MIAMI, FL. When state inspectors walked into Clives Cafe at 5890 NW 2nd Ave on June 11, they found shellfish on the premises with no identification records, meaning that if a customer got sick, there would be no way to trace where the shellfish came from.
That was one of eight high-severity violations documented in a single inspection. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The shellfish violation is among the most serious in terms of public health traceability. Oysters, clams, and mussels are often consumed raw or lightly cooked, and without identification tags and receiving records, there is no chain of custody if a customer becomes ill after eating them.
Inspectors also cited food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Cutting boards, prep counters, and other surfaces that touch food directly are the primary vehicle for transferring bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli from one food item to another.
The handwashing findings were documented twice: once for inadequate handwashing by employees, and again for improper technique. Both citations were logged as high-severity on the same visit. That means inspectors observed not just that employees were skipping handwashing, but that when they did wash, they were doing it wrong.
The cafe had no written employee health policy and no system for employees to report illness symptoms, also both logged as high-severity violations. A no consumer advisory posting for raw or undercooked foods rounded out the eight high-severity citations. Two intermediate violations covered multi-use utensils that were not properly cleaned and single-use items that were being reused.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no illness policy and no symptom reporting is what public health officials call an outbreak enabler. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads directly from infected food workers to customers when there is no system in place to keep sick employees out of the kitchen. A written policy alone does not prevent illness, but its absence removes the one formal mechanism that puts employees on notice about their responsibilities.
The handwashing violations compound that risk. Improper technique, even when a handwashing attempt is made, leaves pathogens on the hands. Studies show that the most commonly missed areas are the fingertips and the backs of the hands. When those hands then touch food contact surfaces that are themselves not sanitized, the contamination pathway from worker to customer is essentially unobstructed.
The absence of a person in charge performing duties is not a paperwork violation. CDC data cited in the inspection record indicates that establishments without active managerial control accumulate three times more critical violations than those with engaged management on site. The other seven high-severity violations found on June 11 are consistent with that pattern.
The shellfish traceability gap is a separate and distinct risk. If a customer reports illness after eating shellfish at Clives Cafe, investigators would have no records to determine the harvest location, the harvester, or the distributor. That information is the foundation of any shellfish-related outbreak investigation.
The Longer Record
The June 11 inspection was not an outlier. State records show Clives Cafe has been inspected 29 times, accumulating 242 total violations across its history. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The most recent prior inspection before June 11 was a follow-up on June 12, 2026, one day later, which still found 3 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. That means even after the initial eight-violation inspection, high-severity problems remained.
The pattern extends back further. In October 2025, an inspection logged 11 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. A follow-up the next day, October 22, 2025, showed zero high-severity violations, suggesting the cafe can correct problems quickly when pressed. But March 2025 brought 3 high-severity violations across two separate inspections, and October 2024 brought 4 more.
The April 2024 inspection was the only one in recent history to show zero violations at any severity level. Every other inspection in the past two years has found at least one high-severity citation. The June 11, 2026 visit, with eight, was the second-highest single-day high-severity count in the records reviewed, behind only October 2025.
Open for Business
Florida law gives inspectors the authority to order an emergency closure when conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. Eight high-severity violations, including untraced shellfish, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and employees neither reporting illness nor washing their hands correctly, did not meet that threshold on June 11.
Clives Cafe remained open that day.