KEY BISCAYNE, FL. A July inspection of Costa Med on Crandon Boulevard turned up food from unapproved or unknown sources, an employee not reporting illness symptoms, food not cooked to the required minimum temperature, and toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled — eight high-severity violations in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
State records show the inspection took place on July 15, 2026. Inspectors documented eight high-priority violations and two intermediate violations before leaving the facility open to continue serving customers.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious on record. When a restaurant obtains food from unapproved or unknown sources, that food has bypassed USDA and FDA inspection entirely, meaning there is no chain of custody if a customer gets sick.
The shell stock identification violation compounds that problem. Oysters, clams, and mussels are frequently eaten raw or only lightly cooked, and without proper tags and records, there is no way to trace a shellfish-related illness back to its harvest location or pull product from circulation during an outbreak.
Toxic chemicals stored improperly near food represent an immediate contamination risk. A mislabeled bottle, a spill, or simple proximity to food prep surfaces can introduce compounds into meals that cause acute poisoning.
The improper handwashing technique violation is a separate problem from simply skipping handwashing. Even when an employee makes an attempt, incorrect technique, such as insufficient duration or missing contact with key areas of the hands, leaves pathogens in place. Combined with an employee not reporting illness symptoms, the conditions for direct person-to-person transmission through food were documented in the same inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The employee illness reporting failure is the violation public health officials rank as the single largest driver of multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus spreads with particular efficiency through food workers who continue working while symptomatic. A kitchen with no mechanism for employees to report illness removes the earliest warning a restaurant has before an outbreak reaches customers.
The undercooked food citation means food reached customers without hitting the minimum internal temperatures required to kill pathogens. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. When that threshold is not met, the bacteria survives and is served.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is specific to situations where a restaurant intentionally holds food outside of refrigeration for a defined window instead of keeping it cold. That practice is permitted under state rules, but only with strict documentation and time limits. Without those controls, food sits in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, for an unknown length of time.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, including cutting boards, slicers, and prep tables, transfer bacteria directly from one food item to the next. That transfer is invisible and has no corrective step once the food reaches a plate.
The Longer Record
The July 15 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Costa Med has been inspected 22 times and has accumulated 131 total violations across its history. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
Every single inspection on record going back to at least mid-2023 has included high-severity violations. The June 2026 inspection turned up six high-priority violations and one intermediate. The November 2025 inspection found five high-priority violations and two intermediate. The pattern holds across eight consecutive inspections without a single high-severity-free visit in the record.
The July 15 visit produced the highest single-inspection high-severity count in the available history, at eight. That is not a new location working out early problems. Twenty-two inspections in, the violation counts are moving in the wrong direction.
No emergency closure has ever been issued for this address despite the sustained accumulation of high-severity findings across multiple years.
Still Open
State inspectors documented eight high-severity violations at Costa Med on July 15, 2026. They included food of unknown origin, an employee not flagged for illness symptoms, undercooking, improperly stored toxic chemicals, and shellfish with no traceability records.
The restaurant was not closed.
