KEY WEST, FL. State inspectors visited Dante's Key West/Prime 951 on Caroline Street on September 22 and documented food coming from an unapproved or unknown source, a finding that means no one can trace where that food came from if a customer gets sick. That was one of seven high-severity violations recorded that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation stood alongside two separate citations for toxic chemicals: one for improper storage or labeling, and a second for improper identification, storage, or use of toxic substances. Two distinct chemical violations in a single inspection means inspectors found more than one problem with how dangerous substances were being kept near food.
The illness-related findings compounded each other. There was no written employee health policy. An employee was not reporting symptoms of illness. And no person in charge was present or performing duties. Those three violations together describe a facility where sick workers had no formal obligation to report their condition and no manager on the floor to catch the gap.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for failing to post a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. The two intermediate violations were improper sewage or wastewater disposal and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The unapproved food source citation is the one that matters most if a customer later gets sick. When food comes from a source that bypasses USDA or FDA inspection, there is no paper trail. Health investigators trying to trace a Listeria or Salmonella outbreak back to its origin have nothing to work with. At Dante's Key West, inspectors could not confirm where some of the food being served to customers came from.
The combination of no employee health policy and an employee not reporting illness symptoms is how Norovirus spreads through a dining room. Norovirus causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers are a primary transmission route. A written health policy is the baseline mechanism that tells workers they must stay home when sick. Without one, the decision is left to the individual, often under pressure to show up.
Two separate toxic chemical violations in a single inspection describe a kitchen where hazardous substances were not properly separated from food, not properly labeled, or both. Chemical contamination from mislabeled or misplaced cleaning agents can cause acute poisoning, and it can be nearly impossible to detect before someone is already ill.
The sewage and wastewater disposal violation adds a separate contamination pathway. Improper sewage handling introduces the risk of fecal bacteria moving through a facility. Combined with inadequate ventilation, which allows grease vapors and other airborne contaminants to accumulate, the inspection portrait on September 22 was of a kitchen with failures across multiple independent systems.
The Longer Record
The September 22 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show 21 inspections on file for Dante's Key West, with 185 total violations documented across that history. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The inspection history going back to May 2023 shows high-severity violations at every single visit. The counts have fluctuated, but they have never reached zero. The December 2024 inspection matched September 2026 exactly: seven high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. That visit produced no closure either.
The pattern in the high-severity category is consistent enough to constitute a record, not a rough stretch. Four inspections in 2025 each produced between two and four high-severity findings. The June 2026 inspection, the most recent before September, found two high-severity violations. Three months later, the count was back to seven.
No prior emergency closure appears in the record across 21 inspections and 185 violations. The September 22 visit, with its unapproved food source, dual chemical violations, absent illness reporting infrastructure, and improper sewage disposal, did not change that.
The restaurant remained open.
