MIAMI, FL. Inspectors visiting Don Criollito at 12039 SW 132 Court on September 21 found the restaurant serving food from unapproved or unknown sources, a violation that means customers had no way of knowing whether what they ate had ever been inspected by the USDA or FDA. That finding was one of nine high-severity violations documented during the visit. The restaurant was not closed.
The September inspection also turned up a failure to follow parasite destruction procedures, a citation that applies when fish, pork, or wild game is served without the freezing or cooking protocols required to kill parasites including Anisakis and tapeworm. Inspectors additionally found food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated, and inadequate shellfish identification records, meaning there was no way to trace oysters, clams, or mussels back to their source if a customer became ill.
What Inspectors Found
Two separate chemical violations were cited during the same visit. Inspectors found toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled, and toxic substances improperly identified, stored, or used. Both citations on the same inspection suggest chemicals were present in or near food preparation areas without adequate controls.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, a violation that turns cutting boards, prep tables, and equipment into direct transfer routes for bacteria between raw and ready-to-eat food. Improper handwashing technique was also cited, meaning that even when employees washed their hands, the method left pathogens behind.
The restaurant had no employee health policy, or an inadequate one. That means there was no documented system requiring sick workers to stay out of the kitchen.
What These Violations Mean
Food from unapproved sources is one of the most serious citations an inspector can write. When a restaurant cannot identify where its food came from, there is no inspection record, no recall system, and no traceback path if customers get sick. At Don Criollito, that violation appeared alongside inadequate shellfish traceability records, compounding the problem: shellfish including oysters and clams consumed raw or lightly cooked are among the highest-risk foods in any kitchen, and without proper identification tags, a contaminated batch cannot be traced to its harvest bed.
The parasite destruction failure adds a second layer of risk at the same facility. Florida rules require that fish served raw or undercooked, and certain cuts of pork and wild game, be frozen to specific temperatures for specific periods before service. That process kills parasites such as Anisakis, which can embed in human intestinal tissue. Skipping it is not a paperwork lapse; it is a gap between a customer ordering a dish and a known biological hazard being neutralized.
The dual chemical citations, taken together, indicate that cleaning or sanitizing products were accessible in areas where food was being handled or stored, without proper segregation or labeling. Chemical contamination does not produce symptoms over time. It produces acute illness, sometimes within minutes of ingestion.
No employee health policy means the restaurant had nothing requiring a worker with Norovirus symptoms to stay home. Norovirus spreads through food handled by infected workers and is responsible for roughly half of all foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States each year.
The Longer Record
The September 21 inspection was not an outlier. Don Criollito has 29 inspections on record with a cumulative 292 violations documented across those visits. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The eight most recent inspections before September tell a consistent story. In March 2026, inspectors found 8 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. In September 2025, 6 high and 3 intermediate. In January 2025, inspectors visited twice within two days: the first visit produced 9 high and 6 intermediate violations, and the second produced 2 high and 2 intermediate, suggesting a partial correction followed by continued problems.
The August 2024 inspection produced 10 high-severity violations, the single worst count in the recent record. January 2024 brought 5 high and 1 intermediate. The pattern across eight inspections in roughly two years is a facility that routinely accumulates between 4 and 10 high-severity violations per visit, corrects enough to avoid closure, and returns to the same range at the next inspection.
No single visit in the recent history produced a clean record. The closest was the September 2023 inspection, which found 1 high and 1 intermediate violation. That result has not been repeated since.
Still Open
State inspectors documented nine high-severity violations at Don Criollito on September 21, 2026, including food from an uninspected supply chain, no system for ensuring sick employees stay out of food preparation, and a failure to destroy parasites in food served to customers. The restaurant accumulated 292 total violations across 29 inspections on record.
It remained open after the inspection.
