ROYAL PALM BEACH, FL. Inspectors visiting El Rinconcito Colombiano #2 on Southern Boulevard on August 17 found food from unapproved or unknown sources being served to customers, a violation that means there is no way to trace where that food came from if someone gets sick.
That was one of ten high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The handwashing violations are particularly striking because there were two of them, cited separately. Inspectors flagged both the physical setup of handwashing stations as inadequate and the technique employees used when they did wash. That means the problem existed at both the infrastructure and the behavioral level at the same time.
Inspectors also cited inadequate shell stock identification records. El Rinconcito Colombiano #2 is a Colombian restaurant, and shellfish appear on its menu. Without proper tagging and records on oysters, clams, or mussels, there is no chain of custody if a customer becomes ill.
Toxic substances were cited as improperly identified, stored, or used. Chemical cleaners and sanitizers stored or handled incorrectly near food preparation areas create a risk of contamination that has nothing to do with bacteria.
The August 17 inspection also cited violations for specialized food processes not being followed. Smoking, curing, fermenting, and reduced-oxygen packaging each require precise temperature and time controls. When those protocols break down, pathogens survive that would otherwise be destroyed.
A follow-up inspection the next day, August 18, found one remaining high-severity violation.
What These Violations Mean
Food from unapproved sources is a supply chain problem with consequences that extend well beyond one restaurant. When a facility cannot document where its ingredients came from, public health investigators cannot trace an outbreak back to a contaminated supplier. The customer who gets sick has no recourse and investigators have no path to find others who may also be affected.
The pair of violations tied to employee illness, including no written health policy and employees not reporting symptoms, represent what epidemiologists identify as the most direct route to a multi-victim outbreak. A single food worker with Norovirus who continues handling food can infect dozens of customers in a single shift. A written policy exists specifically to give managers the authority to send that worker home. El Rinconcito Colombiano #2 had neither the policy nor the reporting practice in place on August 17.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned and sanitized become transfer points for every pathogen introduced into a kitchen. Cutting boards, prep tables, and slicing equipment that carry residue from one food item to the next can move Salmonella or Listeria directly onto ready-to-eat food. The intermediate violation for multi-use utensils compounds that risk, since utensils develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours of inadequate cleaning.
Equipment in poor repair creates the same problem through a different mechanism. Cracks, chips, and corroded surfaces cannot be fully sanitized. They become permanent bacterial harborage points that survive routine cleaning.
The Longer Record
The August 17 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show El Rinconcito Colombiano #2 has accumulated 266 total violations across 34 inspections on record. That is an average of more than seven violations per visit across its entire documented history.
The most recent prior inspections tell a consistent story. The February 2026 visit found five high-severity and three intermediate violations. The October 2025 inspection found five high and one intermediate. March 2025 produced three high and two intermediate violations. The restaurant has never received an emergency closure order in its inspection history.
August 29, 2024 produced four high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. That was followed the next day, August 30, by a callback inspection that found zero high-severity violations, suggesting rapid correction is possible when pressure is applied. But the pattern of accumulating serious violations at each routine inspection has continued regardless.
The restaurant's one clean inspection in recent years came in November 2023, when inspectors documented zero violations at any severity level. That visit stands alone in the recent record.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented ten high-severity violations at El Rinconcito Colombiano #2 on August 17 and left the restaurant open. The violations included food from sources that cannot be traced, employees not reporting illness, and handwashing failures at both the facility and technique level.
The follow-up inspection the following morning found one high-severity violation still on the books.
