TAMARAC, FL. State inspectors visiting Flame Japanese Hibachi on North University Drive on May 12 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means the restaurant was serving customers ingredients that had bypassed federal safety inspections entirely. The facility logged seven high-severity violations that day. It was not closed.
The inspection on May 12 produced ten total violations, seven of them classified as high severity. That is the category reserved for findings with the most direct link to foodborne illness and customer harm.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food sourcing violation stands out. When a restaurant cannot document where its food came from, there is no chain of traceability if a customer becomes ill. USDA and FDA inspections exist specifically to screen for Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli before food reaches a kitchen. Food that skips that process carries risks that cannot be assessed after the fact.
Inspectors also found food in poor condition, described in state records as spoiled, contaminated, mislabeled, or adulterated. That finding, combined with the sourcing violation, means customers may have been served food that was neither properly vetted at origin nor in acceptable condition at the point of service.
Toxic substances were found to be improperly identified, stored, or used. In a kitchen environment, that means cleaning chemicals or other hazardous materials were positioned in ways that created a direct risk of contaminating food or food-contact surfaces.
The handwashing violations deserve particular attention because there were two of them, not one. Inspectors cited employees for inadequate handwashing and separately for improper hand and arm washing technique. The first violation means workers were not washing their hands when required. The second means that when they did wash, the technique was insufficient to remove pathogens. Both citations at the same inspection, alongside a finding of no written employee health policy, describe a kitchen with no formal mechanism to prevent a sick worker from transmitting illness to customers.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of violations documented at Flame on May 12 is not a collection of isolated oversights. It describes a facility where the basic infrastructure for preventing foodborne illness was absent or failing at multiple points simultaneously.
The employee health policy violation is the foundation of the problem. Without a written policy, there is no formal requirement for workers to report symptoms of Norovirus, Salmonella, Hepatitis A, or other illnesses that spread directly through food handling. Norovirus alone accounts for roughly 20 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year, and an infected food handler without a policy requiring them to stay home is among the most efficient transmission routes that exist.
The sewage and wastewater disposal violation, classified as intermediate, carries a risk that is easy to underestimate. Improper sewage handling creates the possibility of fecal contamination moving through a facility, reaching food prep surfaces or equipment. Combined with food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and multi-use utensils that were not properly cleaned, the inspection describes a facility where contamination had multiple pathways and few barriers.
Equipment in poor repair compounds every other violation. Cracks, chips, and corroded areas in kitchen equipment cannot be effectively sanitized, which means bacterial buildup persists even when cleaning attempts are made.
The Longer Record
Flame Japanese Hibachi: Inspection History
The May 12 inspection is not an aberration. State records show six inspections on file for this location, producing 49 total violations. The trajectory is what makes the record notable.
The facility's first two inspections, in May and November of 2023, produced a combined four high-severity violations. By September 2025, that number had reached two high-severity violations in a single visit. Then the counts climbed sharply. November 2025 produced eight high-severity violations. March 2026 produced nine. May 2026 produced seven.
That means in the three inspections spanning November 2025 through May 2026, inspectors documented 24 high-severity violations at this location. The facility has never been emergency-closed. It has never, in six inspections, been cited for zero high-severity violations.
The restaurant was open for business on May 12, 2026, after inspectors left.