COOPER CITY, FL. A state inspector walked into Havana's Cuban Cuisine on Griffin Road on September 28 and found food being served from unapproved or unknown sources, meaning no one could verify it had ever passed a federal safety inspection. That single violation, stacked on top of six other high-severity citations documented the same day, was not enough to close the restaurant.
The facility at 8600 Griffin Road remained open.
What Inspectors Found
The September 28 inspection produced seven high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. The high-severity list covered nearly every major food safety category: sourcing, cooking temperature, employee illness reporting, chemical storage, shellfish traceability, handwashing technique, and consumer disclosure.
Inspectors also cited improper storage or labeling of toxic chemicals, a violation that has nothing to do with cooking and everything to do with whether a cleaning product ends up near a plate. Three intermediate violations rounded out the report: multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and toilet facilities that were inadequate or improperly maintained.
What These Violations Mean
Food from an unapproved or unknown source is not a paperwork problem. It means the ingredient bypassed USDA or FDA inspection entirely, and if someone gets sick, there is no supply chain to trace, no recall to issue, no way to identify other affected customers. At a Cuban restaurant that serves proteins and shellfish, that gap is not abstract.
The undercooking violation compounds it. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. When an inspector documents that food was not cooked to the required minimum temperature, they are documenting a condition where a live pathogen can reach a customer's plate. Combined with food from an unverified source, the two violations together describe a scenario with no safety net at either end of the supply chain.
The employee illness reporting failure is the one that spreads beyond the building. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants, transmits directly from an infected food worker to a customer through food handling. An employee who does not report symptoms, and continues working, is the mechanism by which a single case becomes an outbreak affecting dozens of people. Inspectors documented that failure here on September 28.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods matters specifically for elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system. Without that posted notice, those customers have no way to make an informed choice about what they are ordering.
The Longer Record
The September 28 inspection was not a bad day at an otherwise clean restaurant. State records show 35 inspections on file for Havana's Cuban Cuisine, with 377 total violations documented across that history.
The pattern in recent years is consistent. On June 6, 2024, inspectors found nine high-severity violations and six intermediate ones in a single visit. A follow-up the next day, June 7, still produced three high-severity violations and four intermediate ones. By December 2024, the count was back up to ten high-severity violations in one inspection.
The 2025 record continued in the same direction. An April 2025 inspection produced seven high-severity violations. An October 2025 visit found six. The September 28, 2026 inspection, with its seven high-severity citations, is not an outlier. It is the middle of a line that has been running for years.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history on record.
Still Open
A follow-up inspection on September 29, the day after the seven-violation visit, found two high-severity violations and two intermediate ones still present. A second follow-up on October 6 reduced that to one intermediate violation, and the facility was apparently deemed to have met standards.
The question the record raises is what happened in the weeks and months between each of those clearances and the next round of serious citations. The June 2024 inspections, the December 2024 inspection, the April and October 2025 inspections, and the September 2026 inspection all followed the same arc: high violation counts, follow-up visits, temporary improvement, and then the same categories of high-severity failures appearing again.
On September 28, 2026, a state inspector documented seven high-severity violations at Havana's Cuban Cuisine, including food from an unverified source and food that had not been cooked to the temperature required to kill Salmonella. The restaurant served customers that day, and the day after, and the day after that.
