NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FL. State inspectors walked into Houston's Restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard on August 17 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means there is no way to trace what customers were eating back through the supply chain if someone gets sick.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented at the 17355 Biscayne Blvd. location. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The full list of violations from the August 17 inspection reads like a checklist of the most direct routes to foodborne illness. Food was found contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards. Food was not cooked to the required minimum temperature. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized.
Inspectors also cited improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning employees were going through the motions of handwashing without actually eliminating pathogens. The sixth violation involved the improper use of time as a public health control, a method that allows food to sit in the temperature danger zone under strict time limits that were not being followed.
Every single one of the six violations was classified as high severity. None were intermediate. None were basic.
What These Violations Mean
The unapproved food source violation is particularly consequential. When food enters a kitchen from a supplier that has not been vetted by USDA or FDA inspectors, there is no paper trail. If a customer becomes ill with Listeria or Salmonella, investigators cannot trace the contaminated ingredient back to its origin. The supply chain, in effect, goes dark.
The undercooking violation compounds that risk directly. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. If the food arriving from an unverified source is also not cooked to the temperature required to kill pathogens, those two violations together create a direct exposure path for anyone who orders a meal.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, the fourth violation, mean that bacteria from one food item can transfer to the next one prepared on the same surface. Cutting boards and prep counters that carry residue from raw proteins become vectors. Combined with handwashing technique failures, the contamination can move from surface to hand to plate without interruption.
The time-as-public-health-control violation closes the loop. That method is only safe when food spends a strictly limited window in the temperature range where bacteria multiply fastest, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit. When those time limits are not observed, food that might otherwise have been safe becomes a risk.
The Longer Record
Houston's Restaurant: Inspection History, 2022-2026
August 17 was not an anomaly. State records show Houston's has been inspected 22 times and has accumulated 138 total violations. Every single inspection on record going back to at least December 2022 has produced high-severity citations.
The March 2026 inspection, just five months before this one, also produced six high-severity violations along with three intermediate ones, the worst combined tally in the facility's recent record until August matched it. The restaurant was not closed after that inspection either.
The pattern across eight consecutive inspections is consistent: high-severity violations at every visit, ranging from two to six per inspection, with no emergency closure on record across all 22 inspections in the database.
That is not a facility with an occasional bad day. It is a facility where high-severity violations have been the baseline condition for years.
Open for Business
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when violations pose an immediate threat to public health. Six high-severity violations, including food from unverifiable sources, undercooking, contaminated food, and failed handwashing, did not meet that threshold on August 17.
Houston's Restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard was open when inspectors arrived and open when they left.
