HIALEAH, FL. State inspectors walked into La Romanita Restaurant and Lounge at 7755 W 4th Ave on April 20 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers being served to customers, a violation that means inspectors had no way to trace where that food came from or whether it had ever passed a federal safety check.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food temperature violation compounds the sourcing problem. Food from an unknown supplier that is also not cooked to the required minimum temperature means two of the most basic safeguards against bacterial illness, knowing where food came from and killing pathogens through heat, were both absent on the same day.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for inadequate handwashing facilities and for improper handwashing technique by employees. Those two violations appeared together, meaning staff lacked both the infrastructure and the practice to wash their hands correctly.
No person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties during the inspection. That single fact sits at the center of the rest of the violations. When management is absent, there is no one monitoring food temperatures, no one enforcing handwashing, no one checking whether sick employees are working.
Employees were also cited for not reporting illness symptoms. A single-use items violation, staff reusing items designed for one-time use, rounded out the inspection report.
What These Violations Mean
Food from unapproved sources is not a paperwork problem. When a restaurant buys food outside the licensed supply chain, there is no USDA or FDA inspection record for that product. If a customer gets sick, investigators cannot trace the food back to a farm, a processor, or a distributor. The outbreak investigation starts from zero.
The failure to cook food to required minimum temperatures is the mechanism by which that risk becomes illness. Salmonella survives in poultry held below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. At La Romanita on April 20, inspectors found both the unverified source and the inadequate cooking in the same kitchen on the same afternoon.
The handwashing violations are not minor. Inadequate facilities means the physical infrastructure for proper hygiene was missing. Improper technique means that even when employees attempted to wash their hands, they were not doing it correctly. Studies show that proper handwashing reduces foodborne illness transmission by roughly 50 percent. At La Romanita, both the means and the method were compromised.
Employees not reporting illness symptoms is the violation public health officials most directly associate with multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus, one of the most contagious pathogens a food worker can carry, spreads person-to-person through contaminated hands and surfaces. A sick employee who does not report symptoms and continues working in a kitchen with inadequate handwashing infrastructure is a precise description of how outbreaks begin.
The Longer Record
La Romanita: Inspection History
April 20 was not an anomaly. State records show La Romanita has accumulated 107 violations across 17 inspections on record. That is an average of more than six violations per visit over the life of the restaurant's documented inspection history.
The March 4, 2026 inspection, just 47 days before the April visit, produced nine high-severity violations and two intermediate ones, the heaviest single-visit total in the restaurant's record. The April 20 inspection came six weeks later with six high-severity violations. The restaurant was not closed after either visit.
Going back further, the July 2024 inspection produced eight high-severity violations. The March 2025 inspection produced seven. The pattern across nearly two years is not a restaurant struggling through an isolated rough patch. It is a facility that has repeatedly generated high-severity violation counts and continued operating.
La Romanita has never been issued an emergency closure order, according to state records.
Still Open
A follow-up inspection on April 21, the day after the six-violation visit, found one remaining high-severity violation and zero intermediate violations, a significant drop. The state considered that sufficient.
As of the April 21 follow-up, La Romanita remained open, with 107 violations on record, no emergency closures, and a history of high-severity citations stretching back through 2024.