BOCA RATON, FL. Food at Las Fajitas on N. Dixie Highway was found contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards during a state inspection on August 10, one of eight high-severity violations documented that day at the 2298 N. Dixie Hwy restaurant. The facility was not emergency-closed.
The inspection also turned up a failure to follow parasite destruction procedures, a violation that applies directly to raw or lightly cooked fish on the menu. Inadequate shell stock identification records were cited as well, meaning inspectors could not confirm where the shellfish served to customers had come from.
What Inspectors Found
No person in charge was present or performing duties during the inspection. That single finding, inspectors note, correlates with cascading failures across the rest of the visit.
Employees were not reporting symptoms of illness, inspectors wrote. The handwashing facilities were cited as inadequate, and employees who did attempt to wash their hands were not doing so with proper technique.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch what customers eat, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Sewage or wastewater was being improperly disposed of. Single-use items were being reused.
What These Violations Mean
The contamination finding is the most direct threat to anyone who ate at Las Fajitas on or before August 10. When inspectors cite food contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards, they are documenting that something foreign, whether a cleaning agent, a piece of metal or glass, or a pathogen, reached food that was being served to customers. There is no safe exposure threshold for that category of violation.
The parasite destruction failure carries a different but equally concrete risk. Fish served raw or lightly cooked must be frozen to specific temperatures for specific durations to kill parasites including Anisakis and tapeworm. When that process is skipped or improperly documented, parasites can survive into a customer's meal. The shellfish traceability failure compounds this: without proper shell stock identification records, there is no way to trace an oyster, clam, or mussel back to its harvest source if a customer falls ill.
The illness reporting failure is what epidemiologists call an outbreak enabler. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness, spreads directly from an infected food worker's hands to food. When employees are not required to report symptoms, an infected worker has no formal reason to stay out of the kitchen.
Inadequate handwashing infrastructure and improper technique, cited together in the same inspection, mean the primary defense against that transmission route was compromised twice over. Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces then provide a third pathway for bacterial transfer across every dish prepared on them.
The Longer Record
The August 10 inspection was not an outlier. State records show Las Fajitas has accumulated 229 violations across 39 inspections on file, a history that stretches back through three separate emergency closures.
Inspectors shut the restaurant down on October 1, 2020, for roach activity. It reopened the next day. A rodent activity closure followed on March 23, 2021, with the restaurant reopening within 24 hours. A third closure came on December 13, 2021, again for roach activity, and again the restaurant was back open by the following day.
The inspection record since those closures shows a facility that has continued to generate high-severity citations at nearly every visit. On August 2, 2024, inspectors cited five high-severity and three intermediate violations. A follow-up the next day still found one high-severity violation. On March 2, 2026, six high-severity violations were documented. A follow-up the next day still found one high-severity citation.
The August 10, 2026 inspection, with eight high-severity violations, is the worst single-day tally in the two years of records provided. A follow-up inspection on August 11 found one high-severity and one intermediate violation still present.
Still Open
State emergency closure authority is triggered when inspectors determine a facility poses an immediate threat to public health. Eight high-severity violations, including contaminated food, a parasite destruction failure, no person in charge, and no illness reporting system, did not meet that threshold on August 10 at Las Fajitas.
The restaurant served customers that day and the days that followed.
