SEBASTIAN, FL. Inspectors visiting Las Palmas Cuban Restaurant on Sebastian Boulevard on July 10 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means no regulatory agency had inspected that food before it reached customers' plates.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious a restaurant can receive. When food enters a kitchen from an unapproved or unidentified supplier, there is no chain of custody, no USDA or FDA inspection record, and no way to trace an illness back to its origin if a customer gets sick.
Inspectors also found that food was not being cooked to required minimum internal temperatures. That violation sits alongside the sourcing problem in a particularly dangerous way: unverified ingredients, cooked insufficiently.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. The inspector also cited staff for improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning employees were going through the motions of handwashing without actually removing pathogens. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, creating a direct route for bacteria to move from surface to plate.
Two additional high-severity violations rounded out the list: no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items, and no demonstrated allergen awareness among staff.
Three intermediate violations accompanied the seven high-severity findings. Single-use items were being reused. Wiping cloths were improperly used, a common contamination vehicle when cloths are left sitting in standing water or used across multiple surfaces without sanitizing. Toilet facilities were found inadequate or improperly maintained.
What These Violations Mean
The food-from-unapproved-sources violation is not a paperwork technicality. When a restaurant cannot identify where its food came from, health officials have no way to issue a targeted warning or recall if customers begin reporting illness. Listeria and Salmonella have both been linked to uninspected food supply chains. At Las Palmas, that risk was compounded by the undercooking violation found in the same inspection.
Undercooking is one of the leading causes of foodborne illness in the United States. Salmonella in poultry requires an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit to be killed. When food arrives from an unverified source and is then served undercooked, the two violations amplify each other.
The allergen awareness violation carries a separate and acute danger. Food allergies affect an estimated 32 million Americans, and allergic reactions send roughly 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year. When staff cannot demonstrate awareness of allergens in the dishes they serve, customers with life-threatening allergies to peanuts, shellfish, or tree nuts have no reliable way to make a safe choice from the menu.
Improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals near food represent a different category of risk entirely: acute chemical poisoning from contamination or mislabeling. That violation, combined with the handwashing technique failure and unsanitized food contact surfaces, describes a kitchen where multiple contamination pathways were active simultaneously on July 10.
The Longer Record
The July 10 inspection was not an aberration. Las Palmas has been inspected 18 times, and the facility's records show 159 total violations accumulated across that history. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern of high-severity violations is consistent across years. In September 2025, inspectors found six high-severity violations. In April 2025, six more. In October 2024, five. In February 2024, a single inspection produced seven high-severity violations, matching the count from this month. Two inspections in October 2023 found five and three high-severity violations respectively.
Seven of the eight most recent inspections on record have included at least three high-severity violations. The January 2026 inspection, the most recent before July, found two high-severity violations and three intermediate, the lowest combined count in recent history. That relative improvement did not hold.
The July 10 inspection tied the restaurant's worst single-day high-severity count, matching the February 2024 visit. It also introduced violations, including food from unapproved sources and no allergen awareness demonstrated, that compound the risk beyond a simple repeat of prior findings.
Open for Business
State inspectors left Las Palmas Cuban Restaurant open after the July 10 visit.
The restaurant on Sebastian Boulevard had seven high-severity violations on its record that afternoon, including food that could not be traced to any approved supplier and food that had not been cooked to temperatures required to kill pathogens. Customers who ate there that day, or in the days following, did so without being told.
