PEMBROKE PINES, FL. A food worker at Leafy on NW 100th Place was observed using improper handwashing technique during a state inspection on September 21, 2026, one of six high-severity violations documented that day at the Broward County restaurant. The facility was not closed.
The six violations carried no intermediate citations alongside them. Every single finding that day was high severity.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector found no written employee health policy in place and documented that at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms. Those two violations sit together in the record as a matched pair: no policy requiring disclosure, and no disclosure happening.
Also cited: food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized. Cutting boards, prep surfaces and similar equipment are primary transfer points for bacteria between raw and ready-to-eat foods.
The shellfish traceability violation rounds out the picture. Leafy serves shellfish, which are consumed raw or lightly cooked and carry elevated risk of Vibrio and other pathogens. Without proper identification tags and records, there is no way to trace a contaminated batch back to its source if someone gets sick.
The inspector also cited the absence of an active person in charge performing managerial duties. That violation, in the context of five others, is not a paperwork problem.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and an employee not reporting illness symptoms is the documented setup for a Norovirus outbreak. Norovirus accounts for roughly 20 million infections in the United States annually, and food workers are a primary transmission route. A written health policy is not a formality; it is the mechanism by which a sick worker is identified and removed from food handling before customers are exposed.
Improper handwashing technique compounds that risk directly. Studies show that handwashing attempts using incorrect technique leave measurable pathogen loads on hands. At Leafy, the inspector observed the technique, not just the absence of a sink or soap, which means a worker made an effort to wash and still left contaminated.
The unsanitized food contact surfaces violation means that whatever was on those surfaces, bacteria from raw proteins, residue from prior prep, could transfer to the next food prepared on them. That is a cross-contamination pathway that operates invisibly.
The shellfish records violation carries a specific consequence: if a customer who ate oysters or clams at Leafy became ill in the days following this inspection, investigators would have no reliable documentation to trace which harvest lot was served or where it originated.
The Longer Record
Leafy: Inspection History, 2023–2026
The September 2026 inspection is the restaurant's 17th on record. Across those 17 inspections, state records show 106 total violations. Leafy has never been emergency-closed.
Every single inspection in the eight most recent visits on record produced high-severity violations. The count has fluctuated: two high-severity findings in November 2024, seven in October 2023. September 2026's six matches the March 2023 total exactly, and both inspections share a troubling category overlap in management and food safety fundamentals.
The pattern is not a single bad day. It is a facility that has produced high-severity violations in every documented inspection across more than three years, with the most recent visit producing six of them and zero intermediate ones.
No prior emergency closure appears anywhere in the record.
Still Open
State law gives inspectors the authority to order an emergency closure when conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. Six high-severity violations at Leafy on September 21, 2026, did not meet that threshold, at least not in the judgment of the inspector on site that day.
The restaurant remained open after the inspection concluded.
Customers who ate at Leafy on or around September 21 did so at a facility where, according to state records, no written employee illness policy was in effect, handwashing was being performed incorrectly, food contact surfaces had not been properly sanitized, and shellfish on the menu could not be traced to a verified source.
The record shows 106 violations across 17 inspections. It shows no closures. Those two facts sit in the same file.
