HIALEAH, FL. Inspectors visiting Los Caringas Latin American Food on West 18th Avenue on July 23 found the restaurant serving food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning none of it had passed through USDA or FDA inspection channels, with no manager present to oversee operations and no written policy requiring sick employees to report their symptoms before handling food.
The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
All eight violations logged that day were high-severity. None were intermediate or basic.
The food sourcing violation is the kind that concerns investigators most in outbreak scenarios. When food enters a kitchen without going through approved supply chains, there is no traceability if a customer gets sick. Inspectors cannot identify where the product came from, who handled it, or whether it was ever tested for Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli.
The handwashing findings compounded that risk directly. Inspectors cited both inadequate handwashing facilities and improper technique by employees, meaning even when workers attempted to wash their hands, the conditions and execution left pathogens behind.
Toxic chemicals stored improperly near food rounded out the citation list. Mislabeled or misplaced chemicals can contaminate food directly, and in a kitchen where no manager was present and no illness reporting policy existed, there was no one positioned to catch the error.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is the documented engine of multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus alone accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers who continue handling food while sick are the most common transmission route in restaurant-linked cases. At Los Caringas on July 23, there was no written policy requiring workers to disclose symptoms, and inspectors found that employees were not reporting them.
The absence of a person in charge is not a paperwork violation. CDC data shows that restaurants without active managerial oversight accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with an engaged manager on duty. Every other violation found that day, from the handwashing failures to the chemical storage to the unapproved food sourcing, is more likely to occur and go uncorrected when no one is in charge of catching it.
Time as a public health control, when used correctly, allows food to stay in the temperature danger zone for a defined window before being discarded. When that system breaks down, as inspectors found it had here, food that should have been thrown out continues to be served. There is no thermometer reading that flags the problem for a customer.
The Longer Record
July 23 was not an aberration. State records show 16 inspections on file for the West 18th Avenue location, with 121 total violations across that history.
The pattern of high-severity violations at Los Caringas goes back years. In September 2023, inspectors documented 9 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations in a single visit. The August 2024 inspection logged 8 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations, a tally that matches July 23 exactly. The December 2024 visit produced 6 high-severity violations. The restaurant has not recorded a clean inspection in any of its eight most recent visits.
The facility was emergency-closed once before, in July 2021, after inspectors found roach and rodent activity. It was allowed to reopen the following day. The violations documented since that closure suggest the underlying management problems were never resolved.
A follow-up inspection on July 24, the day after the July 23 visit, found 4 high-severity violations still present.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented 8 high-severity violations at Los Caringas on July 23, including food from uninspected sources, no illness reporting policy, employees not reporting symptoms, no manager on duty, inadequate handwashing infrastructure, improper handwashing technique, misused time controls, and improperly stored chemicals.
The restaurant remained open.
