HIALEAH, FL. State inspectors visiting Los Martin Cafeteria on West 33rd Place on August 18 found that the restaurant was serving food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning none of it had passed through USDA or FDA safety inspections before reaching customers' plates.
That was one of nine high-severity violations documented during the visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source citation is among the most serious a food establishment can receive. When food enters a restaurant outside the regulated supply chain, there is no inspection record, no traceability, and no way to identify the origin if a customer gets sick.
Inspectors also found that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness and that the restaurant had no written employee health policy in place. Together, those two violations describe a kitchen where a worker with Norovirus or another communicable illness could handle food without any formal requirement to stay home or disclose their condition.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near the food operation. The restaurant also lacked a required consumer advisory notifying customers that certain items are served raw or undercooked, and shellfish traceability records were inadequate, meaning there was no reliable documentation of where the oysters, clams, or mussels on the menu came from or when they were harvested.
Inspectors cited improper handwashing technique, food in poor condition or mislabeled, and failure to properly use time as a public health control. Two intermediate violations rounded out the inspection: multi-use utensils not properly cleaned and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is particularly dangerous in a cafeteria-style setting where workers handle large quantities of food served to many customers. Norovirus can spread from a single infected food handler to dozens of diners through a single service shift. A written policy is the baseline mechanism that gives management grounds to send a sick employee home before that happens. There was no such policy at Los Martin on August 18.
The food from unapproved sources violation compounds every other risk on the list. Food that enters a kitchen through an uninspected channel could carry Listeria, Salmonella, or other pathogens with no prior detection. If a customer becomes ill, investigators have no supply chain records to trace the contamination back to its origin.
Inadequate shellfish identification records make that traceability problem acute. Shellfish are consumed raw or lightly cooked, and they filter large volumes of water, concentrating whatever pathogens or toxins are present. Without harvest tags and sourcing documentation, there is no way to know whether shellfish served at this restaurant came from a conditionally approved or prohibited growing area.
The improper handwashing technique citation is not a paperwork failure. It means that even when employees at this restaurant went through the motions of washing their hands, they were not doing it in a way that removes pathogens effectively.
The Longer Record
August's inspection was not an outlier. State records show Los Martin Cafeteria has been inspected 24 times and has accumulated 277 violations over the course of its inspection history.
Looking at just the past three years, the pattern is consistent. Inspectors found seven high-severity violations in October 2025, five in March 2025, five in October 2024, and five in October 2023. The August 2026 total of nine high-severity violations is the highest single-visit count in the recent record, but the violations themselves, food sourcing, illness reporting, handwashing, are categories that have appeared repeatedly.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed. Not in 24 inspections.
That means customers eating at Los Martin in the days and weeks after each of those visits, including the visits that found five and seven high-severity violations, did so while the same categories of risk were present. The August inspection found all nine high-severity violations still in place, the restaurant still open, and no closure order attached to the report.
It remained open after this inspection too.
