MIAMI, FL. State inspectors walked into Me Kong Chinese Restaurant at 18073 S Dixie Hwy on May 8 and found food sourced from suppliers that could not be verified as USDA or FDA approved, meaning no one could say with certainty where that food came from or whether it had ever been inspected for contamination.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant stayed open.
What Inspectors Found
The food source violation sits at the top of any inspector's concern list. When a restaurant cannot document where its food came from, there is no chain of traceability if a customer gets sick. Investigators cannot trace an outbreak backward to a contaminated supplier. The food simply arrived from somewhere.
Inspectors also cited employees for inadequate handwashing, the violation food safety officials consistently identify as the most direct route for spreading pathogens from kitchen workers to customers. Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch everything served, were found not properly cleaned or sanitized.
Toxic chemicals were stored improperly or without adequate labeling, creating a contamination risk for food nearby. Inspectors also cited the restaurant for failing to use time as a public health control correctly, a violation that means food was allowed to sit in the bacterial growth range, between 41 and 135 degrees, without proper tracking of how long it had been there.
The menu apparently includes raw or undercooked items, but the restaurant had no consumer advisory posted to warn customers. Elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system are at acute risk from undercooked proteins, and without a posted advisory, they had no way to know.
The three intermediate violations added to a grim picture: improper sewage or wastewater disposal, single-use items being reused, and inadequate ventilation and lighting throughout the facility.
What These Violations Mean
The unapproved food source violation is not a paperwork problem. It means that some portion of what was being prepared and served at Me Kong on May 8 came through a supply chain that bypassed federal safety inspection. Listeria and Salmonella contamination, the kinds that trigger multistate recalls, are caught at the inspection stage. Food that skips that stage arrives with no such screening.
The handwashing and food contact surface violations compound each other. An employee who does not wash hands properly and then handles a cutting board that has not been sanitized creates two overlapping contamination pathways in a single transaction. Either violation alone is serious. Both documented on the same inspection visit is a different order of risk.
The improper sewage disposal citation is the one that tends to stop readers cold. Sewage exposure inside a food preparation facility means fecal matter can reach surfaces, equipment, and food. The intermediate classification reflects the nature of the specific finding, but the health risk is not intermediate.
The missing consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods is a violation that most diners would never think to check for. It exists precisely because certain customers face life-threatening risk from undercooked proteins that a healthy adult might tolerate. At Me Kong, that warning was absent.
The Longer Record
Me Kong Chinese Restaurant: Recent Inspection History
The May 8 inspection did not arrive in a vacuum. The day before, on May 7, inspectors had already visited Me Kong and documented nine high-severity violations and five intermediate ones. That prior visit alone would rank among the worst single-day inspection results a Miami restaurant can accumulate. The following day's six high-severity violations were the follow-up.
Across 32 inspections on record, the restaurant has accumulated 410 total violations. High-severity citations appeared in January 2026, twice in April 2025, in January 2025, and in multiple visits in 2024. The single clean inspection in the recent record, April 4, 2024, with zero high or intermediate violations, stands out precisely because it is surrounded by visits that found serious problems.
Me Kong has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. Not after the nine-violation visit on May 7. Not after six high-severity violations on May 8. Not after 410 documented violations across three-plus years of inspections.
As of the May 8 inspection, the restaurant at 18073 S Dixie Hwy remained open for business.