HIALEAH, FL. A state inspector walked into Me Sabe a Peru on West 16th Avenue on July 13 and found that not a single employee had ever been required to report symptoms of illness to management, a failure state records flag as the leading cause of multi-victim foodborne outbreaks.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented at the Hialeah restaurant in a single visit. The facility was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector documented that Me Sabe a Peru had no written employee health policy and that employees were not reporting illness symptoms. Those two violations are listed separately in state records but describe the same cascading failure: no written rule requiring workers to disclose when they are sick, and workers who are, in fact, not disclosing it.
Inspectors also found that toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled near food areas, and that food contact surfaces had not been properly cleaned or sanitized. The sixth high-severity citation involved the restaurant's use of time as a public health control without following proper procedures, a method that allows food to remain at temperatures where bacteria multiply if not tracked precisely.
Shell stock identification records were also inadequate. The restaurant serves Peruvian cuisine, which commonly includes shellfish. State records show the facility could not document the sourcing of those shellfish at the time of inspection.
The one intermediate violation involved inadequate ventilation and lighting.
The following day, July 14, a follow-up inspection recorded zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations.
What These Violations Mean
The pairing of no employee health policy and no illness reporting is what state health officials describe as a direct transmission route for Norovirus. Norovirus causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year. A single sick food worker handling ready-to-eat food without being required to report or stay home is enough to trigger a multi-victim outbreak. At Me Sabe a Peru, neither the policy nor the practice was in place on July 13.
Improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals represent a different category of risk entirely. Chemical contamination from cleaning agents or pesticides stored near food does not require the chemicals to spill. Mislabeled containers, aerosol drift, or contact with food prep surfaces can introduce compounds that cause acute poisoning with no warning and no obvious taste or smell.
The food contact surface violation compounds the picture. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that are not properly sanitized between uses become transfer points for bacteria from raw proteins to ready-to-eat food. Combined with the time-control violation, which means food was sitting in the temperature range where bacteria double roughly every 20 minutes without the required documentation, the July 13 inspection described a kitchen where multiple independent safeguards had broken down at once.
The shell stock traceability failure matters for a specific reason: shellfish are frequently eaten raw or lightly cooked, and without sourcing records, there is no way to trace an illness back to a harvest location if customers get sick.
The Longer Record
Me Sabe a Peru has been inspected 27 times, and state records show 169 total violations across that history. The July 13 visit, with six high-severity citations, was the worst single inspection the facility has recorded in the eight most recent visits on file.
The pattern going back to 2023 shows high-severity violations in every inspection except one. The May 2023 visit found zero high-severity violations. Every other inspection in that span found between one and six. The count has trended upward in the most recent cycle: three high-severity in August 2024, three in March 2024, two in January 2025, two in July 2025, two in January 2026, and then six in July 2026.
The facility was emergency-closed once before, in February 2021, for roach activity. It reopened two days later. That closure is the only time state records show the restaurant was ordered shut, despite the accumulation of high-severity violations across subsequent years.
The July 14 follow-up inspection cleared all high-severity violations. State records show zero violations remained.
Open for Business
On the day inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Me Sabe a Peru, including no illness reporting policy, improperly stored toxic chemicals, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and inadequate shell stock records, the restaurant was not closed.
It served customers that afternoon.
