NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FL. State inspectors found food being cooked below required minimum temperatures at Nick Caribbean Restaurant on W Dixie Highway on June 16, a violation that means pathogens like Salmonella can survive in poultry and reach a customer's plate alive. That was one of nine high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
The inspection also turned up toxic chemicals stored improperly near food, inadequate handwashing by food employees, and no written employee health policy. Four intermediate violations accompanied the nine high-severity citations, covering broken equipment, inadequate ventilation, reused single-use items, and failing cold-holding equipment.
What Inspectors Found
The shellfish traceability violation is worth pausing on. Inspectors cited inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning oysters, clams, or mussels served at the restaurant could not be traced to their harvest source. If a customer gets sick from contaminated shellfish, that missing paperwork is the difference between a traceable outbreak and a dead end.
Inspectors also found that food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Cutting boards and prep surfaces that carry bacteria from one food item to the next are among the most efficient vectors for cross-contamination in any kitchen.
The employee illness violations compounded the risk. No written health policy existed to require workers to report symptoms, and inspectors separately cited employees for not reporting illness. Both citations on the same day points to a gap that runs deeper than paperwork.
What These Violations Mean
Undercooked food is not a marginal concern. Salmonella in poultry requires an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit to be killed. Food served below that threshold can cause severe gastrointestinal illness, and in vulnerable populations, hospitalization. At Nick Caribbean Restaurant, inspectors flagged this on June 16 as a high-severity citation.
The combination of no employee health policy and no symptom reporting is what public health officials call an outbreak enabler. Norovirus, one of the most contagious foodborne pathogens, spreads directly from an infected food worker's hands to every plate they touch. A written policy mandating that sick workers stay home is one of the most basic structural defenses a restaurant has. Nick Caribbean Restaurant did not have one on record.
Toxic chemicals stored improperly near food areas create a separate and acute hazard. Mislabeled or misplaced cleaning compounds can contaminate food directly, and the poisoning that results can be rapid and severe. This violation is categorized as high-severity because the margin for error is close to zero.
Cold-holding equipment that cannot maintain required temperatures, cited here as an intermediate violation, means food sits in the temperature range where bacteria multiply fastest. Combined with the cooking temperature violation, the restaurant had failures at both ends of the thermal safety chain on the same day.
The Longer Record
Nick Caribbean Restaurant: Inspection Pattern, 2024-2026
State records show 33 inspections on file for this restaurant and 350 total violations accumulated across that history. One prior emergency closure is on record, from February 2024, when inspectors found roach and rodent activity and ordered the restaurant shut. It reopened the next day.
The pattern since that closure is not a story of correction. February 2025 brought six high-severity violations. October 2025 brought seven. The two clean inspections in the summer of 2025 stand out precisely because they are surrounded by inspections with elevated violation counts on either side.
The June 16 inspection, with nine high-severity citations, is the worst single-day tally in the recent record. Two days later, on June 18, inspectors returned and found seven high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. The problems documented on June 16 had not been resolved.
Nick Caribbean Restaurant served customers through all of it.