HIALEAH, FL. Inspectors visiting Nicoya Nicaraguan Grill on West 12th Avenue on September 1 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means there is no way to trace what entered that kitchen, or where it came from, if someone got sick.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The September 1 inspection produced 11 violations in total: seven high-severity and four intermediate. The high-severity findings covered nearly every critical point of failure in a commercial kitchen, from the source of the food itself to the hands preparing it.
Inspectors cited the restaurant for employees not reporting symptoms of illness and for having no adequate written health policy requiring them to do so. Those two violations compound each other. Without a policy, workers have no formal obligation to stay home when sick. Without reporting, a sick employee becomes an undetected transmission source.
Two separate handwashing violations were also documented. Inspectors found that food employees were not washing their hands adequately, and that the technique used when handwashing occurred was itself improper. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Multi-use utensils were not being cleaned correctly, and single-use items were being reused.
Food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated was also cited as a high-severity finding.
What These Violations Mean
The food-from-unapproved-sources violation is among the hardest to dismiss. When food enters a licensed kitchen through approved, inspected suppliers, there is a paper trail. If a customer becomes ill, investigators can work backward through that chain to identify the contaminated product and pull it. Food from unknown or unapproved sources has no such trail. It bypasses USDA and FDA inspection checkpoints entirely, and it can carry Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli with no record that it was ever screened.
The illness-reporting violations at Nicoya on September 1 represent a different kind of risk. Norovirus, the pathogen responsible for the majority of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads through a single infected food handler touching surfaces, utensils, or food that customers then contact. A written health policy is the minimum structural safeguard against that scenario. The absence of one, combined with documented failure to report symptoms, means that safeguard was not in place.
The two handwashing violations reinforce that picture. Inspectors found both that employees were not washing hands adequately and that the technique used was improper. These are not the same citation. One speaks to frequency and circumstances, the other to execution. Together they document a kitchen where contamination from human hands was not being intercepted at any reliable point in the process.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces and multi-use utensils allow bacterial biofilms to develop within 24 hours. Those films are resistant to standard cleaning and can transfer pathogens directly to food prepared on those surfaces.
The Longer Record
September 1 was not an aberration. The inspection record at Nicoya stretches back across 31 documented inspections and 392 total violations.
The most recent prior inspection, conducted the very next day on September 2, produced four high-severity and one intermediate violation. The inspection on April 23, 2026, found four high-severity and three intermediate violations. A follow-up the next day, April 24, still produced two high-severity findings.
The pattern reaches further back. In December 2025, inspectors again found four high-severity violations. In February 2025, five high-severity violations. In October 2024, a two-day inspection sequence produced six high-severity violations on the first day and two on the follow-up. In May 2024, the single-inspection count reached nine high-severity violations.
Nicoya was emergency-closed once before, in April 2019, after inspectors documented rodent activity. It reopened the following day.
The facility has never been closed for the categories of violations that keep reappearing: illness policies, handwashing, food sourcing, surface sanitation. Those findings have accumulated across years and dozens of inspections without triggering a closure.
Open for Business
After the September 1 inspection, with seven high-severity violations on the books including food from unapproved sources, employees not reporting illness, and inadequately cleaned food contact surfaces, Nicoya Nicaraguan Grill on West 12th Avenue in Hialeah remained open.
The 392 violations spread across 31 inspections represent one of the longer accumulation records in Miami-Dade. The restaurant has served customers through all of it.
