MIAMI, FL. Employees at Pummarola on North Miami Avenue were not reporting illness symptoms to management, inspectors found on October 6, and the restaurant had no written employee health policy to require them to do so. The state cited both violations as high-severity. Neither one closed the restaurant.
Inspectors documented seven high-severity violations and two intermediate violations during that single visit to the Italian restaurant at 3328 N Miami Ave. The facility remained open throughout.
What Inspectors Found
The two handwashing violations appeared together in the same inspection. Inspectors found that food employees were not washing their hands adequately, and separately, that the technique used when handwashing occurred was itself improper.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. The inspection also flagged that Pummarola was not using time as a public health control correctly, meaning food was being left in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, without the documentation and tracking that substitutes for temperature monitoring.
The restaurant's menu includes items served raw or undercooked. Inspectors found no consumer advisory on the menu alerting customers to that risk. Elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system are at elevated risk from undercooked proteins.
What These Violations Mean
The pairing of no employee health policy with employees not reporting illness symptoms is the combination most directly linked to multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States, spreads almost exclusively through infected food workers who continue handling food while sick. A written health policy is the mechanism that tells workers when to stay home and gives management the authority to enforce it. Without one, there is no documented standard, and no accountability when a sick employee shows up for a shift.
The two handwashing violations compound that risk. Inadequate handwashing means the behavior is not happening consistently. Improper technique means that even when it does happen, pathogens are surviving on workers' hands. Together, they describe a kitchen where contamination can move from an infected employee to a plate without interruption.
The chemicals violation is a separate category of danger. Improperly stored or unlabeled cleaning compounds near food preparation areas can cause acute chemical poisoning if they contact food directly, or if a container is mistaken for a food-safe product. This is not a theoretical risk: chemical contamination incidents at restaurants are documented in Florida every year.
The missing consumer advisory matters specifically for Pummarola's customers who are most vulnerable. A pregnant woman ordering a dish with undercooked eggs or raw fish has no way to make an informed choice if the menu does not disclose the risk. That disclosure is required by state code precisely because the restaurant, not the customer, controls how the food is prepared.
The Longer Record
The October 6 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Pummarola has been inspected 25 times and has accumulated 221 total violations across that history, with no emergency closures ever ordered.
The pattern of high-severity violations is consistent across years. A January 2026 inspection found seven high-severity and three intermediate violations. A June 2025 inspection found eight high-severity violations. A March 2026 inspection found five high-severity violations. The October 6 visit, with seven high-severity citations, falls squarely in the middle of that range.
A follow-up inspection on October 15, nine days after the October 6 visit, found only one high-severity violation, suggesting some corrections were made. But the same trajectory has appeared before. After the eight-violation inspection in June 2025, a July 2025 visit found only one high-severity violation. A second inspection that same day in July 2025 found four high-severity violations and two intermediate ones.
The record across 2024 and 2025 and into 2026 shows a facility that reduces its violation count under follow-up scrutiny, then rebuilds it between inspections. The July 2024 inspection found three high-severity and three intermediate violations. The January 2025 inspection found three high-severity and one intermediate. The cycle has repeated enough times across 25 inspections that the 221 cumulative violations now on record reflect not a series of isolated bad days but a sustained operational pattern.
Open for Business
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when an inspector determines that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. Seven high-severity violations at Pummarola on October 6 did not meet that threshold, at least not in the judgment of the inspector on site.
The restaurant served customers that evening.
