MIRAMAR, FL. A state inspector walked into Sabor Dominicano Restaurant at 7100 Pembroke Road on July 10 and found food being served that could not be traced to any approved source, fish that had not undergone required parasite destruction procedures, and food that had not reached minimum cooking temperatures. The restaurant was not closed.
That combination of violations, six of them rated high-severity, places Sabor Dominicano among the more serious inspection findings in Broward County this year. State inspectors documented the problems, issued citations, and left the restaurant operating.
What Inspectors Found
The food source violation is the broadest concern. When a restaurant cannot document where its food came from, there is no way to trace an illness back to a supplier, no recall notice that reaches the kitchen, and no record that the food passed any federal safety inspection.
The parasite destruction citation compounds that. Fish served raw or lightly cooked, including preparations common in Dominican cuisine, must be frozen to specific temperatures for specific durations before service. That process kills parasites including Anisakis and tapeworm. The record does not show it was followed here.
Food not reaching minimum cooking temperatures was also cited. Undercooking is one of the most direct routes for Salmonella in poultry to survive and reach a customer's plate. The inspector flagged it as a high-severity violation.
Inspectors also found food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized, and inadequate shell stock identification records for shellfish. Shellfish, including oysters, clams, and mussels, are consumed raw or lightly cooked and require tag records that link each batch to a licensed harvester. Without those records, there is no way to pull a product if a harvest area is contaminated. The seventh citation, rated intermediate, was for multi-use utensils not properly cleaned.
The restaurant also had no written employee health policy, or an inadequate one. That is the administrative violation that tends to get dismissed as paperwork. It is not.
What These Violations Mean
The employee health policy violation matters because it is the mechanism that keeps sick workers out of the kitchen. Without a written policy, there is no formal system requiring employees to report symptoms like vomiting or diarrhea before handling food. Norovirus spreads directly through that route, and it only takes a small number of viral particles to infect a customer.
The unapproved food source violation and the shell stock recordkeeping failure are connected. Both remove the ability to trace an illness back to its origin. If a customer who ate at Sabor Dominicano on July 10 became sick, investigators would have no supplier records to pull, no harvest tags to cross-reference, and no chain of custody to follow. The investigation would start cold.
The parasite destruction failure is specific to fish. Regulators require either cooking fish to an internal temperature that kills parasites, or freezing it at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit for seven days, or minus 31 degrees for 15 hours. Skipping that step means parasites can survive into a finished dish. Anisakis, for example, can cause severe abdominal pain and requires surgical removal in serious cases.
The food contact surface violation ties all of it together. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that are not properly sanitized become transfer points. A surface that touched raw poultry and was not sanitized before the next use can carry Salmonella directly onto a ready-to-eat item.
The Longer Record
The July 10 inspection was not the first time Sabor Dominicano accumulated serious citations. State records show 17 inspections on file for this location, with 97 total violations across that history.
The most significant prior event was an emergency closure on July 25, 2025, for rodent activity. The restaurant was allowed to reopen the same day. That closure came during an inspection that also produced five high-severity violations and two intermediate ones, one of the worst single-day tallies in the facility's record before this month.
A December 2025 inspection found three high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. The two inspections conducted on October 1, 2025, showed zero high-severity violations, suggesting the restaurant can meet standards when it chooses to. But the pattern across 2024 and 2025 shows high-severity violations appearing in nearly every non-follow-up inspection cycle.
The July 10, 2026 inspection produced six high-severity violations, the highest single-inspection count in the available record. It came almost exactly one year after the emergency closure for rodents.
Open for Business
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when violations present an immediate threat to public health. Six high-severity violations in a single inspection, including unapproved food sources, undercooked food, and no parasite destruction procedures, did not meet that threshold on July 10.
Sabor Dominicano remained open after the inspection.
