NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FL. State inspectors found food not cooked to required minimum temperatures at Smash House on NE 164th Street during a July 15 visit, one of six high-severity violations documented at the restaurant that day. Despite the findings, the facility was not ordered to close.
The undercooked food violation alone carries a stark risk: Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and a single serving can cause serious illness. Inspectors also cited the restaurant for using time as a public health control without doing so properly, meaning food was allowed to sit in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, without the written records and procedures required to make that practice safe.
What Inspectors Found
The full list from July 15 included six high-severity and three intermediate violations. Beyond undercooking and time-temperature abuse, inspectors cited food in poor condition or mislabeled, food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and inadequate records for shellfish identification.
The shellfish finding is its own category of concern. Oysters, clams, and mussels served raw or lightly cooked require documentation that traces the product back to its harvest source. Without those records, there is no way to identify the origin if a customer gets sick.
Inspectors also found no written employee health policy. That means the restaurant had no formal mechanism requiring sick workers to report illness or stay out of the kitchen.
Three intermediate violations rounded out the inspection: multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, inadequate cooling and cold-holding equipment, and poor ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of undercooking and improper time-temperature control is among the most direct paths to a foodborne illness outbreak. When food is not cooked to the required internal temperature, pathogens including Salmonella survive and reach the customer's plate. When time-as-a-public-health-control procedures are not followed correctly, food that should have been discarded after sitting in the danger zone for too long is instead served.
The absence of an employee health policy compounds both risks. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness in the United States, spreads rapidly when sick food workers handle food without a policy in place that would require them to stay home or report symptoms to a manager. Without a written policy, there is no documented standard and no accountability.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, cited as a high-severity violation at Smash House, are a primary vehicle for bacterial transfer from raw to ready-to-eat food. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that carry residue from one food to the next can spread contamination across an entire kitchen shift. The intermediate finding on multi-use utensils compounds this: bacterial biofilms develop on inadequately cleaned surfaces within 24 hours and are resistant to routine rinsing.
Inadequate cold-holding equipment means the restaurant may lack the mechanical capacity to keep food out of the temperature danger zone even if staff follow proper procedures. That is a structural problem, not a training problem.
The Longer Record
The July 15 inspection was not a one-time stumble. Smash House has 28 inspections on record and 260 total violations documented across that history.
The pattern of high-severity violations is consistent across multiple years. The March 31, 2026 inspection turned up seven high-severity and five intermediate violations. The August 5, 2024 inspection also produced seven high-severity violations. The December 26, 2024 inspection added five more high-severity citations.
Two inspections in 2024, one in April and one in August, produced zero high-severity violations, showing the restaurant is capable of meeting standards. But those clean inspections have not held. The restaurant returned to five, six, and seven high-severity violations in subsequent visits, including three of the last four inspections on record.
Smash House has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. That record stands alongside 260 cumulative violations and a pattern in which the most serious violation tier has appeared in six of the eight most recent inspections listed.
Still Open
State inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Smash House on July 15, 2026. The restaurant was not ordered to close.
The most recent prior inspection before July, on April 13, had found only one high-severity violation. The July visit represented a significant escalation, back toward the counts seen in March 2026 and in the worst inspections of 2024.
As of the July 15 inspection date, Smash House remained open for business.
