HIALEAH, FL. Inspectors who walked into Soriano Brothers Cuban Cuisine on West 78th Street on June 17 found food coming from unapproved or unknown sources, a kitchen where employees were not reporting illness symptoms, and no written policy requiring them to do so. The restaurant logged 8 high-severity violations and 6 intermediate violations that day. It was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation sits at the top of the list for a reason. Food from unapproved or unknown sources has not been inspected by the USDA or FDA. If a customer gets sick, there is no supply chain record to trace the contamination back to its origin.
The shellfish records violation compounds that risk. Soriano Brothers serves a Cuban menu, and shellfish such as oysters, clams and mussels are among the highest-risk foods a kitchen can handle, particularly when consumed raw or lightly cooked. Without proper shell stock identification tags, there is no way to know where those shellfish came from, when they were harvested, or whether they came from a certified source.
Inspectors also cited the kitchen for using time as a public health control without doing so properly. That practice allows food to sit in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, for a set period instead of being kept continuously cold or hot. When the time logs are not maintained correctly, there is no record of how long food has been in that range, and the margin for error disappears.
There was no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. That notice exists specifically to warn elderly diners, pregnant women, young children and anyone with a compromised immune system that certain menu items carry elevated risk. Without it, those customers have no way to make an informed choice.
The Illness and Hygiene Failures
Three of the eight high-severity violations on June 17 were directly tied to how sick employees are handled, or in this case, not handled. There was no written employee health policy. Employees were not reporting illness symptoms. And when employees did wash their hands, they were not doing it correctly.
Those three violations together describe a kitchen where the most basic barrier against disease transmission was absent. Norovirus, the pathogen most commonly spread by food workers, can survive on surfaces for days and requires only a tiny number of particles to make someone ill.
Inspectors also found improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils that had not been properly cleaned, improper sanitizer concentration, single-use items being reused, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and inadequate toilet facilities. That is six intermediate violations on top of the eight high-severity ones.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy, no reporting of illness symptoms and improper handwashing technique at Soriano Brothers on June 17 is not three separate problems. It is one systemic failure at the point where a sick worker's hands touch the food a customer is about to eat.
The food from unapproved sources violation means that some ingredient or product in that kitchen on June 17 had no documented inspection history. If a customer became ill after eating there, investigators would have no paper trail to follow.
The shellfish traceability gap is a specific public health tool that exists because shellfish-borne illnesses, including those caused by Vibrio bacteria and hepatitis A, can be severe and rapid. The tagging system allows health officials to pull a harvest lot off the market within hours of an outbreak. Without those records at Soriano Brothers, that response window does not exist.
The time-as-public-health-control violation means food was sitting in the temperature range where bacteria double roughly every 20 minutes, and no one was tracking how long it had been there.
The Longer Record
The June 17 inspection was not an aberration. Soriano Brothers has 33 inspections on record and 314 total violations documented across that history.
The eight prior inspections available in the record show a facility that has repeatedly drawn high-severity violations. In October 2025, inspectors found 7 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate. In November 2024, the count was 6 high-severity and 1 intermediate. In March 2026, 6 high-severity and 3 intermediate. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
Two inspections in that window produced zero high-severity violations, in December 2024 and a follow-up on June 19, 2026, two days after the inspection that generated this report. The June 19 follow-up showed no violations at all. But the pattern across 33 inspections and 314 total violations is not a facility that corrects and holds. It is a facility that corrects and slides back.
The restaurant on West 78th Street was open for business on June 17, 2026, with food from an unverified source in the kitchen, no written illness policy on the wall, and no consumer advisory telling vulnerable customers what they were ordering.