NORTH MIAMI, FL. Food at Stadium Diner on NW 2nd Avenue was not being cooked to the required minimum temperature when a state inspector visited on September 15, 2026, a violation that means pathogens like Salmonella can survive in poultry and reach a customer's plate.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector cited the diner for no employee health policy and separately for employees not reporting symptoms of illness. Those are two distinct failures: there is no written policy requiring workers to disclose when they are sick, and workers were not reporting symptoms regardless.
Inspectors also documented two separate handwashing violations: employees were not washing their hands adequately, and when they did attempt to wash, the technique was wrong. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned, and single-use items were being reused.
No person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties during the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
Undercooking is not a paperwork problem. Salmonella survives in poultry held below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A customer who ate improperly cooked food at Stadium Diner on September 15 had no way of knowing the food on their plate had not reached a safe internal temperature.
The illness-reporting failures compound that risk directly. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million infections in the United States each year, spreads through food handlers who are sick and working. At Stadium Diner, there was no written policy requiring workers to disclose symptoms, and workers were not reporting them. That is two separate barriers removed from a single transmission pathway.
The handwashing violations make the picture worse. An employee who attempts to wash their hands using improper technique can still transfer pathogens to food. The inspector flagged both the absence of adequate handwashing and the failure of technique, meaning the problem was not simply that workers skipped a step but that the step itself was being done wrong.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned become vehicles for cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat food. At a facility where utensils are also not being properly cleaned and single-use items are being reused, the contamination pathways multiply. The absence of a manager on duty during the inspection is what CDC data links to three times the rate of critical violations in a given establishment.
The Longer Record
Stadium Diner: Recent Inspection History
September 15 was not an anomaly. The prior inspection in April 2026 also produced seven high-severity violations. The inspection before that, in March 2026, produced five. The diner has accumulated 310 total violations across 29 inspections on record.
The April 2026 visit and the September 2026 visit produced identical high-severity violation counts. That is the same severity level, six months apart, with inspections in between that showed reduced but still significant violation counts.
The diner's one prior emergency closure came in November 2016, when inspectors found a sewage leak and roach activity. The restaurant was shut down and allowed to reopen the following day. A decade later, the categories of concern have changed; the frequency of high-severity citations has not.
The day after the September 15 inspection, a follow-up visit on September 16 found one high-severity violation and one intermediate violation still present.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented seven high-severity violations at Stadium Diner on September 15, 2026, including food cooked to unsafe temperatures, no illness reporting system, two separate handwashing failures, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and no manager on duty.
The restaurant was not emergency-closed. It remained open to serve customers that day, and the day after, when a follow-up inspection still found violations on site.
