MIAMI, FL. State inspectors walked into Sushi Sake on SW 42nd Street on July 13 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means no safety inspection, no traceability, and no way to know what customers were actually eating.
That was one of eleven high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food-sourcing violation is the one with the longest tail. When a sushi restaurant sources fish from a supplier outside the approved regulatory chain, there is no federal inspection record attached to that product. If a customer gets sick, there is no paper trail to follow back to the source.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for having no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. At a sushi restaurant, where raw fish is the core product, that omission leaves pregnant women, elderly diners, and anyone immunocompromised without the warning the state requires them to receive.
Toxic substances were found improperly identified, stored, or used. That citation, alongside a food contact surfaces violation, describes a kitchen where the line between cleaning chemicals and food preparation is not clearly maintained.
The handwashing record was among the most detailed in the report. Inspectors cited both inadequate handwashing by food employees and improper hand and arm washing technique as separate violations. That means inspectors observed employees either skipping handwashing entirely or going through the motions without following required technique.
No person in charge was present or performing duties at the time of inspection. No employee health policy was in place. Employees were not reporting illness symptoms. Those three violations together describe a management structure that, on the day inspectors arrived, did not exist in any functional sense.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is the documented setup for a Norovirus outbreak. Norovirus accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States annually, and food workers who continue working while symptomatic are the primary transmission route in restaurant settings. At Sushi Sake, the policy that would require a sick employee to stay home was not on file.
The allergen awareness citation carries its own specific weight. Food allergies affect 32 million Americans and send 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year. A restaurant where no allergen awareness is demonstrated cannot reliably tell a customer with a shellfish or sesame allergy what is safe to order.
Time as a public health control, one of the eleven high-severity citations, refers to a specific protocol used in sushi preparation. When refrigeration is not used to keep raw fish cold, time limits govern how long that fish can remain in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, where bacteria multiply rapidly. Inspectors found that protocol was not being properly followed.
The food contact surfaces violation compounds all of it. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that are not properly sanitized become transfer points for whatever pathogen is present, whether from improperly sourced fish, an ill employee, or cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat items.
The Longer Record
July 13 was not a bad day at an otherwise clean restaurant. It was the worst single inspection in a two-year stretch defined by persistent high-severity violations.
State records show 26 inspections on file for this location, with 258 total violations accumulated across that history. The most recent prior inspection, in April 2026, logged 2 high-severity violations. The one before that, in February 2026, logged 9 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate. In September 2025, inspectors found 8 high-severity violations.
Sushi Sake: High-Severity Violations by Inspection
October 2024 produced the same count as July 2026: 11 high-severity violations. The restaurant was not closed then either.
The one inspection in this recent window that showed no high-severity violations was May 2025, a single visit that stands as the exception in a record otherwise defined by double-digit or near-double-digit high counts. The pattern is not a restaurant that had one rough inspection. It is a restaurant that returns to serious violations repeatedly, improves briefly, and returns again.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history.
After 26 inspections, 258 recorded violations, and a July visit that found unapproved food sources, no allergen awareness, improperly stored toxic substances, and no functioning management presence, Sushi Sake on SW 42nd Street remained open for business.
