MIAMI, FL. A state inspector walked into Sushi Sake on SW 42nd Street on September 18, 2026, and left with a citation sheet listing 11 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate ones. The restaurant, which serves raw fish to the public, had no consumer advisory posted warning customers about the risks of eating undercooked food. It also had no demonstrated allergen awareness among staff. When the inspector walked out, the restaurant remained open.
What Inspectors Found
The consumer advisory violation is particularly pointed at a sushi restaurant. Florida requires any establishment serving raw or undercooked animal products to post a written notice informing customers of the associated health risk. Sushi Sake had none. That means customers ordering raw fish had no formal notice of what they were consuming.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for food not cooked to required minimum internal temperatures. The specific items were not detailed in the inspection record, but the violation category covers failures that allow pathogens like Salmonella to survive in food that reaches the table.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled. In a kitchen where raw fish is prepared on shared surfaces, chemical contamination near food is not a theoretical risk.
The person in charge was cited as either not present or not performing required supervisory duties. That violation appeared alongside a citation for no written employee health policy and a separate citation noting that employees were not reporting illness symptoms. All three failures point to the same gap: no one was running the kitchen in a way that meets state standards.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no consumer advisory, no allergen awareness, and undercooked food in a single inspection at a sushi restaurant is not a paperwork problem. Sushi Sake serves raw fish. Customers who are pregnant, elderly, or immunocompromised face elevated risk from raw seafood, and they rely on posted advisories to make informed choices. There was no advisory here.
The allergen violation compounds that. Food allergies affect 32 million Americans, and allergic reactions send 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year. Staff at Sushi Sake could not demonstrate they understood which menu items contained common allergens. A customer with a shellfish allergy asking a server whether a dish is safe has no protection if the staff has not been trained to answer that question accurately.
The shellfish traceability violation adds another layer. Inspectors cited inadequate shell stock identification and records. Shellfish like oysters and clams are consumed raw or lightly cooked, and when a customer gets sick, health officials trace the illness back to the harvest source using those records. Without them, an outbreak investigation stops before it starts.
The employee illness violations are a direct transmission risk. Without a written health policy and without employees required to report symptoms, a worker sick with Norovirus can prepare food and serve customers with no mechanism to stop them. Norovirus is the leading cause of multi-victim foodborne outbreaks in the United States.
The Longer Record
Sushi Sake Inspection History, 2025-2026
The September 18 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Sushi Sake has been inspected 29 times and has accumulated 291 total violations across its history. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The July 13, 2026 inspection produced an identical count: 11 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate ones. Two months later, the same number appeared again. Before that, February 2026 brought 9 high-severity violations. September 2025 brought 8.
The single clean high-severity record in recent history came in May 2025, when inspectors found zero high-priority violations. That inspection stands alone. Every inspection before and after it found serious violations, often in the same categories: management failures, illness reporting, food handling.
The follow-up inspection on September 19, the day after the 11-violation inspection, found 3 high and 3 intermediate violations. The inspection four days before, on September 14, found 4 high and 1 intermediate. The week of September 14 through 19 produced three separate inspections, all with high-severity citations.
Sushi Sake has served customers through all of it. As of the September 18 inspection, the restaurant was open.
