MIAMI BEACH, FL. State inspectors visited Top of the Falls at 5225 Collins Ave on October 2nd and found food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, toxic chemicals improperly stored near food, and employees using improper handwashing technique, among six total high-severity violations. The restaurant was not closed.
That last fact is worth sitting with. Six high-severity violations in a single inspection is not a clerical anomaly. It is the kind of record that, in other circumstances, triggers an emergency closure order. At Top of the Falls, it did not.
What Inspectors Found
The most direct danger to customers that day was the failure to cook food to required minimum temperatures. State code sets those thresholds for a reason: poultry that does not reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit can carry live Salmonella. There is no ambiguity in that number, and there is no safe margin below it.
Toxic chemicals stored improperly near food is the second violation that demands attention. A mislabeled container or a chemical stored above a prep surface is not a paperwork problem. It is a direct path to acute poisoning, the kind that sends customers to an emergency room before anyone realizes what happened.
Inspectors also documented that food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and counters that touch every dish that goes out, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. That violation, combined with the improper handwashing technique cited in the same inspection, means that pathogens could have moved from surface to surface and from hand to food throughout the service day.
The sixth high-severity violation, no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items, closed off the last line of defense. Even if a customer might have chosen differently knowing their food carried elevated risk, they were not given the information to make that choice.
What These Violations Mean
Undercooking is among the most direct causes of foodborne illness on the public health record. Salmonella in poultry, E. coli in ground beef, and Listeria in certain prepared foods do not die at room temperature or at medium heat. They die when internal temperatures reach the minimums the code requires. When a restaurant skips that step, the customer absorbs the risk.
Improper handwashing technique is a subtler but equally serious failure. An employee who goes through the motion of washing hands but does not scrub for the required duration, does not use soap, or does not reach all surfaces of the hand and wrist can transfer pathogens as effectively as someone who skips handwashing entirely. The violation at Top of the Falls was not that employees skipped the sink. It was that the technique was wrong, which means the sink provided false assurance.
The specialized process violation requires context. Certain cooking and preservation methods, including smoking, curing, reduced-oxygen packaging, and fermentation, require written plans approved by the state because the margin for error is narrow. When those procedures are not followed, the safety controls those processes are designed to provide simply do not exist.
Bacterial biofilms on multi-use utensils compound every other violation. A biofilm is a colony of bacteria that adheres to a surface and, within 24 hours, becomes resistant to standard cleaning agents. Utensils that are not properly cleaned between uses carry that colony from one food item to the next, all day.
The Longer Record
The October 2nd inspection was not a departure from the norm at Top of the Falls. It was the norm.
State records show 26 inspections on file for the Collins Avenue location, with 159 total violations accumulated across that history. The facility has never been emergency-closed. The October inspection, with six high-severity violations, is actually the highest single-visit high-severity count in the records provided, but it sits on a continuum that goes back years.
The prior eight inspections, stretching from February 2023 through February 2026, each produced between two and five high-severity violations. The February 2026 visit found four high-severity and three intermediate violations. The November 2025 visit found five high-severity violations. The February 2025 and August 2024 visits each found five high-severity violations as well.
That pattern, high-severity violations at nearly every inspection across three years, with no emergency closure on record, is the context in which the October findings land. This is not a restaurant that had a bad day. It is a restaurant with a documented, recurring inspection record that has not resulted in a closure order.
As of the October 2nd inspection, Top of the Falls remained open for business.
