HIALEAH, FL. Inspectors visiting Trebol Pizzeria at 1167 W 29 St on July 23 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning every ingredient traced to that source bypassed federal safety inspection entirely. Seven of the ten violations documented that day were high-severity. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious a restaurant can receive. Food from unapproved suppliers has not been inspected by the USDA or FDA, which means there is no chain of custody if a customer gets sick and no way to trace an outbreak back to a contaminated batch.
Inspectors also cited toxic substances being improperly identified, stored, or used. That citation covers a range of scenarios, from cleaning chemicals stored near food prep surfaces to unlabeled containers of hazardous material within reach of the kitchen.
Two separate handwashing violations were written up on the same visit. Inspectors documented both inadequate handwashing by employees and improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning workers were either skipping the step or performing it incorrectly. The distinction matters: one is an omission, the other is a practice failure that leaves pathogens on hands even after an attempt is made.
The restaurant had no written employee health policy and no documented process for workers to report illness symptoms. Those two violations travel together. Without a policy requiring workers to disclose symptoms, and without a structure for reporting them, a sick employee has no formal obligation to stay out of the kitchen.
On top of that, Trebol had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked food items. The three intermediate violations rounded out the inspection: multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, improper sanitizer concentration or procedures, and wiping cloths being used in ways that spread contamination rather than prevent it.
What These Violations Mean
The employee illness violations at Trebol are not paperwork problems. Food workers who do not report symptoms of illness are the leading cause of multi-victim outbreaks, particularly for Norovirus, which can spread from a single infected handler to dozens of customers in one service period. A written health policy is the mechanism that creates a legal and operational expectation for workers to stay home when sick. Without one, the kitchen operates on informal judgment.
The handwashing citations compound that risk directly. Hands are the most common contamination pathway in food service, and improper technique, even when a worker goes through the motion of washing, leaves enough bacterial load to transfer pathogens to food, surfaces, and utensils. At Trebol, inspectors found both the behavior and the technique were problems on the same day.
The food sourcing violation raises a separate and harder question. If ingredients arrive from an unknown or unapproved supplier, there is no inspection record, no recall system, and no traceability. If a customer becomes ill after eating there, investigators would have no way to determine whether the food itself was the source.
Improperly cleaned utensils and weak or incorrectly mixed sanitizer are the last line of defense against cross-contamination. When both fail at the same time, surfaces and tools that appear clean are not. Wiping cloths used improperly become vehicles for spreading whatever contamination already exists across prep surfaces.
The Longer Record
The July 23 inspection was Trebol's 24th on record, and its worst single-visit tally in at least two years. The 155 total violations accumulated across those 24 inspections average out to more than six per visit. This was not an unusual day. It was a worse-than-usual version of a consistent pattern.
Every inspection on record going back to at least 2022 included high-severity violations. The November 2023 visit produced six high-severity citations. The August 2025 visit produced five. The most recent inspection before July, in January 2026, drew two high-severity violations, suggesting a brief improvement that did not hold.
The pizzeria has never been emergency-closed. In eight prior inspections with detailed records, the violation counts fluctuated but never dropped to zero high-severity citations. The category of violations shifted from visit to visit, but the severity level did not.
Still Open
State inspectors documented seven high-severity violations at Trebol Pizzeria on July 23, 2026, including food from an unapproved source, toxic substances handled improperly, no employee illness policy, no illness reporting, and two distinct handwashing failures. The restaurant was not emergency-closed.
It was open for business the next day.
