HOLLYWOOD, FL. Food at U Know Restaurant on South State Road 7 was not cooked to the required minimum temperature during a July 22 inspection, one of six high-severity violations state inspectors documented in a single visit to the Hollywood restaurant. The facility was not closed.
The inspection turned up a pattern of failures centered on one of the most fundamental risks in food service: the handling of food by workers who may be sick, who do not wash their hands, and who wash them incorrectly when they try.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooked food violation is among the most direct hazards an inspector can document. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning food pulled from heat too early can carry live pathogens to a customer's plate.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant twice for handwashing failures, as separate violations. One citation was for inadequate handwashing by food employees. A second was for improper hand and arm washing technique. That distinction matters: the first means workers were not washing at all, or not often enough. The second means that even when they did wash, they did it wrong.
The restaurant also had no written employee health policy, or an inadequate one, meaning there was no documented system to keep sick workers out of the kitchen.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned. Single-use items, designed to be used once and discarded, were being reused.
The final high-severity citation involved time as a public health control. When a restaurant uses time rather than temperature to manage food safety, it operates under strict rules about how long food can sit in the temperature danger zone before it must be discarded. Inspectors found those rules were not being followed.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of violations documented on July 22 is not a list of isolated oversights. It describes a kitchen where multiple systems for preventing foodborne illness were failing at the same time.
The handwashing citations are the most direct contamination pathway. Hands carry Norovirus, Salmonella, E. coli, and a range of other pathogens from surface to surface and from worker to food. Inadequate handwashing is the single most significant factor in spreading foodborne illness in food service settings. At U Know Restaurant, inspectors found both that workers were not washing enough and that the technique used when they did wash was insufficient to remove pathogens.
The absence of a written employee health policy compounds that risk. Without a formal policy, a worker who comes in with a stomach illness has no documented obligation to report symptoms or stay home. Norovirus spreads easily from sick food handlers to customers, and a single infected employee working a full shift can expose dozens of people.
The temperature and time violations create a separate but overlapping hazard. Food that does not reach minimum cooking temperatures, and food left in the danger zone longer than permitted, can carry live bacterial loads to the table. Together with unsanitized food contact surfaces and reused single-use items, the July 22 inspection describes a facility where contamination had multiple entry points on a single day.
The Longer Record
The July 22 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show U Know Restaurant has been inspected 25 times, accumulating 173 total violations, with no emergency closures in that history.
The restaurant logged six high-severity violations in a single inspection on December 4, 2023, the same count as July 22. It logged five high-severity violations on four separate occasions: July 2023, February 2023, December 2022, and September 2025. The pattern of high-severity citations runs continuously across nearly four years of records.
The day after the July 22 inspection, on July 23, inspectors returned and found one remaining high-severity violation. That follow-up visit suggests at least some corrections were made quickly.
What the full record shows is a facility that has repeatedly accumulated serious violations, addressed enough to satisfy a follow-up, and then returned to similar findings on the next routine inspection. The September 2025 inspection found two high-severity violations. The November 2025 inspection found two more.
Still Open
Florida's inspection system gives inspectors the authority to order an emergency closure when a facility poses an immediate threat to public health. Six high-severity violations in a single visit, including undercooked food, failed handwashing, and no employee health policy, did not trigger that order at U Know Restaurant on July 22.
The restaurant served customers that day, and the days that followed.
