NORTH MIAMI BEACH, FL. State inspectors walked into UMA at 16395 Biscayne Blvd on August 5 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning no government inspection had verified whether it was safe to serve.
That single finding carries consequences that extend well beyond the day of the inspection. Food from unapproved sources has no traceability. If a customer gets sick, investigators cannot follow the supply chain back to identify a contaminated batch, a compromised distributor, or a processing failure.
The inspector did not stop there.
What Inspectors Found
The August 5 inspection produced seven high-severity violations and one intermediate citation. That count includes food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, a finding that places customers at direct risk of Salmonella and other pathogens that survive in undercooked meat and poultry.
Toxic substances were also found to be improperly identified, stored, or used. That category covers chemicals that, if they reach food or food-contact surfaces, can cause immediate illness requiring emergency medical care.
Three of the seven high-severity violations centered on illness and hygiene. The restaurant had no adequate employee health policy, meaning there was no written framework requiring sick workers to stay home or report symptoms. An employee was also cited for not reporting illness symptoms. And inspectors found both inadequate handwashing facilities and improper handwashing technique being used, a pairing that means the physical infrastructure for hygiene was compromised and the practice itself was flawed.
The one intermediate violation involved multi-use utensils not properly cleaned.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and an employee failing to report illness symptoms is not a paperwork problem. It is the documented pathway for Norovirus outbreaks. A single infected food worker who handles ready-to-eat food can expose dozens or hundreds of customers in a single shift. Without a written policy requiring workers to disclose symptoms, there is no mechanism to remove that worker from food handling before exposure occurs.
The handwashing violations compound that risk. Inadequate facilities means the physical setup, whether a missing sink, no soap, no running water, or no paper towels, made proper hand hygiene structurally impossible at some point during service. Improper technique means that even when a handwashing attempt was made, it was performed in a way that leaves pathogens on the hands. Both violations were cited at UMA on the same inspection.
Food not cooked to required minimum temperatures is among the most direct causes of foodborne illness in restaurant settings. Salmonella in poultry requires an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit to be killed. Food served below that threshold can transmit infection to every customer who orders it.
The unapproved food source violation matters most when something goes wrong. If a customer becomes ill and reports it, state investigators need a supply chain to trace. Food from an unknown or unapproved source has no such chain, making outbreak investigation difficult or impossible and leaving other potentially contaminated food in circulation.
The Longer Record
The August inspection was not an outlier for UMA. State records show the restaurant has accumulated 62 total violations across five inspections on record, and it has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern is consistent. On October 17, 2025, inspectors cited eight high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. On March 3, 2026, two inspections were conducted on the same day, one producing eight high-severity violations and two intermediate citations, the other producing seven high-severity violations and one intermediate. The August 5, 2026 inspection, with seven high-severity violations, fits directly into that sequence.
The sole exception in the record is a January 3, 2025 inspection that produced zero high-severity violations and one intermediate citation. Every subsequent inspection has returned to the seven-and-eight-high-violation range.
Four of the five inspections on record have produced seven or more high-severity violations. That is not a facility working through isolated problems. It is a facility that has been cited repeatedly in the same severity tier across multiple inspection cycles.
Still Open
None of the inspections in UMA's record triggered an emergency closure. Not the eight-high-violation visit in October 2025. Not the back-to-back inspections in March 2026. Not the August 5 inspection that cited food from an unapproved source, undercooked food, toxic substance mishandling, no illness policy, an employee not reporting symptoms, inadequate handwashing infrastructure, and improper handwashing technique.
After the August 5 inspection, UMA remained open for business.
