A routine health inspection turned up live roaches crawling on a kitchen curtain and dozens of rodent droppings scattered across the floor of a North Miami Beach sub shop, prompting state regulators to shut the business down on the spot. Eat & Run Subs, located at 16775 N. Miami Ave., was allowed to reopen the very next day after a follow-up check cleared the violations that triggered the closure.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s Division of Hotels and Restaurants closed the sandwich shop following an inspection on August 20, according to the Miami Herald. Inspectors documented ten total violations, four of them high-priority, and found rodent droppings piled up in multiple spots throughout the kitchen: more than 20 under the fryers, more than 25 on the floor beneath the three-compartment sink, more than 20 under the display case near the front-counter handwash sink, more than 10 under the bread shelves, and five each under the mop sink and on top of the water heater. Inspectors also reported spotting two live roaches crawling on the curtain hanging at the kitchen entrance.
Under Chapter 509 of the Florida Statutes, the Division of Hotels and Restaurants has the statutory authority to issue an Emergency Closure Order and immediately suspend a food establishment’s license whenever inspectors identify conditions that pose an immediate threat to public health, according to MyFloridaLicense.com. That authority is exactly what shut down Eat & Run Subs after the August 20 inspection, following the same routine visit that turned up the roaches and droppings.
What Counts as a High-Priority Violation
Florida adopted the 2017 FDA Food Code in 2019, which sorts restaurant violations into three tiers: High Priority, Intermediate, and Basic, with high-priority infractions being those most directly linked to foodborne illness or injury, per the same state licensing agency. Beyond the rodent droppings and roaches, inspectors at Eat & Run Subs also found the three-compartment sink without any sanitizer, meaning the sink meant to wash, rinse and sanitize dishware was missing a key step in that process. The kitchen handwash sink had no paper towels or mechanical hand-drying device and was coated in old debris, the walk-in cooler floor was heavily soiled with old food debris, and the slicer also had old food debris on it, the Miami Herald reported…