An inspector found old food and condensation dripping on chicken in a Miami supermarket
A Bravo Supermarket in Miami with mold in an ice machine, coolers that didn’t cool and dripped-on food became the latest South Florida to fail inspection.
The store at 5299 NE Second Ave. remains open. Florida Department of Agriculture inspectors doing checks on supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, food processors, food storage and distribution facilities don’t have the power to shut the place down if it fails inspection as Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspectors do with if a restaurant fails inspection.
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But the Department of Agriculture inspector can put Stop-Use Orders on equipment or areas. Enough Stop-Use Orders and management might decide there’s no point to opening until the issues are solved.
That didn’t happened at Bravo on Friday, although Inspector James Zheng did put Stop-Use Orders on the dairy walk-in cooler and the produce area’s open-air cooler. They’re supposed to keep their contents under 41 degrees for proper food safety. The produce cooler’s temperature was 50 to 55 degrees and the dairy walk-in cooler’s temperature was 49 to 50 degrees, so neither could help keep its contents from becoming bacteria barges.
Large watermelon chunks that needed to be below 41 degrees were at 57 to 61 degrees, large watermelon halves and quarters in the same cooler were at 47 to 49 degrees, alfalfa sprouts were at 55.6 degrees and three-color coleslaw was at 45 degrees.
All of the above was tossed, joined in the trash by a gallon of milk in a display case next to an espresso machine. The milk wasn’t just not cooled, it was 80 degrees, summer sunrise temperature, warmer than room temperature.
Let’s take a break from the unsafe food to talk about old food, such as the pastrami turkey that had been opened on July 26, 10 days previous. Seven is the limit.
In the deli, there were “multiple flies observed on the counter of deli display cooler.”
The meat department didn’t have a handwashing sink in the walk-in cooler where ground beef was being prepared. The store has 30 days to put in a working handwashing sink or the grinder and the food processing area there might get hit with Stop-Use Orders.
Meanwhile, over in the meat display cooler: ”condensation from condensation unit dripping onto chicken drumsticks, chicken quarters, and turkey drumsticks in meat display cooler.”
In both the meat and seafood departments, “multiple band saws throughout the department found washed, rinsed, and air dried for use without a sanitizing step.”
And none of the departments had “drain boards available to air dry cleaned equipment.”
Inspector Zheng also saw “black, mold-like growth ... near the ice chute and by the metal baffle of the ice machine located in between the produce processing area and the employee break area.”
Finally, the deli area had a ham, cheese and lettuce sandwich, an open package of turkey above 41 degrees and hot items well below 135 degrees in the steam table: boiled yuca at 95 to 107 degrees; boiled plantains at 97 to 99 degrees; mashed potatoes at 105 degrees.
