A Coral Gables restaurant known for its contemporary Mediterr-Asian menu remains shuttered after state inspectors found roaches crawling through its kitchen not once but twice in two days. Sawa, located at 360 San Lorenzo Ave. inside the Shops of Merrick Park, failed a routine inspection on Monday and then flunked a follow-up visit the very next day, with live and dead roaches turning up both times.
Monday's inspection turned up 15 total violations, including five classified as high priority, according to the Miami Herald. Inspectors found four dead roaches in a prep area where sushi rice was being stored, plus another 11 roach corpses scattered between cooling units and shelves. Two live roaches were spotted crawling under a rice cooker on a prep counter, while more live roaches turned up hiding in a reach-in cooler's gaskets and underneath another cooler.
Mold, Grease and a Stop Sale on Tuna
The violations went well beyond pest activity. The kitchen's ceilings and vents were soiled with accumulated food debris, grease, dust or a mold-like substance, and the cookline's hood filters were coated in grease buildup, the same report notes. Inspectors also slapped a Stop Sale on two strawberries found in a container with mold-like growth, as well as on two packages of minced tuna that were thawing in a reach-in cooler after workers reportedly ignored storage warnings requiring commercially processed reduced-oxygen packaged fish to stay frozen and sealed until use.
Sawa did not reopen after Tuesday's re-inspection, which still found a dead roach inside the coffee station's handwash sink. Inspectors also counted four live roaches in a reach-in cooler's gaskets, two live roaches under a kitchen prep cooler, and another live roach under a second reach-in cooler, according to the same report.
How Florida Classifies the Violations
Under state rules, the presence or breeding of insects, rodents or other pests is automatically treated as a high-priority violation, according to the Florida Division of Hotels and Restaurants, the agency responsible for enforcing sanitation and safety laws at public food-service establishments statewide. The division requires restaurants to undergo between one and four unannounced inspections a year depending on risk factors and compliance history, and it enforces the 2017 FDA Food Code, which took effect in Florida in November 2019.
Sawa is far from the only Shops of Merrick Park tenant to run into trouble with state inspectors. Back in January 2019, another restaurant in the same upscale Coral Gables shopping center was ordered shut after racking up 30 violations, including a dead roach and buildups of food debris and grease, per a report from Local 10. And just last December, a Coral Gables ramen restaurant was shut down after inspectors found roaches and hundreds of pieces of roach excrement, remaining closed even after a re-inspection, Miami Herald reported separately.
The pattern isn't unique to Coral Gables. Three South Florida restaurants in Palm Beach County were temporarily shut by the state in late September, with violations that included a bottle of medication stored above vegetables and 70 dead flies found in a kitchen bug zapper, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. State inspection records list Sawa's business address as 360 San Lorenzo Ave. Ste. 1500 in Coral Gables, Florida.
