Rodent dung and a bad ‘odor’ ruin a Miami restaurant’s first inspection

A West Miami-Dade restaurant so new that the signage for the previous restaurant remains up had an even newer “objectionable odor” and rodent doo-doo dots when a state inspector stopped by Monday.

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That visit briefly put a sign of inspection-related closure on Habana 1990, a restaurant and bakery at 8770 SW 24th St. that you might miss because the sign on the building screams “Tasca De España.” Monday’s routine inspection, the first since Habana 1900 became licensed on July 9, turned up 29 total violations, including seven high-priority violations.

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The inspector noted an “objectionable odor in the first men’s bathroom.” There was no further description of the olfactory offense.

Rodents used other spots in Habana 1900 as their restroom, leaving over 10 rodent droppings behind a kitchen reach-in freezer; more than five droppings “on a shelf where kitchen equipment is stored;” more than seven on a storage-area floor “where utensils, dishes and kitchen equipment are stored;” three-plus on the kitchen floor next to the mixer; and more than five droppings on a dishwasher leg support.

A swarm of around 10 flies were “on top of clean cups near the front service area.”

One roach died on the bar-area floor. Another died on the kitchen floor. Nobody cleaned up the corpses.

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An ice scoop was “stored on a dirty surface, outside of the ice machine by the kitchen.”

Other kitchen equipment was stashed “in a non-fully enclosed room that is exposed to the outside, located by the kitchen exit door.”

To get to the walk-in freezer, you had to walk through standing water.

“Wet wiping cloths were stored in detergent and sanitizer mixed together.” That’s just supposed to be sanitizer.

The bar-area handwash sink didn’t have any paper towels, and the kitchen handwash sink didn’t have paper towels or soap.

A can of sweetened condensed creamer was “dented at the seam” so a Stop Sale order was issued on the creamer.

Commercially processed reduced-oxygen packaged fish come with a label declaring the fish needs to stay in the packaging and frozen until it’s to be used. So when the inspector saw the fish not frozen, but thawing in the walk-in cooler, the fish got hit with a Stop Sale.

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Habana 1900 passed re-inspection Tuesday to re-open.