Food With Beer — Or Else
Local Establishment Raided for Allegedly Serving Alcohol Without Meal

To hear him tell it, on Nov. 9 his restaurant was raided by at least seven officers from the Miami Police Department and the ATF.

 
Lost and Found Owner Ken “KB” Burcell learned the hazards of serving beer in Miami.
And so did some of his customers. Photos by Mitchell Zachs/MagicalPhotos.com.

By Jason Jeffers

It’s a cloudy Monday afternoon out in the perpetually under-construction wilds of Wynwood, and there isn’t much going on except for the traffic trundling down a dusty, dug-out stretch of Northwest 36th Street.

The fittingly titled Lost And Found Saloon sits in this frontier-land of sorts, and despite being obscured from the view of passers-by thanks to all manner of construction vehicles and traffic cones out front, there’s actually a bit of a crowd inside today, everyone digging into heaping omelettes and chipotle-spiced burritos and sipping Coke and iced teas from masonry jars at the Western-styled bar.

What you won’t find, despite this being a saloon and all, is someone having a cold beer. Apparently that’s a no-no ‘round these parts, kind of.

The man sitting in the corner behind a big stack of zoning permits, citations and manila envelopes will tell you. He’s Ken “KB” Burcell, the owner of this spot, and to hear him tell it, on November 9th his restaurant was raided by at least seven officers from the Miami Police Department and the ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) after he served a seemingly normal patron a beer without a full meal.

“They stormed in here, said how nice the place was, then frisked half of our customers and checked to make sure they had ordered meals with their drinks,” says Burcell, poring over various legal documents. He’s due in court the next morning to answer a citation he was given for serving said beer during the raid. It will ultimately be dismissed, although he will remain unclear as to whether he still has to pay a $500 fine.

“After everything was over, the guy who ordered the beer got up and said that he was an undercover Code Enforcement officer,” says Burcell. “He gave me a ticket and they left.”

Burcell says several of his customers believed the police to be overly brutish and rude while carrying out the entire procedure, one which he says was totally unnecessary.

“We opened up in February and for months I’ve been trying to figure out just how we comply with the city’s guidelines,” says Burcell, explaining that the city’s outline of just how alcohol can be served is unclear. “The city has 700 numbers to call, and no one who answers any of them can give you the information you need.”

Similar incidents have happened to others in the area.

A Monday night visit to Kingdom, a tiny restaurant and bar on Biscayne Boulevard, finds the place empty with just the manager and the bartender/waiter watching football on television. Despite the display of a selection of beers behind the bar, an order for a Guinness is rejected.

“You’ve got to order some food if you want to get that. There’s a law out here that says so,” informs a portly fellow behind the bar. “The fries and wings are good.”

A talk with Justin Hughes, the owner of Kingdom, reveals that an incident similar to the one that occurred at Lost and Found happened at his restaurant in March, during which he was arrested.

“The case was later dismissed,” says Hughes. “We were really just being harassed.”

Mariano Loret de Mola, director of the city of Miami’s Code Enforcement Department, was unable to provide any details about a raid on the Lost and Found by press time, but explained that restaurants must make 60 percent of their sales income from food and cannot serve alcohol unless it is accompanied by a meal. Furthermore, he added, operations involving police inspections are not uncommon.

“We do work with the police to carry out inspections of restaurants that we believe are not in compliance,” said de Mola. “At this point I can’t say if we’ve been carrying out more than usual in the Wynwood area, but it’s possible.”

Since 2002 the city of Miami has been utilizing a Quality of Life Task Force, made up of police officers as well as inspectors from fire, code and building, to clamp down on nuisances. Among them are restaurants and cafeterias that serve alcohol without food. During these sweeps, Miami officials have issued 21,000 citations and made 1,000 arrests, according to a Nov. 24, 2005 Miami New Times article. Current statistics regarding code citations and arrests were not made available to the SunPost at deadline.

As far as Burcell is concerned, he has no problem complying with the city’s rules once he knows exactly what they are. On top of that, more civil treatment in dealing with any mistakes made by his waiters wouldn’t be bad either.

“That undercover came in here and we gave him a beer while he was looking over the menu and was undecided about what he wanted to eat,” says Burcell. “We do that and we get a fine and our customers mistreated? It doesn’t seem right.”

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