Certain subgroups of have congenital or acquired virulence properties that allow them to cause a wide spectrum of disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the occurrence of diarrheagenic strains in ready-to-eat (RTE) foods produced in institutional, commercial and hotel restaurants in Salvador, Brazil. The presence of virulent isolates and antimicrobial resistance were evaluated. Four hundred forty-six samples were collected and grouped into cereals and vegetables, meat-based preparations, cooked salads, raw salads, garnishes, soups and sauces, desserts and juices. were detected using the most probable number method, the presence of virulence factors in isolates was determined by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays, and antibiotic resistance was analyzed using the disc diffusion method. In total, 15 isolates (3.1%) of were recovered; raw salads had the highest detection rate, 1.4%, followed by cooked salads, 0.8%; meat-based preparations, 0.4%; and cereals and vegetables, 0.4%. PCR assays showed that none of the isolates had the virulence genes , or . The isolates showed resistance to nine antibiotics of the 15 tested, and the highest levels of resistance were found for sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim, tetracycline, ampicillin, and chloramphenicol (13.3% of isolates for each antibiotic). One isolate from cooked salad had plasmid-mediated multidrug resistance to tetracycline, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, ampicillin and chloramphenicol. These results suggest that RTE foods, especially raw salads, can be reservoirs of and facilitate the spread of antibiotic resistance genes to the gastrointestinal microbiota of humans.