DAYTONA BEACH, FL. Back in April, state inspectors walked into 3Five Bistro & Wine Bar on Main Street and found what they had found there before: rodent activity. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the restaurant at 740 Main St closed on April 15, 2026, giving the owners until April 16 to vacate.
It was not the first time rodents had shut this place down.
What Inspectors Found
3Five Bistro: Emergency Closures and High-Severity Violations, 2024–2026
The April 15 inspection produced three high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. The closure-triggering finding was rodent activity, the same category that had prompted inspectors to order the restaurant shut in November 2024.
The restaurant reopened at 2:38 p.m. on April 16, after a follow-up inspection recorded zero high-severity violations and zero intermediate violations.
That rapid turnaround, one day between closure and clearance, is a pattern at this address.
The Second Rodent Closure in 17 Months
The November 2024 closure was the first documented rodent-triggered shutdown at 3Five. Inspectors ordered the restaurant closed on November 12, 2024. It reopened the following day, November 13, after passing a follow-up inspection. That same follow-up visit still found one high-severity violation and one intermediate violation before the restaurant was cleared to reopen.
Seventeen months later, inspectors were back for the same reason.
The April 2026 closure was the restaurant's third emergency closure overall on record at this address. The inspection history spanning 19 visits documents 87 total violations.
What Rodent Activity Means for Customers
An emergency closure for rodent activity is not a paperwork violation. Rodents, whether mice or rats, contaminate surfaces, food, and equipment with urine, droppings, and fur. They do this continuously and invisibly, on prep counters, in dry storage, along the edges of walk-in coolers, and inside the walls and ceilings above where food is prepared.
The danger is not theoretical. Rodents carry Salmonella, Leptospira, and Hantavirus, among other pathogens. A customer eating food that was prepared on a contaminated surface has no way of knowing it. There is no smell, no visible sign on the plate.
That is why Florida law gives inspectors the authority to order an immediate closure when rodent activity is confirmed, without waiting for a follow-up visit or a correction window. The risk is present and ongoing the moment the activity is documented.
The fact that 3Five passed its follow-up inspection within 24 hours suggests the immediate evidence was addressed. It does not speak to whether the conditions that allowed rodent access to the facility have been resolved.
The Longer Record
Nineteen inspections. Eighty-seven total violations. Two emergency closures, both for rodents, seventeen months apart.
The inspection record at 3Five shows persistent high-severity findings across nearly every visit in the past two years. The October 2025 inspection, five months before the April closure, produced six high-severity violations and one intermediate. The January 2025 inspection also produced six high-severity violations and two intermediate violations, requiring a same-day follow-up that cleared the findings.
March 2025 produced four high-severity violations. May 2025 produced one. The restaurant has not had a routine inspection in recent memory that came back clean.
The two rodent closures bracket a period of continuous high-severity activity. In November 2024, inspectors found enough to shut the place down. In the months that followed, the violation counts stayed elevated through at least five separate inspections before the restaurant was closed again in April 2026 for the same category of violation that triggered the first closure.
A facility accumulating this kind of record across 19 inspections is not encountering random bad luck. The same categories of serious violations, documented repeatedly, across multiple inspection cycles, describe a facility where the underlying conditions are not being corrected between visits.
3Five Bistro & Wine Bar is licensed for permanent food service and, based on the April 16 follow-up clearance, was permitted to reopen. Whether the structural conditions that allowed rodent access to the restaurant have been addressed in any durable way is not something a 24-hour follow-up inspection can confirm.