DAVENPORT, FL. Sewage backed up inside Diromio's Pizza & Grill at 101 Divine Drive on September 22, and state inspectors ordered the Polk County restaurant closed the same day.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation issued the emergency closure order, giving the restaurant until September 23 to vacate. Inspectors returned the following morning and cleared the facility to reopen at 11:49 a.m.
What Inspectors Found
Diromio's Pizza & Grill: Recent Inspection Record
The closure was triggered by a sewage backup on the premises. Inspectors documented three high-severity violations and one intermediate violation during the September 22 visit.
A sewage backup inside a food-service operation is one of the conditions that allows the state to order an immediate shutdown without a hearing. Raw sewage can contaminate food preparation surfaces, equipment, and the floor of a kitchen within minutes of exposure.
The follow-up inspection on September 23 found one remaining high-severity violation and one intermediate violation. The high-severity finding was that the restaurant had no employee health policy, or an inadequate one. Inspectors also cited multi-use utensils that had not been properly cleaned.
What These Violations Mean
A sewage backup is not a paperwork problem. Human waste carries pathogens including E. coli, Salmonella, and Hepatitis A. When sewage reaches the floor or surfaces of a kitchen where food is being handled, any food prepared in that environment during or after the event is at risk of contamination. State rules treat active sewage backup as an immediate public health hazard because the contamination is direct and visible, not theoretical.
The employee health policy violation found during the follow-up inspection carries a separate risk. Without a written policy requiring sick employees to report illness and stay home, a restaurant has no formal mechanism to prevent a worker with Norovirus from handling food. Norovirus is responsible for an estimated 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and a single infected food handler can expose dozens of customers in a single shift.
The utensil-cleaning violation compounds that picture. Improperly cleaned multi-use utensils develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours. Those biofilms protect bacteria from standard sanitizing rinses, meaning contamination can persist across multiple service periods even after a surface appears clean.
The combination of an active sewage event, no employee illness policy, and improperly cleaned utensils, all documented across two consecutive inspection days, describes a kitchen with compounding sanitation failures, not a single isolated problem.
The Longer Record
The September closure was not the first time the state has shut Diromio's down. State records show the restaurant has one prior emergency closure on record in addition to the September 22 order, making this its second forced shutdown in its documented history.
Across 30 total inspections on record, the restaurant has accumulated 129 violations. That works out to an average of more than four violations per inspection visit.
The recent inspection history shows a pattern of persistent high-severity findings. Inspectors cited five high-severity violations during a February 20, 2026 visit, then returned the same day and cited two more. Three high-severity violations were documented in December 2025. Three more were documented in April 2025. The one clean inspection in the recent record, a visit on April 21, 2026, with zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations, stands alone against seven other visits in the past 18 months that each produced at least one high-severity citation.
The restaurant did hold a valid food service license at the time of the closure. It is licensed for permanent food service operations.
The Reopening
State records show Diromio's was cleared to reopen on the morning of September 23, less than 24 hours after the closure order was issued. The follow-up inspection that granted that clearance still found one high-severity violation, the missing or inadequate employee health policy, on the books at the time the doors were allowed to reopen.
Whether that violation has since been corrected is not reflected in the available inspection record.
