DAVENPORT, FL. Back in February 2026, state inspectors walked into El Kiosko 38 Puerto Rican Food on Highway 27 and found what it takes to shut a restaurant down on the spot: active roach and rodent activity inside a working food service facility. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the restaurant closed on February 12, with a vacate deadline of February 13.
The closure was not a surprise to anyone who had read the inspection file.
What Inspectors Found
El Kiosko 38: Inspection Severity Over Time
The February 12 inspection produced five high-severity violations and one intermediate violation. The shutdown trigger was the combination of roach and rodent activity, two of the conditions Florida regulators treat as grounds for immediate closure without waiting for a follow-up visit.
The restaurant was ordered vacated by February 13. Inspectors returned and cleared the facility that same day, and El Kiosko 38 was allowed to reopen at 4:11 p.m. on February 13.
The turnaround was fast. But the record behind it was not.
The Longer Record
The February closure was not the first time El Kiosko 38 had been shut down by state regulators. Records show one prior emergency closure in the facility's history, meaning the February 2026 shutdown was the second time the restaurant had been ordered to stop serving customers.
Across 12 inspections on record, the facility has accumulated 42 total violations. That works out to an average of 3.5 violations per inspection visit, and high-severity citations have appeared in the majority of those visits.
The pattern is consistent. In January 2025, inspectors documented two high-severity violations. In April 2025, two separate visits produced three high-severity violations on one and a clean bill on the other. In August 2025, inspectors found two more high-severity violations. By the time the February 2026 inspection occurred, the facility had logged high-severity findings across five of its eight most recent documented visits.
A clean inspection in April 2025 and a clean follow-up on February 13, 2026, show the restaurant has demonstrated the ability to correct problems quickly. The question the record raises is why the same categories of serious violations kept reappearing between those corrections.
What This Means
Roach and rodent activity inside a food service facility is not a paperwork violation. Both pests carry pathogens that transfer directly onto food preparation surfaces, cooking equipment, and food itself. Cockroaches are documented vectors for Salmonella, E. coli, and several other bacteria that cause foodborne illness. Rodents carry Salmonella as well as Hantavirus and can contaminate food and surfaces through droppings, urine, and direct contact.
Florida law treats active pest activity as an immediate public health hazard precisely because there is no safe threshold. A customer eating food prepared in a kitchen with active roach or rodent presence has no way of knowing it, and no opportunity to make a different choice.
The February 12 inspection also documented a separate high-severity violation: no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. That violation matters independently of the pest findings. When a restaurant serves dishes that may include raw or undercooked animal proteins, including dishes common in Puerto Rican cuisine that involve preparations where internal temperature is a factor, customers in high-risk groups need that information to make an informed decision about what they order. Elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and people with compromised immune systems face elevated risk from undercooked proteins, and without a posted advisory, they have no way to know the risk exists.
Five high-severity violations in a single inspection, including two that each independently could have justified regulatory action, put February 12 at the more serious end of what the facility's record shows.
Where Things Stood After Reopening
The two inspections that followed the February closure showed the restaurant working through the correction process. The April 7 follow-up in 2025 had produced zero high-severity violations. The pattern since reopening in February 2026 has been less clean. An April 14, 2026, inspection found two high-severity violations, and an April 23, 2026, inspection found one.
Neither of those post-closure inspections triggered another shutdown. But both show high-severity citations continuing to appear at a facility that had just been closed for the second time in its inspection history.
El Kiosko 38 has 42 violations across 12 inspections on record. The two most recent inspections, conducted in April 2026, each produced at least one high-severity finding.