CRESTVIEW, FL. Back in April, state inspectors walked into El Paso of Crestview on Industrial Drive and found what they had found before: roaches. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the restaurant at 1025 Industrial Dr closed on April 14, 2026, citing active roach activity as the reason for the emergency shutdown.
It was the restaurant's third emergency closure on record, and the second time roach and rodent activity specifically triggered a state order to vacate.
What Inspectors Found
El Paso of Crestview: Inspection History
The April 14 inspection produced two high-severity violations and one intermediate violation. State records show the restaurant was ordered vacated by April 15. Inspectors returned that same day and, finding the issues resolved, cleared the restaurant to reopen at 11:50 a.m.
The turnaround was fast. But the underlying pattern stretched back years.
What This Means
Roach activity in a food service facility is one of the violations state inspectors treat as grounds for immediate closure, and for specific reasons. Cockroaches carry bacteria including Salmonella, E. coli and other pathogens on their bodies and legs. They move between sewage, garbage and food preparation surfaces without distinction, depositing contamination on cutting boards, prep tables, utensils and food itself.
Unlike a temperature violation, which can be corrected by adjusting a cooler, an active roach infestation signals a systemic breakdown. It means the insects have found a food source, a water source and a harborage area somewhere inside the facility. A single visible roach during an inspection is treated as evidence of a larger population, because roaches are nocturnal and avoid light.
The state does not order emergency closures lightly. A facility can accumulate dozens of violations across multiple inspections and remain open. Roach activity, documented and active, is one of a narrow set of conditions that triggers an immediate shutdown order regardless of a facility's otherwise passing record.
For customers who ate at El Paso of Crestview in the days or hours before the April 14 closure, there is no way to know how long the infestation had been present. Inspectors document what they find on the day they visit.
The Longer Record
El Paso of Crestview has 24 inspections on record, with 65 total violations documented across that history. That volume, spread across a permanent food service facility in a mid-sized Panhandle city, reflects a location that has required sustained regulatory attention.
The April 2026 closure was not the first time inspectors found the restaurant in a condition serious enough to clear the building. In October 2023, the state ordered the same location closed for roach and rodent activity. That closure lasted less than a day, with the restaurant cleared to reopen on October 20, 2023.
What followed the 2023 closure was a string of inspections that never produced a clean high-severity record for long. January 2024 brought two high-severity violations. May 2024 brought two more. October 2024 brought two more. December 2025 brought one. Each of those inspections fell short of an emergency threshold, but none of them produced a zero.
The February 2025 and October 2023 inspections are the only two in the recent record that show zero high-severity violations. Every other documented visit in that span found at least one.
The April 14, 2026 closure marked the second time in roughly 30 months that roach activity specifically was cited as the reason for a state shutdown order at this address. That is not a coincidence of timing. It is a documented recurrence at the same facility, in the same violation category, under the same license.
After the Closure
The restaurant passed its follow-up inspection on April 15 and was allowed to reopen. State records confirm the clearance.
What the records do not show is whether the underlying conditions that allowed roach activity to develop twice in three years have been permanently addressed, or whether the facility's pattern of high-severity violations in the months between closures will continue. The next routine inspection will answer that question. The last two times inspectors visited after a clean bill of health, the violations returned.
El Paso of Crestview has been licensed as a permanent food service establishment throughout its inspection history. It has been emergency-closed three times.