FLORIDA. Sixty restaurants across the state were emergency-closed for pest activity between August 12 and August 25, 2026, a two-week stretch that swept up everything from a children's entertainment chain in Boynton Beach to an upscale Italian eatery on Miami Beach's Ocean Drive.
Forty of the closures were roach-related. Sixteen involved rodent activity. Four were triggered primarily by flies. Tampa led all cities with six closures, followed by Orlando with five, and North Miami Beach and Palm Beach Gardens each with three.
The Closures
The single most striking closure of the two-week period may be Chuck E. Cheese at 244 N Congress Ave in Boynton Beach, shut down August 14 for rodent activity at a location where children eat birthday cake and handle shared gaming equipment throughout the day. Inspectors ordered it closed; it reopened by 10:02 a.m. the same morning.
Longhorn Steakhouse of Cypress Creek at 6225 N Andrews Ave in Fort Lauderdale was closed August 21 for roach activity and cleared by 4:23 p.m. that afternoon.
Panera Bread at 4403 Roosevelt Blvd in Jacksonville was shut the same morning for fly activity and back open by 8:52 a.m., a closure that lasted less than an hour by the timestamps in state records.
Dunkin' Donuts at 8121 SW SR 200 in Ocala was also closed August 21 for fly activity and cleared by 8:31 a.m.
Three restaurants were cited for the most severe combination of all three pest types: roaches, rodents, and flies simultaneously. Big Catch at Salt Creek at 1500 2 St S in St. Petersburg was closed August 12 with all three present and reopened by 9:15 a.m. Getaway at 13090 Gandy Blvd in St. Petersburg was closed the same day with the same combination and reopened by 9:25 a.m. Both St. Petersburg closures happened on the same day, ten minutes apart.
DYA Ice Food Service at 4880 Distribution Ct in Orlando, an industrial food service operation, was closed August 17 for rodent, roach, and fly activity simultaneously. It did not reopen until 4:53 p.m., the latest reopening time of any facility in this period.
North Miami Beach produced three closures in a single 24-hour window on August 19. Eat and Run Subs at 16775 N Miami Ave was closed for both roach and rodent activity and cleared by 8:46 a.m. CM Chicken at 1256 NE 163 St was closed the same day for roach and rodent activity and reopened by 10:04 a.m. Seph Restaurant and Bakery at 1362 NE 163 St was closed the same day for rodent activity alone, reopening at 12:30 p.m.
Osteria Del Mar at 720 Ocean Dr in Miami Beach, a restaurant on one of the most photographed blocks in Florida, was closed August 13 for rodent activity and cleared by 10:42 a.m.
CVI.CHE 105 Aventura at 19501 Biscayne Blvd in Aventura, part of a well-known South Florida restaurant group, was closed August 13 for roach activity and reopened by 12:41 p.m.
Hole in the Wall Seafood and Raw Bar at 23 Ave D in Apalachicola was closed August 18 for roach activity. Its reopening status is not confirmed in state records.
Crab Trap at 16495 Perdido Key Dr in Pensacola was closed August 21 for both roach and fly activity and cleared by 11:12 a.m.
Tampa's six closures were spread across the two-week window. Molly Malone's Irish Pub at 304 E Davis Blvd was closed August 12 for roach activity. Its reopening status is not confirmed in state records. Salem's Fresh Eats at 2015 N 50 St was closed August 18 for roach activity and cleared by 9:16 a.m. Memo Modern Italian at 10103 Montague St was closed August 17 for roach activity and reopened by 8:29 a.m. Doodle Noodle Bar at 9620 W Linebaugh Ave was closed August 17 for roach and fly activity combined and cleared by 11:15 a.m. Sushi Masa Premium at 17021 Palm Pointe Dr was closed August 21 for roach activity and reopened by 3:28 p.m. Grill at Morris Bridge at 10920 Cross Creek Blvd was closed August 13 for roach activity and back open by 9:34 a.m.
Dada at 52 N Swinton Ave in Delray Beach, a well-regarded arts-district restaurant, was closed August 12 for rodent activity and did not reopen until 4:07 p.m., one of the longer clearance windows of the period.
Jaas Kitchen at 9956 Hutchinson Blvd in Panama City Beach was closed August 13 for roach activity. Its reopening status is not confirmed in state records.
What These Violations Mean
Live pest activity during an active inspection is treated as an emergency under Florida law because it represents an immediate contamination route, not a theoretical one. When an inspector documents live roaches in a kitchen, those insects have been traveling between drains, grease traps, trash receptacles, and food-contact surfaces. Roach excrement and shed body parts are allergens, and roaches carry pathogens including Salmonella and E. coli on their bodies and legs.
Rodent activity carries a separate and compounding risk. The presence of rodent droppings, which inspectors document as evidence of active infestation even when no live rodents are seen, indicates that animals have been moving through the facility, likely during overnight hours when no staff are present. Rodents urinate continuously as they travel, contaminating any surface they cross. At Osteria Del Mar on Ocean Drive, at Dada in Delray Beach, at Chuck E. Cheese in Boynton Beach, and at Bbee's Home Cooking in Sanford, rodent activity triggered immediate closure orders.
Fly infestations, while sometimes perceived as less severe than roach or rodent problems, present a direct contamination vector because flies feed and defecate on food surfaces within the same movement. At Panera Bread in Jacksonville, at Dunkin' Donuts in Ocala, and at Bar Louie in Orlando, fly activity alone was enough to trigger emergency closure. The three facilities that were documented with all three pest types simultaneously, Big Catch at Salt Creek, Getaway, and DYA Ice Food Service, represent the most severe category of infestation the state's inspection system flags.
Inspectors order emergency closures without advance notice when they observe live pest activity because waiting for a scheduled follow-up would allow continued contamination of food being prepared and served to customers. The rapid reopening times visible in this data, some facilities cleared in under an hour, reflect not leniency but the speed with which operators can address the immediate evidence when they mobilize cleaning and pest control crews on site.
The Longer Record
The data provided does not include prior inspection counts for individual facilities in this period, which limits direct comparison of repeat-violation history. What the closure dates and clustering do reveal is a pattern worth noting: six Tampa facilities were closed across the two-week window, and two St. Petersburg facilities were closed on the same morning for the same combination of three pest types, suggesting inspectors were moving through those markets with particular intensity during this period.
The Orlando cluster tells a similar story. Five Orlando-area closures were recorded, including DYA Ice Food Service, an industrial food distribution operation, which is a category of facility that poses elevated risk because it supplies other restaurants rather than serving end consumers directly. A pest infestation at a food service distributor has a multiplying effect that a single-restaurant closure does not.
North Miami Beach's three closures in one day, all within a few blocks of each other on or near NE 163 St, point to a corridor that inspectors clearly identified as a priority. Two of those three facilities, CM Chicken and Eat and Run Subs, were found with both roach and rodent activity, the dual-infestation finding that inspectors treat as evidence of a more entrenched problem than a single pest type alone.
Palm Beach Gardens produced three closures across the period as well, at La Granja Restaurant at 3301 Northlake Blvd, at Cooper at 4610 PGA Blvd, and at BurgerFi at 2466 PGA Blvd, three different restaurant types in the same affluent suburban market, underscoring that pest infestations are not confined to any particular price point or neighborhood profile.
As of the data available, Molly Malone's Irish Pub in Tampa, Hole in the Wall Seafood and Raw Bar in Apalachicola, and Jaas Kitchen in Panama City Beach had not confirmed reopenings in state records, leaving their current operating status unresolved.
