ORLANDO, FL. State inspectors ordered Havana Bistro & Café on S Orange Blossom Trail shut down on August 21, 2026, after finding evidence of rodent activity inside the restaurant, a finding serious enough that inspectors required the facility to vacate by the following morning.
The restaurant reopened at 9:06 a.m. on August 22, after a reinspection. But the follow-up visit was not clean. Inspectors documented 6 high-severity violations and 6 intermediate violations on the day the bistro was allowed to reopen, a tally nearly identical to the 6 high-severity and 7 intermediate violations that triggered the closure the day before.
What Inspectors Found
Havana Bistro & Café: Recent Inspection Severity
The August 21 inspection produced a wide-ranging list of failures beyond the rodent finding itself. Among the high-severity violations: no person in charge was present or performing duties, an employee was not reporting symptoms of illness, and staff were using improper hand and arm washing technique.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Inspectors also cited the facility twice for chemical storage failures, once for toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled and once for toxic substances improperly identified, stored, or used.
On the intermediate side, inspectors found improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, inadequate cooling and cold-holding equipment, inadequate ventilation and lighting, improper waste disposal or recycling, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities.
That is twelve violations across two severity tiers, documented on a single visit.
What These Violations Mean
Rodent activity in a food service facility is treated by state regulators as an immediate public health threat, serious enough to justify an emergency closure without the graduated warning process that applies to most violations. Rats and mice contaminate food surfaces, utensils, and stored ingredients with urine, droppings, and fur. They are documented carriers of salmonella, leptospirosis, and hantavirus, and their presence in a kitchen indicates a breakdown in sanitation and structural integrity that cannot be corrected during business hours.
The violations accompanying the rodent finding at Havana Bistro compound the risk considerably. Improper handwashing technique means pathogens survive on employees' hands even when a washing attempt is made. Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned or sanitized become transfer points for whatever contamination enters the kitchen, whether from pests, raw ingredients, or unwashed hands.
The dual chemical storage violations are separately alarming. Improperly stored or unlabeled toxic chemicals near food create a direct path to acute poisoning if a substance is misidentified or spills onto a food surface or ingredient. That two separate chemical violations were cited on the same inspection suggests the problem is not a single misplaced bottle.
Improper sewage or wastewater disposal, also cited on August 21, introduces fecal contamination risk. That violation, combined with rodent activity and failed food contact surface sanitation, describes a kitchen where multiple contamination pathways were open at the same time.
The Longer Record
This was not Havana Bistro's first emergency closure. State records show the facility was previously forced to shut down on September 17, 2025, when inspectors documented 10 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations on a single visit. The August 2026 closure is the second time in roughly eleven months that the state has ordered the restaurant to stop serving customers.
Across 40 inspections on record, the facility has accumulated 631 total violations. That is an average of nearly 16 violations per inspection, a figure that reflects not a string of minor administrative citations but a persistent pattern of high-severity findings.
The recent inspection history makes the pattern visible. On March 17, 2025, inspectors found 10 high-severity and 6 intermediate violations. A reinspection on March 12, 2026, still showed 8 high-severity violations. A follow-up on March 23, 2026, found 9 high-severity violations. There is no inspection in the recent record that shows a clean or substantially improved result.
The two most recent visits, on August 21 and August 22, produced nearly identical violation counts. The facility was allowed to reopen after the second inspection, but 6 high-severity violations remained on the books at the moment the doors opened again.
After the Reopening
The bistro at 7975 S Orange Blossom Trail was confirmed open as of 9:06 a.m. on August 22, 2026. Whether the high-severity violations documented at that reinspection have since been corrected is not reflected in the data available at publication time.
What the record does show is a facility that has cycled through emergency closure, reinspection, and reopening before, and arrived at a second emergency closure carrying 631 violations across its full inspection history.
