ORLANDO, FL. Back in February 2026, state inspectors ordered Lee & Ricks Oyster Bar on Old Winter Garden Road shut down for fly activity, the same reason the restaurant had been emergency-closed just two months earlier.
The closure order came on February 23, 2026. Inspectors gave the restaurant until February 25 to vacate, and records show it did reopen, passing a follow-up inspection that morning at 9:16 a.m. But the shutdown was not an isolated event. It was the third emergency closure the Old Winter Garden Road location had accumulated, and it landed at the tail end of a winter stretch that had already put the restaurant through one emergency closure and a string of repeated high-severity citations.
What Inspectors Found
Lee & Ricks Oyster Bar: Recent Inspection Record
The violation that triggered the February 23 closure was fly activity inside the restaurant. Alongside it, inspectors cited a high-severity violation for food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and two intermediate violations.
The food contact surface finding matters because it is not a paperwork problem. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that are not properly cleaned and sanitized between uses become a direct transfer route for bacteria from one food item to the next.
A follow-up inspection the next day, February 24, still showed one high-severity violation and two intermediate violations. The restaurant did not clear all high-severity findings until the February 25 inspection, when one high-severity and one intermediate violation remained on record at the time it was allowed to reopen.
What These Violations Mean
Fly activity is one of the conditions Florida law treats as grounds for immediate emergency closure, and the reasoning is direct. Flies move between decomposing organic matter, waste, and food preparation surfaces without any barrier. A single fly landing on a prep surface or an open food item can deposit pathogens including Salmonella and E. coli. In a seafood restaurant, where raw shellfish is handled and served, that transfer risk is acute.
The food contact surface violation compounds the fly problem. If surfaces where raw oysters and other shellfish are processed are not being properly sanitized, bacteria introduced by pests or cross-contamination have a vehicle to reach the next customer's plate. State inspectors classify this as a high-severity violation because the link between improperly sanitized food contact surfaces and foodborne illness is well-documented.
The ventilation and lighting citation, classified as intermediate, carries its own risk. Inadequate ventilation allows grease-laden vapors, smoke, and steam to accumulate in a kitchen, creating conditions that accelerate bacterial growth on surfaces and compromise the ability of staff to see and address contamination.
The Longer Record
The February 2026 closure was not the first time fly activity had shut down Lee & Ricks. On December 22, 2025, inspectors had ordered the same emergency closure for the same reason. That December closure was resolved the same day it was issued, with a follow-up inspection also conducted on December 22. But two months later, the flies were back, and so was the closure order.
Across 36 inspections on record, the restaurant has accumulated 236 total violations. That volume, spread across a multi-year inspection history, reflects a facility that has drawn repeated regulatory attention.
The inspection record in the months surrounding the February closure shows a restaurant that continued to generate high-severity findings even after reopening. The March 31, 2026 inspection turned up two high-severity and one intermediate violation. The April 28 inspection found two high-severity and three intermediate violations. As recently as June 1, 2026, inspectors still documented one high-severity and one intermediate violation.
Three emergency closures at a single location, two of them for the same documented condition within a 14-month window, and a run of high-severity findings on every subsequent inspection through at least June 2026, is the record Lee & Ricks has built at 5621 Old Winter Garden Road.
The Pattern
What the February 2026 closure represents, in the context of the full record, is not a sudden finding. The December 2025 closure for fly activity should have been a warning that the underlying conditions attracting flies had not been eliminated. When inspectors returned in February, those conditions had not changed enough to prevent a second shutdown.
The restaurant did reopen after each closure. But the inspection record through June 2026 shows that high-severity violations persisted at Lee & Ricks well after both the December and February shutdowns, with two high-severity violations still appearing on the April 28 inspection, more than two months after the February closure was resolved.