ST AUGUSTINE, FL. State inspectors ordered Romano's Pizzeria and Restaurant at 4010 US 1 S shut down on August 18 after finding roach activity on the premises, triggering the restaurant's third emergency closure and its second roach-related shutdown in nine months.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the restaurant vacated by August 21. It reopened the same day at 4:32 p.m., according to state records.
What Inspectors Found
Romano's Emergency Closure History
The August 18 closure was triggered specifically by roach activity, the same violation that forced the restaurant to close on December 15, 2025. That earlier closure lasted one day. This one stretched across three days of follow-up inspections before the restaurant was cleared to reopen.
State records show inspectors returned to the restaurant on August 19, 20, and 21, conducting multiple visits on two of those days. The restaurant passed all four of those follow-up inspections with zero high-severity violations.
What This Means
Roach activity is one of the conditions Florida law treats as an immediate threat to public health, giving inspectors authority to order an emergency closure without waiting for a scheduled re-inspection. The reasoning is direct: cockroaches carry pathogens including Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria on their bodies and in their droppings, and they move freely between waste areas and food preparation surfaces.
A single roach spotted in a kitchen can indicate a much larger infestation in walls, under equipment, or inside drains. Inspectors are trained to treat visible activity as evidence of a broader problem, not an isolated incident.
The risk to customers is not abstract. A person eating at a restaurant with active roach presence is potentially consuming food that has been contaminated by contact with surfaces those insects have crossed. Roach droppings in food prep areas are not always visible to the naked eye.
The fact that this closure was ordered for the same reason as the one nine months earlier raises a specific concern: that whatever remediation was done in December 2025 did not prevent a recurrence. Two roach-related closures at the same address within nine months suggests the underlying infestation was not fully resolved the first time.
The Longer Record
Romano's Pizzeria has accumulated 218 violations across 38 inspections on record with the state, an average of more than five violations per inspection visit. That volume places it well above what would be expected for a routine permanent food service establishment.
The August 2026 closure was the restaurant's third emergency shutdown on record. Two of those three closures, the December 2025 incident and this one, were ordered for the same reason: roach activity.
The pattern of follow-up inspections after this closure is worth noting. Inspectors visited the restaurant eight times between August 19 and September 2, a level of scrutiny that reflects how seriously the state treated the recurrence. The restaurant passed each of those follow-up visits without any high-severity violations, and the most recent inspection on record, September 2, showed zero violations of any kind.
That clean record in early September is a fact. So is the fact that the restaurant had a clean record after the December 2025 closure too, before roach activity was documented again eight months later.
The Reopening
Romano's was back open by the afternoon of August 21, less than 72 hours after the closure order. State records confirm it met the standards required to reopen on that date.
The restaurant's two most recent inspections, on September 1 and September 2, each showed zero high-severity violations. The September 1 visit noted one intermediate violation. The September 2 visit was clean across all categories.
What the record does not show is whether the pest control work done after this closure addressed the source of the infestation more thoroughly than what was done after December 2025. That question is not answered in state inspection data. It will be answered by whether the restaurant appears on this list again.
Romano's Pizzeria has now been emergency-closed three times. Twice, the reason was roaches. The third prior closure date and its cause are on record with the state but were not specified in the available data.
