KISSIMMEE, FL. State inspectors ordered Romy's on Secret Lake Drive closed on May 5 after finding the restaurant had no warewashing facilities on site, a violation serious enough under Florida law to trigger an immediate emergency shutdown.
The closure order gave the restaurant until May 8 to come into compliance. Inspectors returned that day and cleared Romy's to reopen at 1:05 p.m., state records show.
What Inspectors Found
Romy's Inspection History: High-Severity Violations
The closure-triggering violation was documented on May 5: no warewashing facilities available at the restaurant. The inspection that day turned up five high-severity violations and one intermediate violation in total.
A follow-up visit on May 6, while the restaurant was still under the closure order, found three high-severity violations still on the books.
It was not until the May 8 reinspection that inspectors recorded zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations, clearing the path for Romy's to resume service that afternoon.
What This Means
Warewashing, in plain terms, is the commercial cleaning and sanitizing of dishes, utensils, cutting boards and food-contact equipment. Without functioning warewashing facilities, a restaurant has no reliable mechanism to remove bacteria, grease and food residue from the tools used to prepare and serve every item on the menu.
Florida law treats the absence of warewashing as an immediate public health threat because contaminated equipment is a direct transmission route for foodborne illness. A knife used to cut raw chicken, rinsed in a bucket or wiped down with a rag rather than run through a sanitizing wash cycle, carries bacteria to the next surface it touches. Customers eating food prepared or served on inadequately cleaned equipment have no way of knowing that the cleaning step was skipped entirely.
That is why the state does not issue a warning or a corrective-action notice for this violation. It issues a closure order.
The one intermediate violation documented on May 5 adds a secondary layer of concern. Intermediate violations in Florida's inspection system typically involve food handling practices, employee hygiene or food protection procedures, issues that sit below the immediate-danger threshold but above routine housekeeping. The specific nature of that intermediate violation is not detailed in the available records, but its presence alongside five high-severity findings indicates the May 5 inspection was not a close call.
The Pattern
This was not Romy's first emergency closure. State records show the restaurant, a licensed permanent food service operation at 3070 Secret Lake Drive, has one prior emergency closure on record before the May 5 shutdown.
Across 16 total inspections on record, Romy's has accumulated 69 violations. That averages out to more than four violations per inspection visit across the facility's documented history.
The inspection record shows high-severity violations appearing in six of the eight most recent dated inspections. The October 2021 visit produced four high-severity violations and one intermediate. The February 2023 visit produced the same count. The May 2025 inspection found two high-severity violations and one intermediate.
The only inspection in recent years that produced a clean result was December 2021, which came roughly two months after the October 2021 visit with four high-severity findings.
The Longer Record
Sixteen inspections over the course of Romy's documented history is a substantial record for a single Kissimmee restaurant. The 69 total violations accumulated across those visits place this facility well above what a routine inspection history looks like.
What the record shows is not a restaurant that had one bad day. High-severity violations have appeared consistently across years and across different inspection cycles, from 2021 through 2026. The categories shift from visit to visit in the available data, but the presence of serious findings does not.
The prior emergency closure, combined with the May 5 shutdown, means Romy's has now been ordered closed by state inspectors twice in its recorded history. Both closures required follow-up inspections before the restaurant was permitted to reopen.
The May 6 follow-up, conducted while the restaurant was still under the closure order, found three high-severity violations still present, meaning the problems that triggered the shutdown had not been fully resolved within 24 hours of the closure order being issued. It took until May 8, three days after the initial closure, for inspectors to record a clean result and allow the restaurant to resume operations.
What the record does not show is whether the three high-severity violations found on May 6 were the same violations documented on May 5, or new ones identified during the follow-up walk-through.