RUSKIN, FL. Back in March 2026, state inspectors walked into Taqueria Don Julio on College Avenue and found enough roach activity to shut the place down on the spot.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the 3066 College Ave. restaurant closed on March 12, 2026. It was not the first time. It was not even the second.
What Inspectors Found
Taqueria Don Julio: Emergency Closures and Inspection Pattern
The roach activity that triggered the March 12 closure was the stated basis for the emergency order, according to state records. Inspectors returned six more times between March 16 and March 20 alone, citing high-severity or intermediate violations on each visit until the restaurant cleared an inspection on March 20 with no high-severity or intermediate violations on record.
That clean inspection did not hold.
On April 1, inspectors returned and documented five high-severity violations and three intermediate violations in a single visit. A follow-up on April 2 found two more high-severity violations and one intermediate violation.
The Violations
The most recent inspections, in early April, produced a specific set of findings. Inspectors cited the restaurant for having no employee health policy or an inadequate one. They also cited the restaurant for providing no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods.
A third violation involved improper sanitizing solution or procedures.
These are not paperwork problems. Each carries a direct health consequence for customers who ate there.
What These Violations Mean
The absence of a written employee health policy is one of the most direct disease transmission risks inspectors can document. Without a formal policy requiring sick employees to stay out of the kitchen, workers with Norovirus or similar illnesses can and do prepare food while contagious. Norovirus accounts for roughly 20 million infections in the United States each year, and food handling is among its most common transmission routes. At Taqueria Don Julio, this violation appeared in both the April 1 and April 2 inspections.
The missing consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods puts a specific category of customers at acute risk: elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system. When a menu includes items that may be served undercooked, customers in those groups need to know. Without the advisory, they have no way to make an informed choice.
Improper sanitizing solution or procedures means surfaces and equipment that appear clean may not be. A sanitizer that is too weak leaves pathogens alive on cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils. One that is too strong can itself become a contamination hazard. Either way, the barrier between a contaminated surface and a customer's food breaks down.
The Longer Record
Taqueria Don Julio has been inspected 35 times and has accumulated 280 total violations across its record as a permitted food service establishment in Hillsborough County. That history makes the March 2026 closure something other than a sudden finding.
The restaurant's first documented emergency closure came on August 25, 2022, when inspectors shut it down for rodent and fly activity. It reopened the next day. That closure, and the circumstances behind it, did not appear to produce lasting change in the facility's compliance record.
The March 2026 closure for roach activity is the third emergency shutdown at this address. The pattern across both pest-related closures is consistent: active infestation, closure order, follow-up inspections, a passing visit, and then continued high-severity citations in the weeks that follow.
The five inspections conducted between March 16 and March 20, in the days immediately after the closure order, show how difficult it was for the restaurant to reach even a temporary clean record. High-severity violations appeared on March 16, March 17 (twice), March 18, and March 19 before inspectors found no high-severity or intermediate violations on March 20.
Two weeks later, the April 1 inspection produced the highest single-visit high-severity count in the recent record: five violations in one day.
As of the most recent data available in state records, no confirmed reopen status following the March 12 closure has been recorded. Whether Taqueria Don Julio on College Avenue is currently serving customers is not established in the state's inspection file.