TAMPA, FL. Back in March 2026, state inspectors walked into Tasty Mediterranean Grill on Gunn Highway and found roach activity serious enough to shut the restaurant down on the spot.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the 6178 Gunn Hwy location closed on March 24, 2026. Inspectors set a vacate deadline of March 27. The restaurant reopened later that same day, at 2:27 p.m., after satisfying state requirements.
What Inspectors Found
Tasty Mediterranean Grill: Inspection Activity, March 2026
The closure-triggering inspection on March 24 produced six high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. The inspectors documented the roach activity that day alongside a set of other serious findings.
The violations recorded in the final inspection before the restaurant was cleared included food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled, and single-use items being reused improperly.
None of those are minor paperwork issues. Each one represents a direct path by which a customer could be harmed.
What These Violations Mean
Roach activity is among the handful of conditions Florida treats as grounds for immediate emergency closure, and the reasoning is straightforward. Roaches travel between sewage, trash, and food preparation surfaces. They carry bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli, and they contaminate food and surfaces they contact. A customer eating at a restaurant with active roach activity has no way to know what surfaces their food touched before it reached the plate.
The finding of improperly cleaned food contact surfaces compounds that risk. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that are not properly sanitized between uses become transfer points for bacteria from raw proteins to ready-to-eat food. The health risk is direct cross-contamination, the same mechanism behind most foodborne illness outbreaks tied to restaurant kitchens.
Toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled near food carry a different but equally acute risk. Mislabeled or misplaced cleaning chemicals can be mistaken for food-safe products. Contamination of food or food surfaces with industrial cleaners or sanitizers can cause acute poisoning.
The reuse of single-use items, documented as an intermediate violation, adds a contamination layer on top of the others. Items designed for one use, including disposable gloves, foil, and prep cups, are not built to withstand repeated cleaning. Reusing them creates surfaces that harbor bacteria regardless of how often the surrounding kitchen is wiped down.
The Longer Record
This was not a restaurant caught off-guard by an unusual finding. The March 2026 closure was the second emergency closure in the facility's documented history on Gunn Highway.
State records show 13 inspections on record and 115 total violations accumulated across that history. That is an average of nearly nine violations per inspection visit.
The pattern in the recent inspection data is hard to miss. In October 2025, inspectors documented seven high-severity and six intermediate violations in a single visit. In January 2025, there were eight high-severity violations. In August 2024, seven high-severity violations with no intermediates.
That means four of the eight most recent inspections on record each produced seven or more high-severity violations. The March 2026 closure, which began with six high-severity findings, did not arrive without warning in the data.
The multi-day inspection sequence in March also tells its own story. It took four follow-up inspections across three days before the restaurant was cleared to reopen. High-severity violations were still present as late as the morning of March 27, the day the restaurant was ultimately allowed to resume service.
The Reopening
Tasty Mediterranean Grill did reopen on March 27, 2026, at 2:27 p.m., after the final inspection that day satisfied state standards. The two high-severity and one intermediate violation documented in that final inspection represent what remained after four days of remediation.
Whether the conditions that produced 115 violations across 13 inspections have changed in any lasting way is a question the next routine inspection will answer. The record through March 2026 showed a facility that had been cited for serious violations consistently across multiple years, closed twice by emergency order, and cleared twice after meeting the minimum threshold to reopen.
The restaurant was licensed for permanent food service and remained in operation as of its last documented inspection date.