JACKSONVILLE, FL. Back in March 2026, state inspectors walked into Tequilas Mexican Restaurant on Baymeadows Road and found what the records describe plainly: live roach and fly activity throughout the facility. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation ordered the restaurant at 10915 Baymeadows Rd Bay #101 closed on March 31, giving the owners until April 3 to correct the conditions.
It was not the first time the state had shut this restaurant down.
What Inspectors Found
Tequilas Mexican Restaurant: Recent Inspection Pattern
The March 31 inspection produced six high-severity violations and five intermediate violations. The closure order cited roach and fly activity as the triggering conditions, the category of finding that Florida regulators treat as an immediate threat to public health.
Inspectors returned on April 1 and again on April 2. Both visits showed the high-severity violations had been cleared, with only one intermediate violation remaining on each day. By the morning of April 3, the restaurant had met state standards. Records show it was allowed to reopen at 8:50 a.m. that day, before the ordered vacation deadline.
What These Violations Mean
Live roach and fly activity in a food service environment is not a housekeeping citation. Cockroaches carry bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli on their bodies and legs, depositing those pathogens on food preparation surfaces, utensils, and food itself as they move through a kitchen. A customer eating at Tequilas on March 30 would have had no way of knowing what inspectors documented the following morning.
Flies present a parallel risk. They feed on organic waste and transfer bacteria directly to any food surface they land on. The combination of both pest types in a single inspection is what pushed this finding into emergency closure territory rather than a standard correction order.
Six high-severity violations in a single visit is a significant count. High-severity violations are the category most directly linked to conditions that can cause foodborne illness. The five intermediate violations documented alongside them, covering issues like food handling procedures and employee practices, indicate the problems on March 31 were not isolated to one area of the operation.
The Pattern Before the Closure
The March 2026 shutdown did not arrive without warning in the inspection record.
Six months earlier, in September 2025, inspectors had visited Tequilas and found five high-severity violations and four intermediate violations. That inspection did not result in a closure order, but the severity count was nearly as high as the visit that did.
Before that, in May 2025, a routine inspection produced three high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. A follow-up visit four days later, on May 6, showed zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations, suggesting the restaurant addressed those findings quickly.
The pattern is consistent: a routine inspection finds serious violations, a follow-up clears them, and months later serious violations reappear.
The Longer Record
Tequilas Mexican Restaurant on Baymeadows Road has accumulated 42 inspections and 371 total violations in the state's records. That volume, across a facility licensed for permanent food service, places this location among the more heavily documented in Duval County.
The March 2026 closure was the second emergency closure in the facility's record. The existence of a prior closure matters because it means inspectors and operators had already been through the shutdown-and-reopen process once before. The conditions that triggered the March 31 order, roach and fly activity, are not obscure code technicalities. They are visible, documentable, and correctable.
What the record shows is a facility that clears violations when inspectors are present and following up, then returns to high-severity findings in subsequent routine visits. The September 2025 inspection found five high-severity violations without triggering a closure. The March 2026 inspection found six and did.
The restaurant was cleared to reopen on the morning of April 3, 2026, three days after the closure order was issued. Whether the conditions that produced 371 violations over 42 inspections have been addressed in any lasting way is a question the next routine inspection will answer.