SOUTH DAYTONA, FL. Back in February 2026, state inspectors ordered Webber's Steakhouse & Sushi on South Ridgewood Avenue closed to the public after documenting active rodent activity at the restaurant, the fourth emergency shutdown in the facility's recorded inspection history.
The closure order came on February 25. Inspectors gave the restaurant until February 26 to vacate, and records show it was allowed to reopen that same day at 10:32 a.m., after a follow-up inspection found the most critical violations addressed.
What Inspectors Found
Webber's Emergency Closures: 2017–2026
The February 25 inspection that triggered the closure recorded six high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. The follow-up inspection on February 26, conducted before the restaurant was cleared to reopen, still found two high-severity violations and one intermediate violation on the books.
The rodent activity finding was the direct cause of the emergency order. Rodent presence in a food service environment is treated by state regulators as an immediate public health threat, not a paperwork deficiency.
What This Means
Rodents in a restaurant are not simply a sanitation problem. Rats and mice contaminate food and food-contact surfaces with urine, droppings, and hair, and they carry pathogens including Salmonella, Leptospira, and Hantavirus. A customer does not need to see a rodent to be exposed: contamination happens in storage areas, on prep surfaces, and in the gaps between walls and equipment where rodents travel at night.
State inspectors treat active rodent activity as grounds for immediate closure precisely because the contamination pathway is invisible to the people eating there. Food handled on a surface that a rodent crossed hours earlier carries no visible sign of that contact.
The February 25 inspection also cited failures that compound that risk. Inspectors documented inadequate handwashing facilities and improper handwashing technique, meaning even basic hygiene barriers were not functioning. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, which creates a direct transfer route for anything a rodent left behind.
The restaurant's most recent inspection, conducted April 30, 2026, found seven high-severity violations and four intermediate violations, a higher count than the closure inspection itself. Those violations included no employee health policy, no allergen awareness demonstrated, no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods, and single-use items being reused. For a restaurant that also serves sushi, the absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods is a direct gap in the information customers need to make safe choices, particularly pregnant women, elderly diners, and anyone with a compromised immune system.
The Longer Record
The February 2026 closure did not arrive without warning. State records show 49 inspections at this address, with 576 total violations documented across that history. That averages to nearly 12 violations per inspection visit.
The inspection record going back to 2024 shows no single visit where the facility came close to a clean bill of health. In November 2024, inspectors found eight high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. In April 2024, seven high-severity violations and four intermediate. In October 2025, six high-severity violations and four intermediate. The February 2026 closure inspection, with six high-severity violations, was not an outlier. It was consistent with a pattern that had held for years.
The facility has now been emergency-closed four times. The first came in July 2017 for roach activity, a closure that required two days before the restaurant could reopen. The second came in February 2021 for rodent activity, and the restaurant was cleared the same day. The February 2026 closure was also for rodent activity, cleared the following morning.
Two of the three pest-related closures involved rodents specifically, not roaches. That distinction matters. Roach infestations and rodent infestations require different remediation approaches, and a facility that has faced rodent closures in both 2021 and 2026 has documented the same category of pest problem recurring across a five-year span.
The Pattern
The April 30, 2026 inspection results, recorded two months after the February closure, raise a straightforward question about whether the remediation that cleared the restaurant for reopening addressed anything beyond the immediate closure trigger. Seven high-severity violations in a post-closure inspection is not a facility trending toward compliance.
Among the April violations: improper use of time as a public health control, which means food was sitting in the temperature danger zone between 41 and 135 degrees, the range where bacteria like Salmonella and Staphylococcus aureus multiply rapidly, without the documentation required to make that practice safe. Improperly cleaned multi-use utensils and single-use items being reused were also cited, both of which create contamination pathways that are separate from and in addition to the pest activity that closed the restaurant in February.
The waste disposal violation documented in April is worth noting in the context of the rodent history. Improper waste disposal is a direct attractant for rats and mice. Inspectors documented it two months after a rodent-triggered closure.
Webber's Steakhouse & Sushi remained licensed and operating as of the April 30 inspection. Whether any enforcement action beyond the February closure order followed from that inspection's seven high-severity findings is not reflected in the records available.