TAMPA, FL. A food worker at 3 Coins Diner on Nebraska Avenue was observed not reporting illness symptoms to management during an October 7 inspection that turned up nine high-severity violations, including food not cooked to the required minimum temperature and no written employee health policy of any kind.
The restaurant at 7410 N Nebraska Ave was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
State records from the October 7 visit document a kitchen where multiple basic safeguards had broken down simultaneously. Inspectors cited food not reaching the minimum required cooking temperature, two separate handwashing failures (inadequate washing and improper technique), and food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized.
There was no person in charge present or performing duties. There was no written employee health policy. An employee was not reporting illness symptoms.
The diner also lacked the required consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods, meaning customers had no notice that anything on the menu carried elevated risk. Inspectors additionally cited inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning shellfish served that day could not be traced to a verified source.
On the intermediate tier, inspectors documented improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and improperly maintained toilet facilities.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy, no illness reporting, and inadequate handwashing is not three separate problems. It is a single, unbroken transmission route from a sick employee to a customer's plate.
Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States annually, spreads primarily through exactly this chain: a food worker who feels ill, has no policy requiring them to report it, and does not wash their hands thoroughly before handling food. The October 7 inspection at 3 Coins Diner documented all three conditions present at once.
The undercooking violation compounds that risk. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A customer who ordered chicken on October 7 had no way of knowing whether it had reached a safe temperature, and without a person in charge present and performing duties, there was no one on the floor whose job it was to verify that it had.
The shell stock traceability violation is a separate category of risk entirely. Shellfish, including oysters, clams, and mussels, are often consumed raw or lightly cooked. Without proper identification records, there is no way to trace an illness back to a specific harvest lot if a customer gets sick. That traceability is the mechanism that allows health officials to pull contaminated product from circulation before more people are affected. Without it, the chain of accountability stops at the restaurant door.
The Longer Record
3 Coins Diner: Inspection History, Selected Dates
The October 7 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show 48 inspections on file for this address, with 590 total violations accumulated across that history. The diner has been emergency-closed three times, in February 2017 for roach activity, in August 2018 for unsanitary conditions, and in July 2020 for combined roach and rodent activity.
The inspection frequency in 2026 alone tells its own story. Inspectors visited on March 17 and found six high-severity violations. They returned on June 29 and found ten. A follow-up on July 15 found seven. The October 7 visit found nine. A subsequent inspection on October 12, five days after the one detailed here, found four high-severity violations and four intermediate ones.
In every visit since at least October 2025, the diner has accumulated high-severity violations. The categories shift slightly from visit to visit, but the volume does not.
After the October 7 inspection, with nine high-severity violations documented, including undercooked food, no illness policy, and no person in charge, the restaurant was permitted to remain open and continue serving customers.
