DELAND, FL. A food worker at Anthony's Pizza on South Woodland Boulevard was observed using improper handwashing technique during a July 21 state inspection, a failure inspectors flagged as high-severity, meaning pathogens can survive on hands even when a worker goes through the motions of washing them.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant remained open.
What Inspectors Found
The inspection also found that Anthony's had no written employee health policy and that at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms, a combination inspectors consider among the most direct routes to a multi-victim outbreak.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch ingredients before they reach a plate, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Inspectors also cited the restaurant for failing to maintain adequate shellfish identification and sourcing records, and for posting no consumer advisory warning customers that raw or undercooked items carry health risks.
A single intermediate violation for inadequate ventilation and lighting rounded out the seven-item citation list.
What These Violations Mean
The pairing of no employee health policy and an employee not reporting illness symptoms is not a paperwork problem. Food workers are the single leading cause of Norovirus outbreaks in restaurant settings, and Norovirus spreads through contact with contaminated hands, surfaces, and food. Without a written policy requiring sick workers to stay home, and without workers who actually report symptoms, there is no mechanism to interrupt that chain before customers are exposed.
The handwashing citation compounds that risk. Inspectors distinguish between a worker who skips handwashing entirely and one who performs the steps incorrectly, because the outcome is the same: pathogens remain on the hands and transfer to food. At Anthony's, both the policy failure and the technique failure were documented in the same visit.
Unsanitized food contact surfaces are a separate transmission route. Bacteria from raw ingredients, including Salmonella and E. coli, survive on cutting boards and prep surfaces and transfer to the next item placed on them. The shellfish traceability violation matters for a different reason: if a customer becomes ill after eating oysters or clams, health investigators need sourcing records to identify the harvest location and pull product. Without those records, an outbreak becomes much harder to trace and stop.
The missing consumer advisory is a specific danger for elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system. Those customers cannot make an informed choice about raw or undercooked items if the menu does not disclose the risk.
The Longer Record
The July 21 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Anthony's Pizza has been inspected 38 times and has accumulated 324 total violations over its inspection history.
Anthony's Pizza: Recent Inspection Pattern
The only inspection in the past two years that produced zero high-severity violations was February 2024, when inspectors found one intermediate citation. Every other visit in that stretch documented at least three high-severity violations.
The April 2025 inspection stands out: nine high-severity violations in a single visit. That visit was followed by a February 2026 inspection with four high-severity violations and then the July 21 inspection with six. The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history.
A follow-up inspection one week after the July 21 visit, on July 28, found two remaining high-severity violations. The most serious citations from the week before, the missing health policy, the unreported illness symptoms, the unsanitized food surfaces, were not listed among the violations still outstanding. Whether they were corrected or simply not re-cited is not reflected in the available records.
What the records do show is this: on July 21, a pizza restaurant in DeLand had no written policy to keep sick workers out of the kitchen, at least one employee who was not disclosing illness symptoms, improperly sanitized food contact surfaces, and no warning to customers about the risks of undercooked food. Six high-severity violations. The doors stayed open.
