NEW SMYRNA BEACH, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into Baci Pizzeria and Ristorante at 830 N Dixie Freeway and found no records identifying where the restaurant's shellfish came from, no written employee health policy, and a person in charge who was not performing supervisory duties. They documented eight high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. Then they left, and the restaurant stayed open.
What Inspectors Found
The shellfish violation stands out. Inspectors cited Baci for inadequate shell stock identification and records, meaning the restaurant could not demonstrate where its oysters, clams, or mussels originated. Shellfish are consumed raw or lightly cooked, and without sourcing records, there is no way to trace an illness back to a contaminated harvest area if a customer gets sick.
The restaurant also had no written employee health policy and, separately, employees were not reporting illness symptoms. Those two violations together describe a workplace where a sick cook or server has no formal instruction to stay home and no documented obligation to disclose symptoms to a manager.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and multi-use utensils had not been properly cleaned. Inspectors also documented improper handwashing technique alongside inadequate handwashing facilities, a combination that means the physical infrastructure for hygiene was deficient and the employees using it were not doing so correctly regardless.
No consumer advisory was posted for raw or undercooked foods. Florida requires that advisory for any menu item served raw or undercooked, specifically so that elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and people with compromised immune systems can make an informed choice. It was absent.
What These Violations Mean
The employee illness violations are the ones that most directly put customers at risk. Norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants, spreads almost entirely through infected food workers who continue to handle food while symptomatic. A written health policy is the mechanism that legally and practically requires workers to report symptoms and stay off the line. Without one, there is no policy to enforce and no record that the conversation ever happened. Baci had neither the policy nor evidence that employees were self-reporting.
The shellfish traceability failure compounds that risk in a specific way. If a diner ate raw shellfish at Baci in April and became ill, investigators would have no harvest records to cross-reference against known contamination events. That is not a paperwork problem. It is the difference between identifying an outbreak source and losing it entirely.
Improperly sanitized food contact surfaces and unclean multi-use utensils are how bacteria move from one food to another without any visible sign of contamination. A cutting board or prep surface that tests positive for pathogens looks identical to a clean one. The only safeguard is the cleaning process itself, and at Baci in April, inspectors found that process was not being followed.
The absence of a person in charge performing supervisory duties ties all of these together. CDC data associates establishments without active managerial control with three times the rate of critical violations. At Baci on April 17, the management failure was not a contributing factor. It was the condition under which every other violation occurred.
The Longer Record
The April 2026 inspection was not an outlier. Baci Pizzeria has 40 inspections on record and 242 total violations accumulated over its history. The pattern in recent years is consistent and specific.
In October 2025, a routine visit found no violations. Two weeks earlier, in mid-October, inspectors had documented six high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. In April 2025, the count was seven high-severity violations and two intermediate ones, almost identical to the April 2026 inspection. The November 2024 pair of inspections followed the same shape: seven high-severity violations on November 13, followed by five high-severity violations two days later on November 15.
The repetition is notable. High violation counts appear, then a cleaner inspection follows, then high counts return. The April 2026 inspection, with eight high-severity violations, represents the highest single-visit count in the recent history provided. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed across its 40 inspections on record.
Still Open
State inspectors documented eight high-severity violations at Baci Pizzeria on April 17, 2026. Those violations included failures in employee illness reporting, shellfish sourcing records, food surface sanitation, handwashing infrastructure, handwashing technique, consumer disclosure for raw foods, and management oversight.
The restaurant was not closed.