ORLANDO, FL. An inspector visiting Brooklyn Pizza at 5681 Pershing Ave on May 26 found that the restaurant was sourcing food from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means the ingredients on customers' plates had bypassed federal safety inspections entirely.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented at the restaurant that day. The facility was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector also cited the restaurant for having no employee health policy and for employees not reporting illness symptoms. Those two violations appeared on the same inspection report, which means the restaurant had neither a written protocol requiring sick workers to stay home nor evidence that workers were following any such standard.
Food contact surfaces were found to be improperly cleaned and sanitized. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and similar equipment that touches food directly are a primary route for bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat items.
The inspector flagged inadequate shell stock identification records. Brooklyn Pizza apparently serves shellfish, and without proper harvest tags and lot records, there is no way to trace an oyster, clam, or mussel back to its source if a customer becomes ill. The restaurant also lacked a consumer advisory notifying diners that raw or undercooked items carry elevated risk, a disclosure required specifically to protect elderly customers, pregnant women, and anyone with a compromised immune system.
Three intermediate violations rounded out the report: inadequate ventilation and lighting, improper waste disposal, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities.
What These Violations Mean
The food-from-unapproved-sources violation is among the most consequential a restaurant can receive. When food enters a kitchen through channels outside the licensed supply chain, it has not been inspected by USDA or FDA at any point. If a customer becomes sick after eating there, investigators have no supplier records to trace, no lot numbers to pull, and no way to determine whether other restaurants received the same contaminated product.
The pair of illness-related violations, no health policy and employees not reporting symptoms, is what public health officials call a direct transmission pathway. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads readily when a sick food handler touches ready-to-eat items. A written health policy is the first line of defense; enforcement of that policy is the second. Brooklyn Pizza appears to have had neither in place on the day of this inspection.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces compound the risk. If a surface used to prep raw shellfish, which the restaurant apparently handles, is not properly sanitized before being used for other foods, the contamination moves with the knife or the board. The shell stock recordkeeping violation makes that risk harder to contain, because without traceability documents, a shellfish-linked illness cannot be confirmed or recalled quickly.
The toilet facility violation matters beyond appearances. When employee restrooms are inadequate or poorly maintained, workers are less likely to wash hands thoroughly between tasks, a gap that connects directly to the illness-reporting failures documented in the same report.
The Longer Record
This inspection was not an outlier. Brooklyn Pizza has 33 inspections on record and 393 total violations across that history. It has never been emergency-closed.
The eight most recent inspections before May 26 show a facility that has cycled through high-severity violations without apparent correction. The September 2025 inspection produced seven high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. The March 2025 inspection produced six high-severity violations and four intermediate ones. The August 2024 inspection produced nine high-severity violations and six intermediate ones.
That August 2024 inspection, with nine high-severity citations, is the worst single visit in the recent record. It was followed four months later, in December 2024, by an inspection that produced three high-severity violations and seven intermediate ones. Then the pattern climbed back up.
Going further back, the February 2023 inspection documented seven high-severity violations and seven intermediate ones, for a combined 14 citations in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed after that inspection either.
In every inspection since early 2023, Brooklyn Pizza has received at least one high-severity violation. The May 26 inspection, with six high-severity citations and three intermediate ones, is consistent with what this restaurant's record has looked like for years.
Still Open
State inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Brooklyn Pizza on May 26, 2026, including food from an unapproved source, no mechanism for keeping sick employees out of the kitchen, and shellfish with no traceability records.
The restaurant was not closed.