KEY LARGO, FL. Food employees at Buttonwood Grill on Garden Cove Drive were not reporting illness symptoms to management on June 19, according to state inspection records, and the restaurant had no written employee health policy in place to require them to do so.
That combination, two of seven high-severity violations cited that day, is the documented setup for a multi-victim outbreak. The restaurant remained open.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector also cited employees for inadequate handwashing and improper handwashing technique, two separate violations that together indicate workers were not cleaning their hands correctly or thoroughly enough before handling food. Those two citations appeared alongside a finding that food on the premises was in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated.
Time as a public health control was not being properly used. That violation means food was being held in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, without the time limits that are supposed to substitute for refrigeration in that scenario.
No person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties during the inspection. The one intermediate violation, improperly cleaned multi-use utensils, rounded out a citation list that covered nearly every layer of a functioning food safety system.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting and health policy violations are not paperwork problems. When a food worker comes in sick with Norovirus and there is no policy requiring them to report symptoms or stay home, that worker handles food, touches surfaces, and serves customers. Norovirus accounts for roughly 20 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year, and a single infected food handler can expose dozens of customers in a single shift.
The handwashing violations compound that risk directly. Improper technique, meaning not washing long enough, not covering all surfaces, or not using soap, leaves pathogens on hands even when an employee believes they have washed. Combined with a sick worker who was never told to report symptoms, those hands become a direct transmission route to every plate that leaves the kitchen.
The food-in-poor-condition violation adds a separate hazard. Food that is spoiled, contaminated, or mislabeled cannot be traced if a customer becomes ill. Mislabeling is particularly dangerous for customers with allergies, who rely on accurate labeling to avoid life-threatening reactions.
The misuse of time as a public health control means food sat in the temperature danger zone longer than the rules allow. Bacteria double roughly every 20 minutes at those temperatures. What starts as a marginal safety risk becomes a serious one within hours, and the inspector's job is to catch it before it reaches a table.
The Longer Record
The June 19 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show 27 inspections on file for Buttonwood Grill, with 359 total violations documented across that history.
The eight most recent inspections before June 2026 tell a consistent story. The April 2026 visit produced 7 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. The December 2025 visit produced 7 high-severity violations. April 2025 produced 8 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations. December 2024 produced 5 high-severity and 1 intermediate violation. April 2024 produced 7 high-severity and 1 intermediate violation.
Go back further and the pattern holds. August 2023 produced 8 high-severity violations. December 2022 produced 8 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. In only one inspection across that entire stretch, October 2023, did the high-severity count drop to 2.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. Every one of those visits, including the ones that produced 8 high-severity citations, ended with the facility remaining open.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority applies when an inspector determines that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. Seven high-severity violations, including sick workers not reporting illness, no health policy, and food in poor condition, did not meet that threshold on June 19 at Buttonwood Grill.
That is the same threshold the facility did not meet in April 2026, in December 2025, in April 2025, in December 2024, or in April 2024.
The restaurant on Garden Cove Drive was open for business when the inspector left.
