FERNANDINA BEACH, FL. Inspectors visiting Cafe Karibo Duck Pinz at 27 N 3rd Street on May 26, 2026 found food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, a violation that means pathogens like Salmonella can survive in poultry and reach a customer's plate. The cafe was not closed.
State records show inspectors cited the restaurant for seven high-severity violations and four intermediate violations during that single visit. No person was in charge or performing supervisory duties at the time.
What Inspectors Found
The handwashing violations were not a single citation. Inspectors recorded three separate and distinct failures: employees not washing their hands adequately, the physical handwashing facilities being inadequate, and the technique employees used when they did wash being improper.
That combination means the kitchen had no reliable mechanism for preventing hand-to-food contamination at any point in the preparation process.
The sewage and wastewater disposal violation adds another layer. Improper sewage handling creates a pathway for fecal contamination to spread through a facility, and it appeared the same day the restaurant had no functioning manager on site to oversee basic operations.
What These Violations Mean
The undercooking violation is the one with the most direct consequence for anyone who ate at Cafe Karibo Duck Pinz that day. Salmonella in poultry survives at temperatures below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A customer who ordered a chicken dish and received it undercooked had no way of knowing, and no consumer advisory was posted to warn them.
The three handwashing violations compound that risk. Improper handwashing is the single most significant factor in spreading foodborne illness from kitchen workers to customers, and here inspectors found the facility, the behavior, and the technique all failing simultaneously. That is not one problem. It is the same problem at every point where it could have been caught.
The illness-reporting violation is the one that extends the risk beyond a single meal. When employees are not required to report symptoms, a worker sick with norovirus or Salmonella can prepare food across an entire shift without anyone intervening. Norovirus spreads readily through contaminated food and can sicken dozens of people from a single infected handler.
The absence of a person in charge during the inspection is not an administrative footnote. CDC data shows establishments without active managerial control accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with engaged management. On May 26, no one was present to stop any of the failures inspectors documented.
The Longer Record
The May 26 inspection did not come out of nowhere. State records show Cafe Karibo Duck Pinz has accumulated 300 total violations across 26 inspections on record.
The pattern in those records is consistent. On November 1, 2024, inspectors cited the restaurant for six high-severity and four intermediate violations. On February 2, 2024, they found seven high-severity and one intermediate violation, the same high-severity count as the May 2026 visit. On December 1, 2025, inspectors returned and found eight high-severity and four intermediate violations.
Each of those inspections was followed by a callback visit that showed improvement, but the improvement did not hold. The December 1, 2025 visit with eight high-severity violations was followed by a clean inspection on December 2, one day later. By May 26, 2026, the restaurant was back to seven high-severity citations.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. Not after the seven high-severity violations in February 2024. Not after the eight high-severity violations in December 2025. Not after the eleven violations, seven of them high-severity, documented on May 26, 2026.
Still Open
A follow-up inspection on May 27, 2026, the day after the egregious visit, found three high-severity violations remaining. The intermediate violations had cleared.
Three high-severity violations is a meaningful reduction from eleven total. It is also three high-severity violations at a restaurant that has cycled through this pattern across multiple years and more than two dozen inspections.
Cafe Karibo Duck Pinz was not closed after the May 26 inspection. It remained open to serve customers in Fernandina Beach.