CLERMONT, FL. A state inspector walked into Cantina's Mexican Grill on South US Highway 27 on June 1 and documented food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, toxic chemicals stored improperly near food, and employees who had no system in place to report illness symptoms. The restaurant was not closed.
The inspection produced 10 high-severity violations and one intermediate violation. That is the same total number of high-severity violations the restaurant drew during its worst prior inspection, in October 2025 and April 2025.
What Inspectors Found
The food temperature violation is the one that most directly puts a customer at risk of illness. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Undercooking is among the leading documented causes of foodborne illness outbreaks nationwide, and there is no visible sign for a diner that the food on their plate did not reach the temperature it was supposed to reach.
The toxic chemicals violation compounds that risk from a different direction. Chemicals stored improperly near food can cause acute poisoning through direct contamination or mislabeling. A customer ordering a plate of food has no way to know whether the surfaces that food touched were clean or whether chemicals were stored in proximity to the ingredients.
The shell stock identification violation means the restaurant could not trace its shellfish back to a certified source. If a customer became ill from contaminated shellfish, investigators would have no paper trail to follow.
A System With No Safeguards
What the June 1 inspection revealed is not one failure. It is the absence of multiple interlocking systems that are supposed to prevent illness before food reaches a table.
The restaurant had no written employee health policy. Employees were not reporting illness symptoms. The person in charge was not present or not performing duties. Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique, meaning that even when workers attempted to wash their hands, the technique was inadequate to remove pathogens.
Parasite destruction procedures were not followed. For fish served raw or undercooked, proper freezing at specific temperatures for specific durations is the required method to kill parasites including Anisakis. No consumer advisory was posted to warn diners that certain items on the menu carried elevated risk for elderly customers, pregnant women, young children, or anyone with a compromised immune system.
That is ten separate categories of high-severity failure documented in a single visit.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy, no symptom reporting, and inadequate handwashing technique creates a direct transmission route for Norovirus. Norovirus accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses per year in the United States. A single infected food worker who does not report symptoms, and who does not wash hands effectively, can contaminate food served to dozens of customers.
The absence of an active person in charge is not merely a paperwork problem. CDC data cited in the inspection record indicates establishments without active managerial control accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with engaged management. The other nine high-severity violations found on June 1 are consistent with that pattern.
The parasite destruction and shell stock violations sit in a specific category of risk: they involve foods that customers sometimes believe are safe because they are on a restaurant menu. They are not automatically safe. The procedures exist because the risks are real and documented, and when those procedures are skipped, the customer absorbs the risk without knowing it.
The Longer Record
The June 1 inspection is not an aberration. State records show 24 inspections on file for Cantina's Mexican Grill, with 189 total violations documented across that history.
The most recent comparable inspection was October 28, 2025, when the restaurant drew 10 high-severity and 5 intermediate violations. A week later, on October 29, it drew 4 high-severity violations. The following week, November 5, another 4 high-severity violations. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The April 2025 inspection also produced 10 high-severity violations. The December 2024 and December 9, 2024 inspections produced 4 and 5 high-severity violations respectively. The one clean inspection in the recent record, April 2024, stands as the exception, not the rule.
The day after the June 1 inspection, a follow-up visit on June 2 found 1 high-severity violation remaining. That is a significant reduction. It also means that as of June 2, the restaurant was still operating with at least one unresolved high-severity citation on record.
The restaurant was not closed on June 1. It served customers that day.