PANAMA CITY, FL. A Captain D's seafood restaurant logged a violation for failing to follow parasite destruction procedures during an April 29 inspection, a finding that means fish served to customers may not have been treated to kill Anisakis, tapeworm, or other parasites before it reached the plate.
State inspectors cited Captain D's at 225 W 23rd Street for six high-severity violations and one intermediate violation during that visit. The restaurant was not emergency-closed.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction citation is notable at a seafood-focused chain. State food safety rules require that fish served raw or undercooked be frozen to specific temperatures for specific durations before service, a process designed to kill organisms that survive in fish flesh. When those procedures are skipped, the risk falls entirely on the customer.
Inspectors also found toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled at the location. At a restaurant, that means cleaning agents, sanitizers, or other chemical products were kept in proximity to food or food-contact areas, or were not properly identified, creating a contamination path that can cause acute poisoning with no visible warning to staff or customers.
Food contact surfaces were cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized. Cutting boards, prep tables, and similar surfaces that touch food directly are among the most reliable vectors for bacterial transfer if cleaning and sanitizing steps are skipped or done incorrectly.
The remaining high-severity findings included food cited as being in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated; no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items; and no written employee health policy. The intermediate violation covered inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The parasite destruction failure is the violation most specific to what Captain D's sells. A chain built around fried and baked fish is handling product that, without proper freezing protocols, can harbor Anisakis roundworms or tapeworm larvae. Customers would have no way to know whether the fish on their tray had been treated correctly before cooking.
The missing employee health policy compounds that risk. Without a written policy, there is no formal mechanism requiring sick workers to report symptoms or stay off the line. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants, spreads through exactly this gap: an employee working while ill, handling food, with no policy in place to stop it.
The improperly stored chemicals finding adds a separate and unrelated hazard. Chemical contamination of food does not always produce obvious symptoms immediately, and mislabeled containers mean staff cannot quickly identify what they are handling or what the appropriate response to a spill would be.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked items is a legal requirement designed to protect the most vulnerable diners: the elderly, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system. Without that notice posted, those customers cannot make an informed choice about what they order.
The Longer Record
The April 29 inspection was not an outlier. State records show 30 inspections on file for this location, with 137 total violations accumulated across that history.
The eight most recent inspections before April 29 tell a consistent story. The location drew seven high-severity violations in a single inspection on June 3, 2025, followed by a clean inspection the very next day, June 4, suggesting a rapid correction that did not hold. By December 2025, the location was back to two high-severity violations. The April 2026 inspection, with six high-severity findings, is the second-highest single-inspection tally in the recent record.
High-severity violations appeared in seven of the eight most recent inspections before April 29. The one exception was the June 4, 2025 follow-up visit, which came the day after the seven-violation inspection. The pattern is not one of isolated bad days. It is a location that cycles through citations, corrects enough to pass a follow-up, and then accumulates violations again.
The location has never been emergency-closed in 30 inspections on record.
Still Open
State emergency closure authority exists for situations where inspectors determine a facility poses an immediate threat to public health. Six high-severity violations, including a parasite destruction failure at a seafood restaurant and improperly stored toxic chemicals, did not meet that threshold on April 29.
The restaurant at 225 W 23rd Street remained open after the inspection.