CORAL SPRINGS, FL. Inspectors walked into Carrabba's Italian Grill on University Drive on October 5, 2026, and found food coming from an unapproved or unknown source, no written employee health policy, an employee who had not reported illness symptoms, and food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized. They documented six high-severity violations in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious an inspector can document. When food arrives from an unapproved or unverified source, it has bypassed the USDA and FDA inspection systems that screen for Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli. If someone gets sick, there is no supply chain record to trace.
Inspectors also found that the restaurant lacked an adequate employee health policy and that at least one employee had not reported illness symptoms. Those two violations compound each other. Without a written policy, workers have no documented guidance on when to stay home. Without reporting, a sick employee can work an entire shift, handling food throughout.
The shellfish traceability violation adds another layer. Carrabba's serves shellfish, and state rules require restaurants to maintain shell stock identification tags so that any contaminated batch can be traced back to its harvest location. The records were inadequate.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and equipment that touch ingredients directly, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. That is a direct cross-contamination pathway between whatever was prepared before and whatever comes next.
The person in charge was either absent or not performing required oversight duties. That violation did not stand alone. It sat at the top of a list that included every other failure documented that day.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and an employee not reporting symptoms is what public health officials call an outbreak enabler. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads most efficiently when a sick food worker handles ready-to-eat food without restriction. A written health policy is the first control point. At Carrabba's on University Drive on October 5, that control point was missing.
The food sourcing violation carries a different kind of risk. Approved food suppliers operate under federal inspection regimes designed to catch contamination before product reaches a restaurant kitchen. Food from an unapproved or unknown source has no such verification. If a customer became ill after eating there that day, investigators would have no reliable supply chain record to work backward through.
The shell stock violation is specific to shellfish, which are consumed raw or lightly cooked and are a known vehicle for Vibrio and hepatitis A. Harvest location tags allow health officials to link an illness case to a specific growing area and pull product before more people are exposed. Without those records, that link is broken.
Improperly sanitized food contact surfaces tie all of it together. Bacteria or viral particles from one food item, or one sick employee's hands, can transfer to the next item prepared on the same surface. That is not a theoretical risk. It is the documented mechanism behind a significant share of restaurant-linked outbreaks.
The Longer Record
Carrabba's University Dr, Coral Springs: Inspection History
The October 5 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show 34 inspections on file for this location, with 169 total violations across that history. The restaurant has logged high-severity violations in seven of the eight most recently recorded inspections before the follow-up visit.
The pattern goes back further than that. In June 2019, inspectors emergency-closed the same location after finding roach activity. It reopened the next day. The closure is the only one on record, but the years since have not produced a clean stretch.
The January 2025 inspection produced five high-severity violations. The June 2025 visit found four. October 2025 found three. February 2026 found three more. Each inspection cycle produced high-severity findings. The October 5, 2026 visit, with six, was the worst documented in the recent run.
A follow-up inspection the next day, October 6, showed no remaining high-severity violations and one intermediate. The one-day turnaround resolved what inspectors could verify on a return visit.
The restaurant served customers through all six high-severity violations on October 5, 2026, and was never ordered to close.
