JACKSONVILLE, FL. A state inspector walked into Casa Dora Italian Cafe at 108 E Forsyth St on June 15 and found food contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards, one of the most direct threats to customer safety a health inspection can document. The restaurant was not closed.
By the time the inspection was complete, the record showed seven high-severity violations and three intermediate violations at the downtown Jacksonville cafe. The violations covered contaminated food, improperly stored toxic chemicals, unwashed hands, unclean food contact surfaces, and a workforce with no written policy requiring sick employees to report their symptoms or stay home.
What Inspectors Found
The contaminated food violation sits at the top of any inspector's concern list. Contamination by chemicals, physical objects, or biological agents means something foreign and potentially dangerous reached food that customers were served or would be served.
Toxic chemicals were also found improperly stored or labeled on the same visit. That violation and the contaminated food citation together suggest the two problems were not unrelated.
The inspection also found that employees were not following proper hand and arm washing technique. This is distinct from simply skipping handwashing entirely. It means workers attempted to wash their hands and still left pathogens on them.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and equipment that touch ingredients directly, were cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized. The intermediate violations added to that picture: multi-use utensils were improperly cleaned, sanitizing solutions were wrong or applied incorrectly, and single-use items were being reused.
There was no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items, meaning customers who are pregnant, elderly, or immunocompromised had no way to know they were ordering food that carried elevated risk.
What These Violations Mean
The pairing of contaminated food and improperly stored toxic chemicals is the most acute concern from this inspection. When cleaning chemicals or sanitizers are stored without proper labeling or placed near food, a mislabeled container or a spill can introduce a substance into food that causes immediate poisoning. Customers would have no way to identify the source.
The employee illness violations compound every other risk in the building. Casa Dora had no written employee health policy and inspectors found employees were not reporting illness symptoms. Food workers who show up sick are the leading cause of multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus, which spreads easily through food handled by infected workers, can sicken dozens of people from a single shift. Without a policy requiring disclosure, there is no mechanism to pull a sick worker off the line.
Improper handwashing technique is a failure that is easy to underestimate. Inspectors distinguish between workers who skip handwashing and workers who perform it incorrectly. Both leave pathogens on hands. Both result in those pathogens reaching food. The difference is that an employee performing the technique wrong believes they are clean.
The sanitizer violation closes the loop. If food contact surfaces are not cleaned, utensils are not properly washed, and the sanitizing solution itself is either too weak or applied incorrectly, the entire sanitation system at the facility fails simultaneously. That is what the June 15 record shows.
The Longer Record
This inspection does not represent a new low for Casa Dora. It represents a continuation of a pattern that state records have documented for years across 64 total inspections and 623 total violations on file.
The facility has been emergency-closed three times since February 2025, each time for roach activity. The most recent closure came on November 5, 2025, when inspectors found roach activity and ordered the restaurant shut. It was allowed to reopen two days later after a follow-up inspection on November 7 showed zero high-severity violations.
That November 7 clean inspection did not hold. In January 2026, inspectors returned and found 10 high-severity violations and four intermediate violations on January 26. A follow-up two days later on January 28 showed zero high-severity violations. The pattern is consistent: a bad inspection, a rapid cleanup for the follow-up, then a return to serious violations at the next unannounced visit.
Prior to the November 2025 closure, the facility was emergency-closed on March 13, 2025, for roach activity and again on February 26, 2025, also for roach activity. Three emergency closures in nine months, all for the same cause. The May 2025 inspection found nine high-severity violations. The November 2025 inspection before that closure found nine high-severity violations. The June 15, 2026 inspection found seven.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented seven high-severity violations at Casa Dora Italian Cafe on June 15, 2026, including contaminated food and improperly stored toxic chemicals. The facility had accumulated 623 violations across 64 inspections and had been emergency-closed eight times in its recorded history.
It was not closed after this inspection.