ORLANDO, FL. A state inspector visiting Cask & Larder at 1 Jeff Fuqua Blvd. on August 19 documented food being sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means some of what the restaurant served that day had never passed a USDA or FDA safety inspection. The facility was not closed.
The inspection turned up seven high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. Despite that total, the restaurant continued operating.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation stands alone as the most consequential finding. When food enters a restaurant outside the regulated supply chain, there is no paper trail. If a customer gets sick, investigators cannot trace the product back to its origin, cannot issue a recall, and cannot determine how many other people may have eaten the same item.
The inspector also cited inadequate shell stock identification records. Cask & Larder serves shellfish, including items that customers may eat raw or lightly cooked. Oysters, clams, and mussels carry a higher baseline risk than most foods, and the tags that accompany each shipment are the only way to trace a contaminated batch if someone falls ill with Vibrio or norovirus after a meal.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods compounds that risk directly. Pregnant women, elderly diners, and anyone with a compromised immune system rely on menu disclosures to make informed decisions about what they order. There was none posted.
The allergen violation is its own category of danger. Food allergies affect 32 million Americans and send roughly 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year. The inspector found no demonstrated allergen awareness among staff, meaning employees could not reliably field a customer's question about whether a dish contained a known allergen.
The employee illness reporting violation means at least one worker was present without having disclosed symptoms that could indicate a communicable illness. Sick food workers are the leading driver of multi-victim outbreaks, particularly for norovirus.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of violations documented on August 19 is not a collection of isolated paperwork failures. They describe a facility where the basic systems that protect customers from foodborne illness were simultaneously absent or broken.
Improper handwashing technique, cited as a high-severity violation, is distinct from simply skipping handwashing. It means an employee made an attempt that still left pathogens on their hands, and that no one caught or corrected it. Pair that with improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, and the transfer path from contaminated surface to food to customer becomes short.
The sewage and wastewater disposal violation, classified as intermediate, raises a separate concern. Improper disposal of waste water creates conditions for fecal contamination to spread through areas where food is prepared. Combined with wiping cloths used improperly, which can carry contamination from one surface to another rather than eliminating it, the intermediate violations reinforce what the high-severity findings already suggest.
For a traveler passing through Orlando International Airport, this is not an abstract risk. Cask & Larder sits inside a terminal. Customers eat quickly, board flights, and are hours away before any symptoms could appear.
The Longer Record
The August 19 inspection did not represent a sudden decline. State records show 35 inspections on file for this location and 317 total violations documented across that history.
The most concentrated stretch came in the summer of 2025. Inspectors visited three times in a five-day window in June of that year, finding 11 high-severity violations on June 13, 11 high-severity violations again on June 18, and 10 high-severity violations on June 20. That cluster produced 32 high-severity citations in less than two weeks without triggering an emergency closure.
The pattern did not begin in 2025. A March 2024 inspection turned up five high-severity violations. A November 2024 visit found four. The fall 2025 inspections, in October and November, each produced three high-severity violations. The August 19, 2026 inspection, at seven high-severity violations, is the worst single-day total outside that June 2025 cluster.
Across 35 inspections, the facility has never been emergency-closed.
A follow-up inspection took place the day after the August 19 visit, on August 20, and found two high-severity and two intermediate violations. That means high-severity violations were still present the day after the original inspection.
Still Open
State records do not indicate that the August 19 findings triggered a closure order. The restaurant, located inside a major international airport terminal serving tens of thousands of travelers each week, continued operating with seven high-severity violations on the books, including food from an unapproved source, no allergen awareness on staff, and an employee who had not reported illness symptoms.
The follow-up inspection the next morning found violations remained.
