DAYTONA BCH, FL. State inspectors who walked into Chart House on South Beach Street on April 23 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means no government inspector ever verified where that food came from or whether it was safe to eat.
That finding was one of eight high-severity violations documented during the inspection. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
Three of the eight high-severity violations centered on employee illness. Inspectors cited the restaurant for having no written employee health policy, for employees not reporting symptoms of illness, and for inadequate handwashing facilities. Together, those three citations describe a kitchen where a sick worker had no formal obligation to stay home, no written guidance on when to report symptoms, and no reliable means to wash their hands even if they wanted to.
Inspectors also found food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, meaning cutting boards, prep tables, or other surfaces that touch food directly were carrying contamination risk between uses.
Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled. That violation means cleaning agents or other hazardous substances were kept near food or in containers that could lead to accidental contamination.
The restaurant had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods, leaving customers with no notice that certain menu items carry elevated risk. The person in charge was not present or not performing managerial duties during the inspection. Improper sewage or wastewater disposal and inadequate ventilation rounded out the citation list.
What These Violations Mean
The food sourcing violation is the one that offers no easy fix after the fact. When a restaurant cannot document where its food originated, there is no supply chain to trace if a customer gets sick. The USDA and FDA inspection systems that catch Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli contamination before food reaches a kitchen depend entirely on food moving through licensed, verified suppliers. Food that bypasses that chain bypasses those checks.
The illness reporting failures carry a different kind of risk. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads directly from infected food workers to customers through contaminated food. A written health policy is the basic mechanism that tells a sick employee to stay home and tells a manager to send them there. Without one, the decision is informal, and the consequences can be severe.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces are how bacteria move from one food to another, from raw protein to ready-to-eat items, without any visible sign that anything went wrong. The combination of that violation with inadequate handwashing facilities means two of the most fundamental contamination barriers were compromised at the same time.
Mishandled toxic chemicals represent a separate and acute danger. Cleaning products stored near food or in unlabeled containers have caused poisoning incidents in restaurant settings when they are mistaken for food-safe liquids or when they contaminate surfaces that later contact food.
The Longer Record
The April inspection was not an outlier. Chart House has accumulated 363 violations across 35 inspections on record, a figure that averages to more than 10 violations per visit.
The pattern in recent years is consistent. An inspection on May 8, 2025 produced 11 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate ones. An inspection on October 27, 2025 produced 7 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations. The December 2024 visit generated 7 high-severity and 7 intermediate citations. Even the lighter visits, a December 2025 inspection with 3 high-severity violations and a November 2025 inspection with 2 high-severity violations, still carried high-severity findings.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. That record of staying open is consistent across inspections that, in other contexts, have preceded closures elsewhere.
Some of the violation categories from April 23 are not new to this location. High-severity findings have appeared in nearly every recent inspection cycle. The question the record raises is not whether these problems exist, but how persistently they return.
Still Open
After documenting eight high-severity violations, including food from an unapproved source, no employee illness policy, employees not reporting symptoms, inadequate handwashing facilities, improperly stored toxic chemicals, and unsanitized food contact surfaces, state inspectors left Chart House open on April 23.
The restaurant served customers that day.