NEW SMYRNA BEACH, FL. When state inspectors walked into Chases on the Beach at 3401 S Atlantic Ave on May 1, they found the restaurant operating without an approved potable water supply, a violation that means customers and staff could have been exposed to water carrying E. coli, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, or Legionella.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented that day.
The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The water violation alone is grounds for immediate concern. A restaurant without a verified safe water source uses that water to wash produce, rinse equipment, and supply the ice that goes into customer drinks.
Two of the seven high-severity violations involved sick employees. Inspectors found no written employee health policy and separately cited employees for not reporting illness symptoms. These two violations together describe a workplace where a food handler with Norovirus could show up, prepare food, and no written rule existed requiring them to tell anyone.
The shellfish records violation adds a layer of specific risk for anyone who ordered oysters, clams, or mussels that day. Without proper shell stock identification tags, there is no way to trace where those shellfish came from if customers later report getting sick.
Inspectors also cited food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized, meaning cutting boards, prep surfaces, or utensils that touch raw protein could carry bacteria to the next item prepared on them. The time-as-public-health-control violation indicates food was left in the temperature danger zone longer than the documented time limit allowed.
The restaurant also had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. Elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system have no way to make an informed choice about what they order if the menu carries no warning.
What These Violations Mean
The water supply violation is the most acute of the nine documented on May 1. Non-potable water used in food preparation can carry pathogens that cause severe gastrointestinal illness and, in some cases, respiratory disease. A restaurant on a beach in late spring, serving a high volume of tourists, compounds that exposure.
The paired employee illness violations deserve equal weight. Norovirus spreads through food prepared by infected workers and can sicken dozens of people from a single shift. A written health policy is not bureaucratic paperwork. It is the mechanism that keeps a sick cook off the line. Chases on the Beach had neither the policy nor the reporting practice in place.
The shellfish traceability failure matters most when something goes wrong. If a customer reports illness after eating raw oysters, health investigators need the harvest tags to identify the source bed and pull product from distribution. Without those records, that investigation stops before it starts.
Improperly reused single-use items and misused wiping cloths round out the picture. Wiping cloths that are not kept in sanitizer solution between uses pick up bacteria from one surface and spread it to the next. These are not paperwork violations. They are direct contamination pathways.
The Longer Record
The May 1 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Chases on the Beach has been inspected 57 times and has accumulated 393 total violations across its history.
The pattern in recent years is consistent. Inspectors found 7 high-severity violations on October 2, 2025, the same count as May 1. They found 7 high-severity violations on August 20, 2024, and again on July 24, 2023. The facility logged 5 high-severity violations on January 21, 2025, and 5 more on January 17, 2024. The inspection three days after the May 1 visit, on May 4, 2026, found 1 high-severity and 1 intermediate violation, suggesting some corrections were made quickly. The deeper violations documented on May 1 had been present before.
The restaurant has also been emergency-closed three times, all for rodent activity, in November 2019, November 2020, and December 2020. Two of those closures came within three weeks of each other in the fall of 2020.
A facility with 57 inspections on record and seven high-severity violations appearing repeatedly across multiple years is not cycling through isolated bad days. The same violation categories keep appearing in the records.
Still Open
After documenting seven high-severity violations including no approved potable water supply, no employee illness reporting, no consumer advisory for raw foods, and improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, state inspectors did not order Chases on the Beach to close on May 1.
The restaurant served customers that day.