ST. JOHNS, FL. Inspectors who visited Cimarrone Golf Club at 2800 Cimarrone Blvd on June 17 found the kitchen was sourcing food from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means no one can trace where that food came from if a customer gets sick. That was one of seven high-severity violations documented that day. The club was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation stood alongside a cluster of illness-related failures. The club had no written employee health policy and, separately, at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms. Those two violations together describe a kitchen where a sick worker has no formal obligation to stay home and no documented system requiring it.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique. That is distinct from not washing hands at all. It means workers were making handwashing attempts that left pathogens on their hands.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, a finding that compounds the handwashing problem. Contaminated hands on contaminated surfaces create multiple transfer points before food reaches a plate.
The remaining high-severity citations covered two additional areas. The club was not posting a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked menu items, leaving customers with no notice that certain dishes carry inherent risk. And required procedures for specialized food processes were not being followed, a category that covers techniques like reduced-oxygen packaging, curing, or smoking, each of which requires precise controls to prevent bacterial growth.
What These Violations Mean
The unapproved food source violation is the one with the longest tail. When food enters a kitchen from a supplier outside the regulated supply chain, there is no USDA or FDA inspection record attached to it. If a customer becomes ill, investigators cannot trace the food back to a farm, a processor, or a distributor. The outbreak investigation stops at the kitchen door.
The illness-reporting failures operate on a shorter timeline but a more direct path. Norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads person-to-person and through contaminated food. A single infected food worker can expose every customer served during a shift. Without a health policy and without a requirement to report symptoms, that worker has no structured reason to stay out of the kitchen.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces at Cimarrone compound every other violation on the list. A cutting board or prep surface that carries residual bacteria from a prior use becomes a transfer point regardless of how carefully a worker handles the food placed on it afterward.
The missing consumer advisory affects a specific group of diners most acutely: pregnant women, elderly customers, and people with compromised immune systems face the highest risk from raw or undercooked proteins. Without the advisory on the menu, those customers cannot make an informed choice.
The Longer Record
The June 17 inspection was not an outlier. State records show 25 inspections on file for Cimarrone Golf Club, with 155 total violations documented across that history. The club has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern in recent years is one of alternating results. A July 2023 inspection found 10 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. The follow-up the next day found zero. An October 2024 inspection found 3 high-severity violations; the follow-up two days later found none. The same sequence repeated in March 2024 and again in October 2025, when inspectors cited 5 high-severity violations, and in May 2025, when they found 3 more.
That rhythm, high violations followed by a clean follow-up, repeated across three consecutive years, describes a facility that corrects problems when an inspector is present and then accumulates them again before the next visit.
The June 2026 inspection produced 7 high-severity violations, the second-highest single-visit count in the club's recent record, behind only the 10 found in July 2023. The illness-reporting and food sourcing violations documented this month were not present in every prior inspection, but the overall volume of high-severity findings has not declined over time.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority requires inspectors to find an imminent threat to public health. Seven high-severity violations, including unapproved food sources and a kitchen with no employee illness policy, did not meet that threshold on June 17.
Cimarrone Golf Club was cited, documented, and left open.