SAINT AUGUSTINE, FL. Food served at a Saint Augustine Mexican restaurant on July 23 came from sources that inspectors could not verify as approved, meaning it bypassed the federal safety inspections designed to catch Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli before the food reaches a customer's plate.
That single violation at Cinco de Mayo Authentic Mexican Restaurant on Capulet Drive was one of nine high-severity citations state inspectors issued that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
Beyond the sourcing problem, inspectors found that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness and that the restaurant had no written employee health policy at all. Those two violations work together: without a policy requiring workers to disclose when they are sick, there is no mechanism to keep an ill employee away from food preparation.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for improper handwashing technique and inadequate handwashing facilities, meaning that even when employees attempted to wash their hands, the infrastructure and the method were both deficient. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, creating a direct path for bacteria to transfer from surface to plate.
Two separate violations involved chemicals. Toxic substances were improperly stored or labeled, and toxic substances were improperly identified, stored, or used. Both citations appeared on the same inspection report, alongside a finding that no person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties.
Inspectors also cited improperly cleaned multi-use utensils and inadequate ventilation and lighting, bringing the total to eleven violations across the high and intermediate categories.
What These Violations Mean
The food sourcing violation is among the most consequential a restaurant can receive. When food comes from an unapproved or unknown source, it has not passed through the USDA or FDA inspection chain. If someone gets sick, investigators have no supplier record to trace, no lot number to pull, and no way to identify whether other customers or other restaurants received the same contaminated product.
The illness-reporting failures compound that risk. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million infections in the United States each year, spreads most efficiently through food workers who handle food while symptomatic or in the hours before symptoms appear. A written health policy is the baseline tool for preventing that. Cinco de Mayo had neither the policy nor, inspectors found, employees who were reporting symptoms on their own.
The chemical violations add a separate category of danger. Improperly stored or unlabeled cleaning chemicals near food preparation areas can contaminate food directly, and mislabeled containers create the risk that a worker uses a toxic substance in a context where a food-safe product is required. The presence of two distinct chemical violations on the same report suggests the problem was not isolated to a single cabinet or a single substance.
CDC data cited in the inspection records indicates that establishments without active managerial control have three times as many critical violations as those with supervision in place. The finding that no person in charge was present or performing duties on July 23 is not a background detail. It is the condition under which every other violation on that list occurred.
The Longer Record
The July 23 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show 37 inspections on file for this location, with 329 total violations documented across that history.
The pattern in the most recent two years is consistent. In October 2024, inspectors cited the restaurant for 11 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations. A follow-up inspection in March 2025 produced 6 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate violations. August 2025 brought 7 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate violations. Each of those inspection cycles was followed by a clean or near-clean follow-up visit, and then the high-severity violations returned.
The February 2026 cycle followed the same arc: a visit on February 2 produced 5 high-severity violations, follow-up visits on February 5 and February 9 showed zero or near-zero violations. Five months later, the restaurant logged its highest single-inspection high-severity count in the available recent record.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history on file with the state.
Open for Business
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. Nine high-severity violations at Cinco de Mayo on July 23 did not result in that order.
The violations included food whose origin inspectors could not confirm, employees with no system for reporting illness, handwashing failures at both the facility and technique level, improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, and two separate chemical handling problems, all occurring in a restaurant where no one in charge was present.
The restaurant at 124 Capulet Drive, Suite 109, remained open that day.
