NEW SMYRNA BEACH, FL. State inspectors walked into City Market Bistro at 124 Canal St. on August 20, 2026, and found food being served from unapproved or unknown sources, a violation that means no one can trace where that food came from or whether it ever passed a federal safety inspection. They also found toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled near food. They counted six high-severity violations in total.
The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
Beyond the sourcing and chemical violations, inspectors cited employees for not reporting symptoms of illness and for using improper handwashing technique. Both violations were flagged as high severity on the same inspection report.
The no-consumer-advisory violation means customers with weakened immune systems, pregnant women, the elderly, and children were not warned that certain menu items contained raw or undercooked ingredients. That warning is required precisely because those groups face the highest risk of severe illness.
A person in charge was either absent or not actively performing supervisory duties during the inspection. That brings the high-severity count to six, with three additional intermediate violations: improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, and single-use items being reused.
What These Violations Mean
Food from an unapproved or unknown source is not a paperwork problem. If a customer gets sick, investigators trace the illness back through the supply chain to find the contaminated batch and pull it from shelves. When the source is unknown, that chain breaks entirely. The food could carry Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli, and there is no way to know because it never went through USDA or FDA inspection.
The employee illness-reporting failure compounds that risk directly. Food workers are the most common transmission route for norovirus outbreaks, and the reason illness-reporting requirements exist is to stop a sick employee from handling food before symptoms are recognized. At City Market Bistro on August 20, that safeguard was not in place.
Improper handwashing technique is distinct from not washing hands at all. It means an employee went through the motions but left pathogens on their hands anyway. Combined with the illness-reporting failure, it creates a direct path from a sick employee to a customer's plate.
Toxic chemicals stored near or improperly labeled around food areas carry a different but immediate risk: acute poisoning through accidental contamination. Mislabeled chemicals are particularly dangerous because staff may not recognize what they are handling or what food contact has occurred.
The Longer Record
The August 20 inspection was not an outlier. It was the eighth inspection in less than two years to produce multiple high-severity violations at this address.
State records show City Market Bistro has been inspected 33 times in total, accumulating 235 violations across that history. The two inspections in October 2024 produced six high-severity violations on one day and three the next. The September 2025 inspection produced eight high-severity violations. The February 2026 inspection produced seven. None of those inspections resulted in an emergency closure.
The violation categories repeat. High-severity findings have appeared at this location across inspections in 2024, 2025, and 2026 without a single emergency closure on record. The pattern is not a facility catching a bad week. It is a facility that has cycled through serious violations across multiple years and remained open each time.
The day after the August 20 inspection, inspectors returned and found three more high-severity violations and one intermediate violation. That follow-up visit did not result in a closure either.
Open for Business
State inspection records list City Market Bistro as having remained open following the August 20 findings. Six high-severity violations, including food from an unknown source and toxic chemicals stored near food, were documented at a restaurant on one of New Smyrna Beach's most trafficked streets during the height of summer.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed in 33 inspections on record.
