SAINT AUGUSTINE, FL. State inspectors visited De Leon at 1111 N. Ponce de Leon Blvd. on April 22, 2026, and documented that employees had no system for reporting illness symptoms to management, no written employee health policy existed, and the person responsible for overseeing food safety was either absent or not doing the job. The restaurant was not closed.
The inspection turned up 8 high-severity violations and 6 intermediate violations, a total of 14 citations in a single visit. For a facility with two prior emergency closures and 36 inspections on record, it was the worst single-day tally in recent years.
What Inspectors Found
Three of the high-severity violations were directly tied to sick workers. Inspectors cited the absence of a written employee health policy, no mechanism for employees to report illness symptoms, and a person in charge who was not actively performing supervisory duties. Those three failures together mean a sick employee could have worked a full shift with no one required to intervene.
Shellfish traceability was also flagged. Inspectors found inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning oysters, clams, or mussels served at the restaurant could not be traced to their source if a customer became ill. That matters because shellfish are frequently consumed raw or lightly cooked, with no heat step to kill pathogens.
Toxic chemicals were stored or labeled improperly. Inspectors also cited food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized, and documented that the restaurant was using time as a public health control without following the required procedures. There was no consumer advisory posted to warn customers about the risks of eating raw or undercooked food.
On the intermediate side, inspectors found improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils that had not been cleaned correctly, single-use items being reused, inadequate ventilation and lighting, improper use of wiping cloths, and inadequate toilet facilities.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy, no illness reporting, and an absent or inactive person in charge is the most direct pathway to a foodborne illness outbreak. When employees have no written policy telling them to stay home if they are sick, and no supervisor checking whether they are, someone with Norovirus or Salmonella can spend an entire shift handling food. Norovirus causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and infected food workers are among the most common sources of multi-victim outbreaks.
The shellfish traceability violation compounds that risk in a specific way. If a customer gets sick after eating oysters at De Leon, investigators need harvest records to identify the source and pull contaminated product from the supply chain. Without those records, that chain of accountability breaks. Shellfish are among the highest-risk foods served in Florida restaurants precisely because they are eaten raw.
The food contact surface violation means cutting boards, prep tables, or other surfaces where raw food is handled were not being sanitized between uses. That is a direct cross-contamination route. Paired with the wiping cloth violation, which typically means cloths used to wipe surfaces are not stored in sanitizer solution between uses, the kitchen had multiple overlapping pathways for bacterial transfer.
Improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals near food is a separate category of danger entirely. Chemical contamination does not require a sick employee or a temperature failure. It can happen in a single moment of mislabeling.
The Longer Record
De Leon Inspection History, Selected Visits
De Leon has 36 inspections on record and 198 total violations accumulated across that history. The April 2026 inspection, with 8 high-severity citations, is the highest single-visit high-severity count in the data going back to 2023.
The pattern is not ambiguous. Five of the six most recent inspections before April 2026 each produced five high-severity violations. The one exception was October 2024, when inspectors found no violations at all. That clean inspection sits between two visits, each with five high-severity citations, which suggests the problems documented repeatedly are not being permanently resolved.
The restaurant was emergency-closed twice before. In May 2022, inspectors shut it down for roach activity and it reopened the following day. In August 2018, the closure was for no handwashing, a fundamental hygiene failure, and it took three days to reopen. Neither closure appears to have interrupted the accumulation of high-severity violations in subsequent years.
On April 22, 2026, after an inspector documented 8 high-severity violations including no illness reporting policy, no employee health policy, improperly stored chemicals, and a person in charge not doing the job, De Leon remained open for business.