YULEE, FL. Inspectors who visited DeCicco's Pizzeria on William Burgess Boulevard in September found food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, toxic chemicals stored improperly near food, and no demonstrated allergen awareness among staff. They also found that no one in charge was present or performing managerial duties. The restaurant was not closed.
The September 11 inspection produced nine high-severity violations and one intermediate violation, the worst single-visit tally the Yulee pizzeria has recorded across four inspections on file with the state.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking citation is among the most direct threats to customer health on the list. Food not brought to required minimum temperatures can harbor live Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria. At a pizzeria handling meat toppings and poultry-based proteins, that failure is not a paperwork problem.
The toxic chemical citation compounds the concern. Improperly stored or unlabeled chemicals near food preparation areas can contaminate food directly, and mislabeled containers have caused acute poisoning events in restaurant settings when workers mistake a chemical for a food ingredient.
No allergen awareness among staff is a citation that directly implicates every customer with a food allergy who ordered that day. The violation means inspectors found no evidence that employees could reliably identify allergens in menu items or prevent cross-contact, a gap that sends roughly 30,000 Americans to emergency rooms each year.
The illness-reporting violation adds another layer. An employee working while ill and not flagging symptoms is, according to federal outbreak data, the single most common pathway for norovirus and hepatitis A to spread from a kitchen to a dining room.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no person in charge and no illness-reporting protocol is particularly significant. CDC data shows that food service establishments operating without active managerial control accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of supervised kitchens. When no manager is present to enforce procedures, every other item on the violation list becomes more likely, not less.
Improper handwashing technique, cited here as a separate high-severity violation, is distinct from simply skipping handwashing. It means employees made an attempt but used a method that left pathogens on their hands. Studies show that incorrect technique, such as insufficient scrubbing time or skipping soap, can leave contamination levels comparable to not washing at all.
The shellfish traceability citation is unusual for a pizzeria and points to a specific risk. Without proper shell stock identification records, there is no way to trace oysters, clams, or mussels back to a harvest source if a customer gets sick. Shellfish carry a concentrated load of waterborne pathogens, including Vibrio, and are often consumed raw or lightly cooked. A missing tag or incomplete record severs the chain of accountability entirely.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned or sanitized, combined with food found in poor condition or mislabeled, describe a kitchen where the basic infrastructure of food safety, clean equipment, properly identified product, and temperature control, was not functioning on the day inspectors arrived.
The Longer Record
DeCicco's Pizzeria has four inspections on file with the state, accumulating 32 total violations across those visits. The September 2026 inspection was the worst of the four by a significant margin, but it did not come without warning.
The April 2026 inspection, five months before this one, produced five high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. The September 2025 inspection, a year before the most recent visit, produced an identical result: five high-severity violations and two intermediate violations.
The pattern is direct. In three of four inspections, the restaurant produced high-severity violations in the five-to-nine range. The only exception was a January 2025 visit that found a single intermediate violation, a result that now reads as an outlier rather than a turning point. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
High-severity violations in the prior two inspections included categories consistent with what was found this September, suggesting that the kitchen's core compliance problems have not been resolved between visits. The September 2026 inspection did not reveal a restaurant that had slipped for the first time. It revealed one where the violation count nearly doubled.
Still Open
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when conditions present an immediate threat to public health. Nine high-severity violations at a single inspection, including undercooking, chemical mishandling, no allergen awareness, and no person in charge, did not meet that threshold on September 11.
DeCicco's Pizzeria on William Burgess Boulevard remained open after the inspection.
