CASSELBERRY, FL. State inspectors walked into Diginos Pizza Bar & Grill on Semoran Boulevard on September 2 and documented food being sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means there is no chain of custody if a customer gets sick and no way to trace an outbreak back to its origin.
That was one of ten high-severity violations recorded that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The ten high-severity violations covered nearly every major category of food safety failure. Inspectors cited inadequate handwashing by food employees and improper hand and arm washing technique as two separate violations, meaning workers were both washing their hands too infrequently and doing it wrong when they did.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Multi-use utensils were not cleaned to standard, and single-use items were being reused.
Food described as being in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated was documented alongside the unapproved sourcing citation. Inspectors also noted that food was not being cooked to required minimum temperatures, that required procedures for specialized processes were not being followed, and that toxic substances were improperly identified, stored, or used.
Three intermediate violations rounded out the inspection: improperly cleaned multi-use utensils, single-use items being reused, and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The food sourcing violation is among the most consequential on the list. Food from unapproved or unknown sources has bypassed USDA and FDA safety inspections, which means it could harbor Listeria, Salmonella, or other pathogens with no regulatory checkpoint. More critically, if a customer becomes ill, investigators have no supply chain to trace. The outbreak starts and stops at Diginos.
The undercooking violation compounds that risk directly. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. If the sourcing of that poultry is also unknown, a customer is exposed to an unverified product that was then not cooked to the temperature required to neutralize it.
The handwashing violations, cited twice, represent what food safety regulators call the single most significant factor in spreading foodborne illness. Two citations, one for frequency and one for technique, means that even when employees were washing their hands, they were not doing it correctly enough to remove pathogens. Combined with improperly cleaned food contact surfaces and reused single-use items, the inspection describes a kitchen where contamination had multiple active transfer routes on the same day.
The absence of an employee health policy, paired with a separate citation for employees not reporting illness symptoms, closes the loop. Without a written policy, workers have no formal obligation to disclose symptoms. Without reporting, a Norovirus-positive employee can work an entire shift. Norovirus is responsible for roughly 20 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year, and direct transmission from a food handler is one of its most common vectors.
The Longer Record
The September 2 inspection was not an anomaly. It was the worst single inspection in a pattern that dates back to the restaurant's first recorded visit in October 2025.
That October 2025 inspection produced seven high-severity violations and four intermediate ones. A follow-up in April 2026 found four high-severity and five intermediate violations. A second April visit, four days later, found four high-severity and three intermediate violations. The September 2 inspection pushed the single-visit high-severity count to ten, the worst on record for this location.
The facility has never been emergency-closed across five inspections and 53 total recorded violations.
The September 10 follow-up inspection, eight days after the ten-violation visit, showed zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. That result means the restaurant corrected enough to satisfy inspectors within a week. It also means that on September 2, all ten of those high-severity conditions existed simultaneously in a restaurant that remained open and serving customers.
The violations documented in September 2026 are not a new problem at 1271 Semoran Boulevard. High-severity citations have appeared in every inspection on record except the most recent follow-up. The categories shift slightly from visit to visit, but the severity level does not.
Diginos Pizza Bar & Grill was open for business on the day inspectors found food from an unknown source, food that was not cooked to safe temperatures, and no functioning employee illness policy. It remained open after they left.
