SEBRING, FL. State inspectors visited Don Jose Mexican Restaurant on Lakeview Drive on May 26, 2026, and documented that some of the food being served to customers came from an unapproved or unknown source, a violation that inspectors rank among the most serious they can cite.
The restaurant collected six high-severity violations that day. It was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The six high-severity findings covered nearly every major category of food safety risk. Inspectors documented food that had not been cooked to the required minimum temperature, food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized, and the absence of any consumer advisory notifying customers that raw or undercooked items were on the menu.
Two separate violations involved toxic chemicals. Inspectors cited the restaurant both for improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals and for toxic substances that were improperly identified, stored, or used. That means chemicals were in proximity to food or food preparation areas in two distinct ways that inspectors considered serious enough to flag separately.
A single intermediate violation rounded out the inspection: inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities.
What These Violations Mean
The food-from-unapproved-sources violation is the one that keeps food safety officials up at night. When food enters a kitchen from an unknown or unapproved supplier, there is no chain of inspection records, no USDA or FDA oversight, and no way to trace the product back to its origin if customers get sick. At Don Jose, inspectors found that condition on May 26.
The cooking temperature violation compounds that risk directly. Poultry that does not reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit can harbor live Salmonella. If the food arriving at the restaurant bypassed federal inspection and was also not cooked to a safe temperature, the two violations interact in a way that multiplies the danger to anyone who ate there that day.
The chemical violations introduce a separate and immediate hazard. Improperly stored or unlabeled chemicals near food preparation areas can contaminate food through direct contact, drips, or mislabeling that leads a worker to use a toxic substance where a food-safe product belongs. Two distinct chemical violations in a single inspection suggests the problem was not isolated to one shelf or one product.
The missing consumer advisory matters most to the most vulnerable diners. Elderly customers, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system rely on that posted notice to make an informed choice about raw or undercooked items. Without it, they have no way of knowing the risk they are taking.
The Pattern
This inspection did not arrive without warning. Don Jose has 35 inspections on record and 270 total violations accumulated across that history.
The January 2025 inspection produced nine high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. The April 2025 inspection, conducted on April 7, produced six high-severity violations and three intermediate ones, a nearly identical profile to the May 2026 visit. A follow-up inspection ten days later, on April 17, showed zero high-severity violations, suggesting the restaurant can correct problems quickly when pressed.
The November 2025 inspection found five high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. That means in the eight inspections on record going back to June 2023, only one, the April 17 follow-up, came back clean.
The Longer Record
Across 35 inspections and 270 documented violations, Don Jose has never been emergency-closed. That is a fact the inspection record supports without qualification.
The February 2024 inspection produced six high-severity violations, the same count as the most recent visit. The October 2023 and June 2023 inspections each found three high-severity violations. The restaurant has been cited for serious violations in every calendar year represented in the available history.
What the record does not show is a sustained period of clean inspections. The one zero-violation result in April 2025 came ten days after a six-high-severity inspection, and was followed seven months later by five more high-severity violations in November 2025.
The May 2026 inspection added six more high-severity violations to that total, including food from an unapproved source and chemicals stored improperly near food preparation areas.
Don Jose Mexican Restaurant on Lakeview Drive in Sebring remained open after inspectors left.