TAMPA, FL. Inspectors visiting El Churrascaso Grill on W Hillsborough Avenue on April 24 found that the restaurant had not followed proper parasite destruction procedures, a failure that puts customers at direct risk of infection from parasites including Anisakis in fish and Trichinella in pork. The grill, which specializes in South American-style meats, walked away from that inspection with six high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. It was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction citation is particularly pointed for a churrasco-style restaurant, where fish and pork are staples. Proper parasite destruction requires fish to be frozen to specific temperatures for specific durations before serving, and pork to reach verified internal temperatures during cooking. Neither was being handled correctly according to the inspection record.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables and any surface that directly touches what customers eat, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. That citation appeared alongside a separate finding that multi-use utensils were also not properly cleaned, meaning the contamination risk extended to the tools used to prepare and serve food.
The inspector also noted that no person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties. No written employee health policy was on file. Employees were observed using improper handwashing technique. And the restaurant was serving items that require a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods without posting one, leaving customers with no way to make an informed choice about their risk.
The intermediate violations added sewage and wastewater disposal problems to the list, along with inadequate toilet facilities. Raw sewage anywhere in a food service facility creates a fecal contamination pathway. Broken or poorly maintained restrooms discourage the kind of handwashing that is supposed to stop that contamination from reaching food.
What These Violations Mean
The parasite destruction failure is not an administrative technicality. Anisakis, a roundworm found in raw or undercooked fish, causes severe abdominal pain and can require surgical removal if larvae embed in the stomach lining. Trichinella, found in undercooked pork, can cause muscle pain, fever and cardiac complications in severe cases. A churrascaria that is not following freezing and cooking protocols for these proteins is serving food where those risks have not been controlled.
The absence of an employee health policy compounds that. Without a written policy that defines when sick workers must stay home, a worker with Norovirus has no formal instruction to leave the kitchen. Norovirus causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States annually and spreads easily through food handled by infected workers. Improper handwashing technique means that even when an employee attempts to wash their hands, pathogens can remain.
The missing consumer advisory matters most to the most vulnerable diners. Pregnant women, elderly customers, young children and anyone immunocompromised are at elevated risk from raw or undercooked proteins. Without a menu notice or posted advisory, those customers have no information to act on.
The sewage and wastewater finding ties all of it together. Fecal contamination in a facility where handwashing is already inadequate and food contact surfaces are not being properly sanitized is a compounding failure, not an isolated one.
The Longer Record
April's inspection was not an outlier. The restaurant has 39 inspections on record and has accumulated 340 total violations across that history. The April 24 visit, with six high-severity violations, was the heaviest high-severity count in the recent record.
The pattern of high-severity citations stretches back continuously. In January 2026, inspectors found three high-severity and two intermediate violations. In February 2025, five high-severity violations. In December 2024, four high-severity and one intermediate. Even after a clean inspection in May 2024, a follow-up visit just days later found three high-severity violations, and a November 2023 visit produced five high-severity and two intermediate.
The restaurant was emergency-closed twice in 2018, both times for rodent activity. The March closure required an overnight correction before the facility was allowed to reopen; the April closure was resolved the same day. Those closures are now eight years in the past, but the high-severity violation counts in the years since have remained consistent.
Open for Business
Six high-severity violations, including failures in parasite destruction, surface sanitation, handwashing and disease prevention policy, are documented in the April 24 inspection record. The sewage disposal problem was flagged. No supervisor was on duty.
El Churrascaso Grill on W Hillsborough Avenue was not closed.