OCOEE, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into El Paso Mexican Restaurant at 1113 S Clarke Road and documented something that should stop any regular customer cold: food sourced from unapproved or unknown origins, sitting in a kitchen with no written employee health policy, being served to the public without a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked items. When inspectors left on April 16, the restaurant was still open.
The visit produced 9 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations, a total of 13 citations from a single inspection.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious an inspector can document. Food from unapproved sources has not passed USDA or FDA safety inspections, which means there is no reliable chain of custody if a customer gets sick. Inspectors also cited inadequate shell stock identification records, a separate but related problem: without proper tagging, shellfish like oysters or clams cannot be traced back to their harvest location if an illness outbreak occurs.
Parasite destruction procedures were not being followed. For fish served raw or undercooked, state rules require specific freezing protocols to kill parasites including Anisakis and tapeworm. No consumer advisory was posted to warn diners that raw or undercooked items were on the menu.
Food was not being cooked to required minimum temperatures. Inspectors also cited improper use of time as a public health control, meaning food was being held in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, without the documentation and time limits required when temperature control is not used. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized.
The employee health policy violation is foundational. Without a written policy, there is no mechanism to keep a sick worker off the line. Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique, meaning employees who did attempt to wash their hands were not doing so effectively.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sources and missing shellfish traceability records creates a situation where, if a customer became ill, investigators would have no reliable way to identify where the food came from or who else received it. That traceability gap is precisely why these violations are classified as high severity.
Undercooking and the failure to follow parasite destruction protocols compound the risk. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Parasites in fish survive without proper freezing. The absence of a consumer advisory means customers who are elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised had no information to make an informed choice about what they were ordering.
The no-health-policy and improper-handwashing citations work together in a particularly dangerous way. A sick employee with no policy requiring them to report illness, using flawed handwashing technique, is one of the most direct transmission routes for Norovirus, which causes an estimated 20 million illnesses in the United States each year.
Improperly cleaned multi-use utensils and food contact surfaces develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours. Those biofilms are resistant to standard cleaning and can transfer pathogens to every item of food that passes across them.
The Longer Record
The April 2026 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show El Paso Mexican Restaurant has accumulated 187 violations across 22 inspections on record.
The pattern of high-severity citations stretches back through every recent inspection period. In September 2025, inspectors documented 8 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations. In November 2024, two inspections in two days each produced 7 high-severity violations. In April 2024, a single visit yielded 5 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations.
The April 2026 total of 9 high-severity violations is the highest single-inspection count in the recent record, surpassing the 8 cited in September 2025.
What the history shows is not a restaurant that had a bad week. The food sourcing, temperature control, and sanitation categories appear repeatedly across multiple inspection years. The facility has never been emergency-closed despite this accumulation.
Still Open
State inspectors documented 9 high-severity violations at El Paso Mexican Restaurant on April 16, 2026, including food from unapproved sources, failure to follow parasite destruction procedures, undercooking, no employee health policy, and no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked items.
The restaurant was not closed.
It had 187 violations across 22 inspections on record before that visit. It has never received an emergency closure order. After inspectors left on April 16, it continued serving customers.