DELRAY BEACH, FL. State inspectors walked into Excell Restaurant on South Congress Avenue on July 9 and found food contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards, improperly stored toxic chemicals, food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized, and no functioning employee health policy. They logged 7 high-severity violations in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
The July 9 inspection produced one of the most concentrated clusters of high-severity findings in the restaurant's documented history, matching a nearly identical inspection from exactly one year prior.
What Inspectors Found
The food contamination citation is the most direct threat to anyone who ate at the restaurant that day. The violation covers food reached by chemicals, physical objects such as glass or metal fragments, or biological agents. Inspectors did not note a closure order.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled on the same visit. When cleaning products, sanitizers, or pesticides are stored near food or placed in unlabeled containers, the risk of accidental poisoning rises sharply, and the source of any illness becomes nearly impossible to trace.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch food directly, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Uncleaned surfaces transfer bacteria from one food item to the next without any visible sign that a transfer has occurred.
The restaurant also lacked adequate shell stock identification records. Shellfish such as oysters, clams, and mussels are consumed raw or lightly cooked, and the tags that accompany each harvest batch are the only way to trace a contaminated shipment back to its source if customers fall ill. Without those records, that traceability disappears entirely.
The Illness Policy Failures
Three of the seven high-severity violations on July 9 were tied directly to employee illness. The restaurant had no written employee health policy, at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms, and the person in charge was either absent or not performing supervisory duties.
These three violations together describe a kitchen where a sick employee could work a full shift without anyone in authority knowing or acting on it. Norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in the United States, spreads readily through food handled by symptomatic workers.
The intermediate violation, single-use items being improperly reused, adds a separate contamination pathway. Gloves, cups, and foil containers are designed for one use because repeated use degrades their integrity and carries bacteria from one surface to another.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of contaminated food and improperly stored chemicals in a single inspection is not a paperwork problem. If a cleaning chemical reaches food through improper storage or a mislabeled container, the result can be acute poisoning. Unlike bacterial illness, which typically takes hours to develop, chemical poisoning can produce symptoms within minutes of ingestion.
The absence of an employee health policy compounds every other violation found on July 9. CDC data cited in the inspection records indicates that establishments without active managerial control log three times as many critical violations as those with it. Without a policy in place, there is no formal mechanism to keep a sick employee out of the kitchen.
The shellfish traceability failure is a specific and underappreciated risk. If a customer who ate shellfish at Excell on July 9 developed illness, health officials would have no harvest records to consult. That gap makes it harder to identify a contaminated batch before more people are exposed.
The Longer Record
The July 9 inspection was not an anomaly. Excell Restaurant has 39 inspections on record and 185 total violations documented across its history. The restaurant has been emergency-closed three times, all for roach and rodent activity, in June 2021, August 2021, and September 2022.
The pattern of high-severity violations predates those closures and has continued since. The July 23, 2025 inspection produced exactly 7 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate violation, an identical count to July 9, 2026. Before that, inspectors found 4 high-severity violations in July 2024, 5 in April 2024, and 3 in both December 2023 and January 2025.
The inspection on July 10, 2026, the day after the 7-violation visit, showed zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. That single clean follow-up is the only thing separating the July 9 findings from a closure order.
The restaurant has now accumulated high-severity violations in every inspection year on record going back to at least 2021. Three of those years produced emergency closures. The July 9 visit produced 7 high-severity violations, including food confirmed as contaminated and chemicals confirmed as improperly stored.
The restaurant remained open.
