LITHIA, FL. State inspectors visiting Fishhawk Pizzeria on Lithia Pinecrest Road on August 13 found toxic chemicals stored improperly near food, no traceability records for shellfish on the menu, food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized, and employees using incorrect handwashing technique, among six total high-severity violations. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The chemical storage violation is the most acute single risk in the report. Inspectors documented toxic chemicals stored or labeled improperly in a location where food was present, a condition that can result in direct contamination of food or food surfaces without any visible sign that something has gone wrong.
The shellfish finding compounds that picture. Without proper shell stock identification tags and records, there is no way to trace where oysters, clams, or mussels came from if a customer becomes ill. Those records exist precisely for that scenario.
Inspectors also cited food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep counters, and equipment that touch food directly, as not properly cleaned or sanitized. That finding appeared alongside a separate intermediate citation for multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, meaning the surface and tool failures were documented independently, not as a single overlapping note.
The handwashing violation adds another layer. Employees were observed using improper technique, meaning that even when a handwashing attempt was made, pathogens remained on their hands and were then carried to food, surfaces, and utensils.
Rounding out the high-severity list: food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated was cited, and the restaurant had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items. That advisory is required specifically to warn elderly customers, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system that certain items carry elevated risk.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of surface sanitation failures and improper handwashing technique is particularly significant. Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces are a primary vehicle for bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat foods. When that failure coincides with employees who are not washing their hands correctly, the two problems reinforce each other: contamination introduced at one point travels further because the handwashing step that might interrupt it is not working.
The shellfish traceability violation carries a different kind of risk. Shellfish are among the highest-risk foods in a restaurant kitchen because they are often served raw or lightly cooked, and they filter large volumes of water during their lives, concentrating bacteria and viruses in the process. The records inspectors look for, shell stock tags with harvest dates and source information, exist so that if multiple customers report illness after eating oysters on the same night, public health investigators can identify the source harvest and pull it from other restaurants. Without those records, that chain of investigation breaks.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked items means that customers who are most vulnerable to foodborne illness, and who need that information to make an informed choice, received none. That is not a paperwork technicality. It is the mechanism by which a restaurant communicates risk to the people least able to absorb it.
The improperly stored toxic chemicals represent the most immediate physical hazard in the report. Chemical contamination of food does not require the kind of incubation time that bacterial illness does. It can produce symptoms within minutes of ingestion.
The Longer Record
The August 13 inspection was not an outlier. State records show Fishhawk Pizzeria has been inspected 30 times and has accumulated 175 total violations across that history, with no emergency closures on record.
The pattern across the most recent inspections is consistent. In March 2026, inspectors made two visits on consecutive days, finding three high-severity violations on March 18 and two more on March 19. One year earlier, in August 2025, the restaurant logged five high-severity violations and two intermediate ones, a nearly identical profile to this month's inspection.
The only clean inspection in the recent record was April 2024, when inspectors found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. Every inspection before and after that visit returned high-severity findings.
High-severity violations have appeared in seven of the eight most recent inspections on record. The categories have shifted somewhat from visit to visit, but the severity level has not.
Open for Business
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when inspectors determine that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health serious enough to require shutting the facility. Six high-severity violations at Fishhawk Pizzeria on August 13 did not meet that threshold, and the restaurant remained open.
Customers who ate there that day had no way of knowing that toxic chemicals were stored near their food, that the shellfish on the menu had no traceable origin, or that the surfaces their food touched had not been properly sanitized.
The restaurant has now logged high-severity violations in seven of its last eight inspections. It has never been emergency-closed.
