PALM BAY, FL. Food at Gettin Crabbys on Dixie Highway NE was not cooked to the required minimum temperature during a state inspection on April 28, a violation that inspectors classify as a direct pathway for pathogens like Salmonella to survive and reach a customer's plate.
That was one of eight high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The full list from the April 28 visit is dense. Beyond the undercooked food, inspectors cited toxic chemicals that were improperly stored or labeled near food preparation areas. They found food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized, creating a direct route for bacteria to transfer from surface to plate.
Inspectors also documented two separate handwashing failures on the same visit: employees not washing their hands adequately, and employees using improper technique when they did wash. Both violations were flagged as high severity.
There was no person in charge present or performing supervisory duties during the inspection. There was no written employee health policy on file. And the restaurant had posted no consumer advisory warning customers about raw or undercooked items on the menu, a notice specifically intended to protect elderly diners, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems.
Five intermediate violations accompanied the eight high-severity ones. Those included improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils that had not been properly cleaned, improper sanitizing solutions or procedures, single-use items being reused, and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The cooking temperature violation is the one with the most direct consequence for a customer who ate there that day. Salmonella survives in poultry held below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. At a seafood restaurant, undercooking is not a theoretical risk: it is a documented, measurable failure that can send someone to the hospital.
The chemical storage violation sits alongside it in seriousness. Toxic chemicals stored near or mislabeled in food preparation areas can contaminate food through direct contact or through the kind of confusion that happens when a kitchen is not well supervised. The absence of a person in charge during the inspection makes that risk harder to dismiss.
The two handwashing violations compound each other. Improper handwashing is the single most studied factor in spreading foodborne illness. Finding both inadequate handwashing and improper technique on the same inspection means the failure is not accidental, it is systemic.
The lack of an employee health policy matters in a specific way: without a written policy, there is no formal mechanism to keep a sick worker out of the kitchen. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads almost exclusively through the fecal-oral route, meaning a sick employee with no health policy standing between them and the prep line is a direct transmission risk to every customer served that shift.
The Longer Record
The April 28 inspection was not an outlier. State records show Gettin Crabbys has been inspected 29 times and has accumulated 276 total violations across that history.
The most recent prior inspection, on December 9, 2025, produced 7 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations. Before that, inspections in May 2025 found 4 high-severity violations on May 23 and 5 high-severity violations on May 1, just three weeks apart.
Gettin Crabbys: High-Severity Violations Over Time
The inspection on November 19, 2024 produced the same number of high-severity violations as the most recent visit: 8. The May 1, 2024 inspection was worse, logging 10 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate.
The facility has never been emergency-closed across its 29 inspections on record.
After 276 violations and eight inspections in the past two years alone producing between 2 and 10 high-severity citations each time, Gettin Crabbys remained open following the April 28 visit.