HOLLYWOOD, FL. A state inspector walked into Giant Pizza on Taft Street on September 10 and documented six high-severity violations, including a failure to follow parasite destruction procedures for fish and food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction finding is among the most acute on the list. State rules require that fish served raw or undercooked be frozen at specific temperatures for specific durations before service, a process that kills parasites including Anisakis, a roundworm found in marine fish that can embed in the human stomach lining. The record does not specify which fish or menu items were involved, but the violation indicates those procedures were not being followed.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch food directly, were also cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized. That finding, combined with the parasite destruction failure, means two separate pathways for contamination were documented in the same visit.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique. This is distinct from not washing hands at all. It means employees were making a handwashing attempt but doing it incorrectly, leaving pathogens on their hands before returning to food preparation. The violation was recorded as high severity.
Two additional high-severity citations rounded out the food safety findings. Food was documented as being in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated, a category that covers spoiled or contaminated product. And time as a public health control was not being properly used, meaning food was held in the temperature danger zone longer than rules permit without adequate tracking or disposal.
The shellfish traceability violation adds a separate layer of concern. Shell stock identification records, the tags that trace oysters, clams, and mussels back to their harvest source, were inadequate or missing. If a customer became ill after eating shellfish at Giant Pizza, investigators would have no reliable chain of custody to identify the source.
The one intermediate violation involved toilet facilities that were inadequate or improperly maintained, a finding that affects whether employees can maintain basic hygiene during a shift.
What These Violations Mean
The parasite destruction failure is not a paperwork problem. Fish that has not been properly frozen before raw or undercooked service can carry live Anisakis larvae, which survive stomach acid and can penetrate the stomach or intestinal wall, causing severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and in some cases requiring surgical removal. The risk is highest with fish like salmon, mackerel, and herring served in preparations that do not reach a fully lethal internal temperature.
Improperly sanitized food contact surfaces are one of the most consistent cross-contamination routes documented in outbreak investigations. A cutting board used for raw protein and not properly sanitized before it contacts ready-to-eat food can transfer Salmonella, E. coli, or Listeria directly onto a finished dish. At Giant Pizza, that surface failure was documented alongside a food condition violation, meaning potentially compromised food and contaminated prep surfaces were present in the same kitchen on the same day.
The time control violation compounds both of those risks. When food is held in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, bacterial populations can double roughly every 20 minutes. If the tracking system that governs how long food stays in that range is not being followed correctly, there is no reliable mechanism to pull food before it becomes dangerous.
The missing shellfish records deserve particular attention. Shellfish are among the highest-risk foods for Vibrio and norovirus, and the tagging system exists precisely because illnesses from shellfish can be difficult to trace without harvest location data. Without those records at Giant Pizza, any illness linked to shellfish served there would be significantly harder to investigate.
The Longer Record
The September 10 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Giant Pizza has been inspected 23 times and has accumulated 108 total violations. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
Every inspection on record going back to at least 2023 has included at least one high-severity violation. The January 2026 inspection, eight months before this one, produced three high-severity violations and one intermediate. The August 2025 inspection produced three high-severity violations. The pattern holds across 2025, 2024, and 2023, with high-severity violations appearing in every single visit on record.
The September 10 inspection doubled the high-severity count from what had become a baseline of three per visit to six. That escalation, against a backdrop of consistent prior findings, is what the record shows.
No prior inspection has resulted in an emergency closure. The six high-severity violations documented on September 10 did not change that.
Still Open
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when violations pose an immediate threat to public health. Six high-severity violations, including parasite destruction failures, unsanitized food surfaces, and missing shellfish traceability records, were documented at Giant Pizza on September 10, 2026.
The restaurant remained open.
