TAMPA, FL. Food workers at Grand Hacienda on Sheldon Road were not required to report illness symptoms under any written policy, inspectors found on May 18, and the restaurant was serving shellfish it could not trace to a certified source. The facility remained open.
State inspectors cited Grand Hacienda at 11955 Sheldon Road for six high-severity violations and three intermediate violations during the May 18 inspection. Not one triggered an emergency closure order.
What Inspectors Found
The illness-reporting violations were cited separately but together they describe the same gap: the restaurant had no written policy requiring sick employees to stay home, and employees were not reporting symptoms regardless. Those two violations in combination mean the kitchen had no formal mechanism to keep an ill food worker away from the food.
Inspectors also documented inadequate shell stock identification records. The restaurant was serving shellfish, a category that includes oysters, clams, and mussels, without the paperwork required to trace those items back to a certified harvester.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, a violation that creates a direct transfer route for bacteria between prep surfaces and the food customers receive. Inspectors further found no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items, meaning diners had no notice they were eating food that carries elevated risk.
The person in charge was either not present or not performing required supervisory duties at the time of the inspection.
On the intermediate side, inspectors cited improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities. The sewage violation alone, independent of everything else, is a condition that can introduce fecal contamination into a working kitchen.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and no illness reporting is the specific pairing public health officials identify as the most direct route to a multi-victim outbreak. Norovirus, which accounts for roughly 20 million cases of foodborne illness in the United States each year, spreads most efficiently when a symptomatic food worker handles food with no policy in place to stop them. At Grand Hacienda on May 18, both safeguards were absent simultaneously.
The shellfish traceability violation is a separate category of risk. Oysters, clams, and mussels are frequently consumed raw or lightly cooked, and they filter large volumes of water, concentrating pathogens in the process. The tagging and record-keeping requirements exist so that if customers get sick, investigators can identify the harvest location and pull the product. Without those records, that trace-back is impossible.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces at a facility already missing illness controls compounds the exposure. Surfaces that carry bacterial residue from one prep cycle to the next become a secondary transmission route, independent of whether a worker is symptomatic.
The sewage disposal violation adds a third vector. Raw sewage contains bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Improper disposal in a food-service environment is not a maintenance issue in isolation; it is a contamination pathway running through the same space where food is handled.
The Longer Record
The May 18 inspection was not an anomaly. Grand Hacienda has 27 inspections on record with 187 total violations accumulated across that history. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern in the prior inspection record is consistent and specific. In March 2023, inspectors cited 10 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations. A follow-up inspection in October 2023 found zero high-severity violations, but a second visit two days later found 6 high and 1 intermediate. In September 2024, inspectors found 8 high-severity violations; a follow-up one week later showed zero. In May 2025, the count was 5 high and 3 intermediate. In January 2026, it was 3 high and 1 intermediate.
The cycle is visible in the data: high violation counts, a clean follow-up, then high counts again at the next routine inspection. The facility passes the re-inspection and the clock resets.
The illness-policy violations cited on May 18 are not new categories for this location. The March 2023 inspection, which produced the highest single-visit count in the record at 10 high-severity violations, established that this kitchen has struggled with management-level compliance for at least three years.
Still Open
State inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Grand Hacienda on May 18, 2026, including conditions that public health data links directly to multi-victim illness outbreaks and shellfish that could not be traced to a certified source.
The restaurant was not closed.