SAINT PETERSBURG, FL. Toxic chemicals were stored improperly near food at Gyros and Seafood Express at 1760 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. S when a state inspector visited on April 24, one of ten high-severity violations documented that day at the small restaurant that serves both gyros and seafood.
The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector cited the restaurant for having no written employee health policy and for employees not reporting symptoms of illness. Those two violations appeared on the same report, alongside a third: employees were washing their hands inadequately, and a fourth specified that the technique itself was wrong even when a handwashing attempt was made.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. The inspector also found food in poor condition and noted the restaurant had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked items, a requirement that exists specifically to warn customers who face elevated health risks.
The shellfish traceability records were inadequate. For a restaurant whose name includes "seafood," that gap matters: without proper shell stock identification, there is no paper trail if a customer gets sick from an oyster or clam.
No person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties during the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is not a paperwork problem. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million infections in the United States each year, spreads directly from sick food workers to customers through contaminated food. A written health policy is the mechanism that tells workers when to stay home. Without one, there is no system, and without a reporting requirement, there is no check.
The handwashing violations compound that risk. Improper handwashing technique leaves pathogens on hands even when a worker makes the attempt. At Gyros and Seafood Express, inspectors cited both the frequency of handwashing and the technique, meaning that even the handwashing that did occur may not have been effective.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces are a primary vehicle for bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat foods. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that carry residue from one food to the next can move Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria across an entire service. The intermediate violation for multi-use utensils not properly cleaned adds to that picture.
Toxic chemicals stored near food represent a different category of risk entirely. Chemical contamination does not require a sick worker or a temperature failure. It can happen in a single moment of mislabeling or accidental contact, and the result can be acute poisoning.
The Longer Record
April's inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Gyros and Seafood Express has been inspected 40 times and has accumulated 403 total violations across its history.
The pattern in recent years is consistent. Inspectors documented 9 high-severity violations in August 2024, 7 high-severity violations in October 2025, and 6 high-severity violations in both January 2024 and August 2023. The April 2026 visit, with 10 high-severity violations, is the worst single inspection in the recent run, but it sits at the top of a range, not outside it.
The restaurant has been emergency-closed three times. Inspectors shut it down in July 2021 for roach and rodent activity, reopened it the next day, then closed it again in July 2022 for rodent and fly activity, and again in September 2022 for rodent, roach, and fly activity combined. Both 2022 closures were resolved within two days.
A February 2025 inspection found zero high-severity violations and zero intermediate violations. That result stands alone in the record. Every other recent inspection has produced multiple high-severity citations, and the violations have not shifted to a new category: handwashing, management presence, illness policy, and food safety fundamentals have appeared repeatedly across years of reports.
Still Open
State inspectors left Gyros and Seafood Express open on April 24 after documenting ten high-severity violations, including toxic chemicals near food, no illness reporting system for employees, and inadequate handwashing at a facility that had already been emergency-closed three times in a fourteen-month span between 2021 and 2022.
The restaurant, which serves seafood without adequate shellfish traceability records, had 403 violations on record before this inspection was added to the count.
It remained open.