CAPE CORAL, FL. The seafood restaurant at 4721 SE 10th Place had no approved potable water supply on June 1, according to state inspection records. That single finding, at Hooked Island Grill, sat alongside 11 other high-severity violations when inspectors walked out the door. The restaurant stayed open.
What Inspectors Found
The June 1 inspection produced 12 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate ones. State inspectors cited the restaurant for food from unapproved or unknown sources, meaning ingredients arrived without passing through USDA or FDA inspection channels. They also found inadequate shell stock identification records, which is a separate and specific problem for a seafood-focused restaurant: without those tags and logs, there is no way to trace where oysters, clams, or mussels came from if customers fall ill.
The inspection also turned up toxic substances improperly identified, stored, or used. That violation sits in the same report as improper sewage or wastewater disposal, a finding that inspectors flagged at the intermediate level.
No person in charge was present or performing duties during the visit. Inspectors also cited inadequate handwashing facilities and improper hand and arm washing technique, two violations that compound each other. Without the physical infrastructure to wash hands correctly, the technique problem is almost beside the point.
The restaurant had no written employee health policy and at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms. Time as a public health control was not properly used, meaning food sat in the bacterial growth temperature range longer than state rules allow, without the documentation required to justify that practice.
What These Violations Mean
A restaurant with no approved potable water supply is not a paper violation. Water touches nearly everything in a commercial kitchen: handwashing, produce rinsing, equipment cleaning, ice production. Non-potable water can carry E. coli, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, and Legionella. The fact that this violation appeared in the same inspection as improper sewage disposal compounds the concern.
Food from unapproved sources means there is no paper trail. If a customer gets sick from something served at Hooked Island Grill and investigators need to trace the ingredient back to a supplier, the records do not exist to do that. For a seafood restaurant, the shell stock identification failure makes this worse. Shellfish are frequently consumed raw or lightly cooked, and without harvest location tags and receiving logs, a Vibrio or norovirus outbreak cannot be traced to its origin.
The employee illness violations are a direct transmission route, not a theoretical one. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads through a single sick food worker who handles food without being screened or excluded. Without a written health policy, there is no mechanism for a manager to even ask the question.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods is the final piece. Customers who are elderly, pregnant, immunocompromised, or otherwise vulnerable rely on that menu disclosure to make an informed decision. On June 1, they did not have it.
The Longer Record
The June 1 inspection was not an outlier. State records show 35 inspections on file for Hooked Island Grill, with 259 total violations documented across that history.
The most recent prior inspection, on March 11, 2026, found 3 high-severity violations. Before that, the December 2025 visit found 5 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate. The September 2025 inspection found 5 high-severity violations. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The inspection on March 24, 2025 found 9 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations. The January 2, 2025 visit also found 9 high-severity violations. The August 2024 inspection found 9 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations.
The pattern across eight inspections is consistent: high-severity violation counts ranging from 3 to 12, with only two clean inspections in that stretch, in May 2025 and October 2024. The June 1 total of 12 high-severity violations is the highest single-inspection count in the recent record.
Still Open
State inspectors documented 12 high-severity violations at Hooked Island Grill on June 1, including no approved potable water, food from uninspected sources, no traceability records for shellfish, improperly stored toxic substances, and no mechanism to keep sick workers out of the kitchen.
The restaurant was not closed.