TAMPA, FL. Inspectors visiting Jerk Pit on East Fletcher Avenue on April 21 found the restaurant operating without an approved potable water supply, one of six high-severity violations documented during that single visit. The facility was not emergency-closed.
The water violation alone carries significant public health consequences. Non-potable water used in a food establishment can contain E. coli, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, and Legionella, pathogens that can cause severe gastrointestinal illness and, in some cases, respiratory disease. Inspectors also found food from an unapproved or unknown source on the premises that same day.
What Inspectors Found
The April 21 inspection produced six high-severity and four intermediate violations, a total of ten. That count matches the restaurant's April 2025 inspection almost exactly, which also yielded six high-severity and four intermediate violations.
Inspectors also cited a lack of adequate shell stock identification records. Shellfish, including oysters, clams, and mussels, are high-risk foods frequently consumed raw or lightly cooked. Without proper tagging and sourcing records, there is no way to trace a shellfish-related illness back to a supplier or a harvest location.
The restaurant's time-as-a-public-health-control practices were also flagged as inadequate. When a facility uses time rather than temperature to manage food safety, food is permitted to sit in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, for a defined window before being discarded. If that tracking is not properly documented and followed, there is no safeguard at all.
Rounding out the high-severity findings: no written employee health policy and improper handwashing technique. Both are documented in the same inspection, which means staff with no guidance about working while ill were also not washing their hands correctly.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sourcing and missing shell stock records is particularly serious because it eliminates traceability entirely. If a customer became ill after eating at Jerk Pit on or around April 21, investigators would have no supplier chain to follow. Food from unapproved sources bypasses USDA and FDA inspection processes, meaning it could harbor Listeria, Salmonella, or other pathogens that standard supply-chain oversight is designed to catch.
The potable water violation compounds every other risk in the kitchen. Water touches almost every surface, every utensil, and every food preparation step. If the supply is contaminated, the contamination is not isolated to one dish or one station. It is systemic.
The absence of a written employee health policy means there is no formal mechanism requiring sick workers to stay home or report symptoms. Norovirus, one of the most common foodborne illnesses in the United States, is responsible for roughly 20 million cases annually, and food workers are a primary transmission route. An establishment without a health policy has, in effect, no barrier between a sick employee and a customer's plate.
Improperly cleaned multi-use utensils, also cited on April 21, introduce a separate risk. Bacterial biofilms can develop on inadequately cleaned surfaces within 24 hours, and those biofilms protect bacteria from standard sanitizing efforts.
The Longer Record
The April 21 inspection is not an outlier. It is the sixth consecutive inspection, going back to April 2024, in which Jerk Pit accumulated at least six high-severity violations. The August 2024 inspection produced eight high-severity and six intermediate violations, the highest single-inspection total in the recent record.
Across 38 inspections on record, the restaurant has accumulated 339 total violations. That averages nearly nine violations per inspection across its entire documented history.
The facility was emergency-closed once before, in January 2022, after a sewage backup. It reopened the same day. A November 2022 inspection found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. That clean record did not hold.
By January 2023, two high-severity violations had returned. By April 2024, the count was back to six high-severity. The pattern since mid-2024 shows no inspection producing fewer than four high-severity violations, and most producing six or more.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented ten violations at Jerk Pit on April 21, six of them high-severity, including no approved potable water supply and food from an unapproved source.
The restaurant was not emergency-closed.