RIVERVIEW, FL. State inspectors visiting Joia Fabulous Pizza & Martini Bar on Gibsonton Drive on April 21 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means no one can trace where that food came from if a customer gets sick.
That was one of nine high-severity violations documented during the visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation stands out. When a restaurant cannot document where its food came from, there is no way to connect a sick customer to a contaminated supplier, no way to pull a product before more people eat it, and no path back to the source if an outbreak begins.
Inspectors also found that food was not being cooked to required minimum temperatures. Poultry that does not reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit can carry live Salmonella. That is not a theoretical risk. It is the mechanism behind some of the most common and serious foodborne illness cases in the country.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near the food operation. A mislabeled chemical or one stored near food prep surfaces creates a direct route to acute poisoning, not from bacteria but from the cleaning and sanitizing products themselves.
The inspection also found that food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, that no written employee health policy existed, and that employees were not reporting illness symptoms. Those three violations form a chain: no policy means workers do not know when to stay home, workers who do not stay home prepare food while sick, and surfaces that are not sanitized carry whatever they leave behind.
Inspectors noted no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked menu items. Joia's name includes a martini bar, and restaurants serving raw shellfish or undercooked proteins are required to warn customers on the menu. Without that notice, a pregnant customer or someone on immunosuppressant medication has no way of knowing what they are ordering.
The person in charge was either absent or not performing required duties during the inspection. Inadequately maintained toilet facilities rounded out the ten violations.
What These Violations Mean
The food sourcing violation carries a specific kind of danger. USDA and FDA inspections exist to catch contamination before product reaches a kitchen. Food that bypasses that system, from an unknown or unapproved supplier, has not been checked for Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli. If someone gets sick, investigators cannot pull the product or warn others because there is no record of where it came from.
The employee illness violations compound that risk directly. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads most efficiently through food prepared by a sick worker. A written health policy is the mechanism that keeps symptomatic employees out of the kitchen. Without one, and without a reporting requirement employees are aware of, an infected worker has no formal reason to call in.
The shellfish traceability violation is its own category of concern. Oysters, clams, and mussels are often consumed raw or lightly cooked, and shellfish are among the most common vehicles for Vibrio and hepatitis A. Tag records exist so that a specific harvest lot can be traced if illnesses are reported. When those records are inadequate, that traceability disappears entirely.
Taken together, the nine high-severity violations at Joia on April 21 represent failures at nearly every layer of a restaurant's safety system: sourcing, cooking, sanitation, illness prevention, chemical storage, and management oversight.
The Longer Record
The April 21 inspection was not an anomaly. Joia Fabulous Pizza & Martini Bar has accumulated 217 total violations across 26 inspections on record, a history that shows the same categories of concern appearing repeatedly over time.
The December 2025 inspection produced nine high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. The February 2025 inspection produced eight high-severity violations and one intermediate, followed two days later by a reinspection that found zero high-severity violations, suggesting a pattern of correcting problems for inspectors and reverting afterward. By November 2024, the restaurant had six high-severity violations again.
Going back further, the April 2024 inspection found six high-severity violations, and the December 2023 inspection found four. The one clean inspection in this record, September 2023, produced zero violations at any severity level. That visit stands alone.
Despite this pattern, Joia has never been emergency-closed. The state's records show no prior closures across the full inspection history.
Still Open
After the April 21 inspection, with nine high-severity violations documented including food from an unknown source, undercooked food, and improperly stored toxic chemicals, Joia Fabulous Pizza & Martini Bar remained open to customers.
That is the fact the record leaves behind.