FORT MYERS, FL. When state inspectors walked into Los Molcajetes on Cleveland Avenue on August 7, they found a restaurant operating without a written employee health policy, without adequate handwashing facilities, and with food in poor condition on the line. They cited seven high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. Then they left, and the restaurant stayed open.
No emergency closure order was issued. No orange sticker on the door.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector documented that no person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties at the time of the visit. That single fact sets the context for everything else found that day.
Without a manager actively overseeing operations, inspectors found employees were not reporting illness symptoms and the restaurant had no written employee health policy to require them to do so. Those two violations compound each other directly: no policy means no obligation, and no oversight means no enforcement of either.
The handwashing findings were documented at two levels. The facilities themselves were cited as inadequate, meaning the physical infrastructure for proper hand hygiene was not in place. Separately, inspectors cited improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning that even when employees attempted to wash their hands, they were not doing it correctly.
Food contact surfaces were cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized. Inspectors also found food in poor condition, described in state records as adulterated. Multi-use utensils were not being properly cleaned between uses, and single-use items were being reused.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and no illness reporting is among the most direct pathways to a multi-victim outbreak. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads efficiently when infected food workers handle food without restriction. A written health policy is the mechanism that keeps symptomatic employees off the line. Without one at Los Molcajetes, there was no documented process for a sick employee to report symptoms or be sent home.
Inadequate handwashing facilities and improper technique form a second compounding failure. Studies consistently show that handwashing is the single most effective barrier between a food worker and a customer. When the infrastructure is deficient and the technique is wrong, that barrier does not exist, regardless of how often an employee approaches the sink.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned or sanitized become transfer points for bacteria between raw and ready-to-eat food. The intermediate violation for improperly cleaned multi-use utensils adds to that risk: bacterial biofilms can develop on utensil surfaces within 24 hours and resist standard cleaning once established. The reuse of single-use items compounds the contamination pathway further.
The food in poor condition citation carries its own weight. Adulterated or spoiled food that reaches a customer can cause illness independent of any handling failure.
The Longer Record
The August 7 inspection was not an anomaly. It was the ninth documented inspection of this facility, and the pattern across those visits is consistent.
On August 27, 2025, inspectors cited seven high-severity violations and three intermediate ones, a nearly identical profile to the August 7, 2026 visit. That inspection was followed the next day, August 28, 2025, by a callback that still found two high-severity violations. The facility has accumulated 57 total violations across 11 inspections on record.
The only clean inspection in the record was January 17, 2025, when inspectors found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. Every other documented visit produced at least one high-severity citation. The March 2025 inspection found five high-severity violations. The November 2024 visit found two. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
Three days after the August 7 inspection that produced seven high-severity violations, inspectors returned on August 10 and still found three high-severity violations and one intermediate. The follow-up visit did not produce a clean result.
Still Open
State records show Los Molcajetes on Cleveland Avenue has operated through 57 documented violations, including two separate inspection dates with seven high-severity citations each, without ever receiving an emergency closure order.
After the August 7 visit, with no person in charge present, no employee health policy in place, improper handwashing at both the infrastructure and technique level, adulterated food, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and improperly cleaned utensils, the restaurant remained open for business.
