NEW SMYRNA BEACH, FL. Food contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards was among the violations state inspectors documented at Lost Lagoon Wings and Grill on North Dixie Freeway during a September 11 inspection, and the restaurant was not closed.
That single violation, the most direct threat to anyone who ordered food that day, was one of six high-severity citations inspectors recorded at the 2004 N. Dixie Freeway location. Three intermediate violations were also documented. Despite that total, the restaurant remained open and serving customers.
What Inspectors Found
The contaminated food violation sits at the top of the severity scale because it represents food that has already been compromised, not food at risk of becoming compromised. The toxic chemical citation compounds it directly: improperly stored or unlabeled chemicals near food are a documented pathway to the kind of contamination that sends people to emergency rooms.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for having no employee health policy and for employees not reporting illness symptoms, two violations that appear on the same inspection report. That combination means there was no written requirement for sick workers to stay home and no evidence those workers were doing so anyway.
The absence of a person in charge actively performing duties was the sixth high-severity violation. A manager present and engaged is the first line of defense against the other five violations on that list. The record shows that line was not in place on September 11.
The intermediate violations added a layer of infrastructure failure. Improper sewage or wastewater disposal, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities were all cited. None of those are cosmetic problems.
What These Violations Mean
Food contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards is not a warning that something could go wrong. It is a finding that something already has. Whether the source is a cleaning chemical, a fragment of glass or metal, or a biological contaminant, the food cited in that violation was not safe to serve. Anyone who ate at Lost Lagoon Wings and Grill on or around September 11 had no way of knowing that finding was on record.
The toxic chemical storage violation explains one plausible route to that contamination. Sanitizers, cleaners, and pesticides stored near food or without clear labeling can transfer to food through direct contact or mislabeled containers used in food prep. The two violations, chemical mishandling and food adulteration, documented on the same inspection report, point in the same direction.
The illness reporting failures carry a different kind of risk. Norovirus is responsible for roughly 20 million infections in the United States each year, and food workers are a primary transmission route. Without a written health policy requiring sick employees to report symptoms or stay home, a single ill worker can expose dozens of customers before anyone in management knows there is a problem. At Lost Lagoon on September 11, inspectors found no policy and no evidence of compliance with one.
Improper sewage disposal creates the possibility of fecal contamination spreading through a facility. Combined with inadequate toilet facilities that reduce the likelihood of proper handwashing by employees, the intermediate violations documented here reinforce the same pattern the high-severity citations already established: the basic infrastructure of food safety was not functioning that day.
The Longer Record
The September 11 inspection was not an anomaly. Lost Lagoon Wings and Grill has 55 inspections on record and 386 total violations accumulated across that history. That volume does not describe a restaurant that had one bad day.
The inspection on August 14, 2025, produced 11 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate violations at the same location. A follow-up inspection one week later, on August 21, still found 1 high-severity violation. The February 5, 2026, inspection recorded 5 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations. A follow-up six days later on February 11 still carried 1 high-severity citation.
The restaurant was emergency-closed once before, on July 12, 2023, for rodent activity. It was allowed to reopen the following day.
The most recent inspection on record, September 21, ten days after the inspection that is the subject of this report, found zero high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. That is an improvement. It does not change what the record from September 11 shows.
Still Open
State inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Lost Lagoon Wings and Grill on September 11, including food already contaminated and toxic chemicals improperly handled. The restaurant was not closed.
It continued to operate.
