JACKSONVILLE, FL. A state inspector walked into Maiza at 13820 Old St. Augustine Road on October 5 and found the restaurant operating without an approved potable water supply, a violation that means every surface washed, every pot filled, and every hand rinsed that day may have been touched by water that had not been tested or certified safe for human contact.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The water violation appeared alongside a citation for food from an unapproved or unknown source. That combination means inspectors could not verify where the food came from or whether the water used to prepare it met any safety standard.
The inspector also cited three violations tied directly to worker illness protocols: no employee health policy, no system for employees to report illness symptoms, and no person in charge present or performing oversight duties. All three were flagged as high-severity on the same visit.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch ingredients before they reach a plate, were cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized. A separate intermediate violation noted that the sanitizing solution itself was either the wrong concentration or applied incorrectly.
Single-use items were also found being reused.
What These Violations Mean
The potable water citation is among the most structurally serious a food establishment can receive. Non-potable water can carry E. coli, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, and Legionella. It affects not just drinking water but every step of food preparation: rinsing produce, cooking, cooling, and hand-washing. A restaurant operating without a verified water supply cannot reliably perform any of those tasks safely.
The food sourcing violation compounds that risk. When food arrives from an unapproved or unknown source, it has bypassed USDA and FDA safety inspections entirely. If a customer became sick, investigators would have no supply chain to trace.
The three illness-related violations, taken together, describe a workplace where a sick employee had no policy instructing them to stay home, no system to report symptoms, and no manager present to catch the gap. CDC data links establishments without active managerial control to three times as many critical violations as those with it. Norovirus, which sickens roughly 20 million Americans each year, spreads most efficiently through exactly this kind of failure: a sick worker, no policy, no oversight.
Improper sanitizer concentration means that even surfaces that appeared to be cleaned may not have had pathogens killed. Reusing single-use items, gloves, cups, or utensils not designed for repeated contact, introduces contamination at the point where food is handled directly.
The Longer Record
The October 5 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Maiza has been inspected 30 times and has accumulated 202 total violations across that history, with zero emergency closures.
The pattern of high-severity findings runs deep. On January 27, 2026, inspectors cited 5 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations. On August 26, 2025, they documented 8 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate, the worst single-visit count in the available record. The facility passed a follow-up inspection three days later on August 29 with zero violations, then returned to 3 high-severity citations by April 2026.
The October 5 inspection, with 6 high-severity violations, was followed by a return visit on October 6 that still found 2 high-severity violations. A visit on October 9 found 2 more. A visit on October 13 found 1 high-severity violation.
That sequence, four inspections in nine days, each still producing high-severity findings, describes a facility that clears enough violations to pass a follow-up but does not hold that standard.
The illness-policy violations documented on October 5, specifically no written employee health policy and no reporting system for symptoms, are the kind of structural failures that do not appear by accident on a single bad day. They reflect the absence of systems that should be in place before a restaurant opens each morning.
Open for Business
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when violations pose an immediate threat to public health. On October 5, after documenting six high-severity violations at Maiza, including no safe water supply and food from an unknown source, they did not use it.
The restaurant served customers that day.
