ORLANDO, FL. Inspectors visiting Marita's Latin Bites on E. Colonial Drive in late September found that the restaurant was not following parasite destruction procedures for fish, had no verifiable shellfish identification records, and left customers eating raw or undercooked items with no advisory on the menu telling them so. The date was September 28, 2026. The restaurant was not closed.
Six of the nine violations documented that day were classified as high severity. Three more were intermediate. When inspectors left, the kitchen kept running.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction failure is among the most direct food safety risks documented in the inspection. When restaurants serve fish that may be eaten raw or undercooked, state rules require that the fish be frozen to specific temperatures for a specific duration to kill parasites including Anisakis and tapeworm. Records showed those procedures were not being followed.
Alongside that, inspectors found that shellfish identification records were inadequate. Florida requires restaurants to maintain shell stock tags that identify the harvest location and date of every batch of oysters, clams, or mussels they receive. Without those tags, there is no way to trace a shellfish-linked illness back to its source.
The restaurant also lacked a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. That single line on a menu, or a notation on individual items, is the last signal a vulnerable customer gets that a dish carries elevated risk.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Cutting boards, prep tables, and similar surfaces that touch food directly are one of the most reliable transmission routes for bacteria when they are not adequately cleaned between uses.
No employee health policy was on record. And the person in charge was either absent or not actively performing oversight duties at the time of the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of parasite destruction failures and missing shellfish records is not a paperwork problem. Parasites in fish are killed by proper freezing or thorough cooking. When neither is confirmed, a customer eating ceviche, sushi-style preparations, or lightly cooked fish is eating something that may still carry live parasites. Anisakis, one of the most common fish parasites, causes severe abdominal pain and can require surgical removal from the stomach lining.
The shellfish traceability gap matters for a different reason. Oysters, clams, and mussels are filter feeders that concentrate whatever is in the water around them, including Vibrio bacteria and norovirus. When an illness cluster is linked to shellfish, public health officials use shell stock tags to identify the harvest bed and pull product from the market. Without those records at Marita's Latin Bites, that chain breaks entirely.
The missing consumer advisory compounds both risks. Customers with compromised immune systems, pregnant women, the elderly, and young children are at significantly elevated risk from raw or undercooked seafood. The advisory is how they know to ask or to choose differently. Without it, they have no information to act on.
The absent or non-functioning person in charge ties all of this together. CDC data shows that establishments without active managerial control accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with engaged oversight. Every other violation on this list is more likely to exist, and to persist, when no one with authority is watching.
The Longer Record
The September 28 inspection was not the first time Marita's Latin Bites collected a serious violation count. State records show 24 inspections on file and 213 total violations across those visits.
The eight most recent inspections before September 28 each produced high-severity violations. The March 2026 visit found eight high-severity and one intermediate violation. The April 2025 inspection found ten high-severity violations. The pattern holds across 2024 and 2023 as well, with four to seven high-severity violations documented at every inspection dating back to at least March 2023.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed. In three-plus years of documented high-severity findings, no inspection has resulted in an order to shut the doors.
That is a fact the records make plain. Six high-severity violations on September 28, 2026, including failures tied directly to parasite control and shellfish traceability, and Marita's Latin Bites remained open for business.
