CLERMONT, FL. A state inspector visiting Michael's Ali Coal Fired Pizza at 790 W. Minneola Ave. on May 14 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers being served to customers, a violation that means no government inspector ever checked where that food came from or whether it was safe to eat.
The restaurant walked away with 12 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations that day. It was not emergency-closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation alone sets off a chain of unknowns. If a customer gets sick, investigators have no paper trail to follow, no supplier to contact, no lot number to pull.
The parasite destruction citation compounds that risk. The inspection record shows the kitchen was not following required freezing or cooking procedures for fish or other proteins where parasite destruction is mandated. Without those steps, parasites including Anisakis in fish and Trichinella in pork can survive and reach a customer's plate.
Food contact surfaces were cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized. Inspectors also found multi-use utensils improperly cleaned, creating what food safety researchers call a biofilm environment, where bacteria survive repeated surface cleaning.
The kitchen also lacked adequate handwashing infrastructure, and inspectors separately cited improper hand and arm washing technique. Both violations were recorded on the same visit, meaning the facility failed on the equipment and on the execution.
No person in charge was present or performing duties at the time of the inspection.
The Violations in Plain Terms
The allergen citation is worth pausing on. Food allergies affect roughly 32 million Americans, and reactions send 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year. When a restaurant cannot demonstrate allergen awareness, customers with serious allergies to tree nuts, shellfish, dairy or wheat have no way of knowing whether a dish is safe. At Michael's Ali, the inspection record shows that awareness was absent.
The illness-reporting violation means at least one employee was working without having disclosed symptoms that could indicate a communicable illness. Food workers are the primary transmission route for norovirus outbreaks. A single sick employee handling food without reporting symptoms can expose dozens of customers in a single shift.
Toxic chemicals stored improperly near food is a different category of risk. Mislabeled or misplaced cleaning agents can contaminate food directly, and the symptoms, nausea, vomiting, chemical burns, can appear within minutes of ingestion.
Improper sewage or wastewater disposal, listed as an intermediate violation, means the facility had a breakdown in how it was handling waste that carries fecal bacteria. Inadequate cooling equipment, also intermediate, means the kitchen lacked the mechanical capacity to keep food out of the temperature range where bacteria multiply fastest.
The Longer Record
Michael's Ali Coal Fired Pizza: Inspection History
The May 14 inspection was not an anomaly. Across 25 inspections on record, Michael's Ali Coal Fired Pizza has accumulated 172 total violations. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
Every inspection in the prior history going back to December 2022 recorded at least one high-severity violation. The November 2024 inspection found 8 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate ones. The November 2025 inspection found 7 high and 5 intermediate. January 2026 brought 3 high and 2 intermediate, a relative low point, followed four months later by the 12-violation inspection in May.
The pattern is not a restaurant struggling through a rough patch. It is a facility that has produced high-severity violations at every documented visit across more than three years, with counts that have climbed, not fallen.
The May 14 inspection produced the highest single-visit high-severity count in the recorded history of this location. The restaurant was not closed.