WINDERMERE, FL. State inspectors walked into My French Cafe / Croissant Gourmet on Winter Garden/Vineland Road on October 5, 2026, and documented food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, toxic chemicals stored improperly near food, and no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked items. Six of the nine violations were high-severity. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking violation is the most direct threat to anyone who ate at the cafe that day. Inspectors documented food not reaching required minimum internal temperatures, meaning any pathogens present in that food were not eliminated before it reached a plate.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. That is not a paperwork problem. Mislabeled or misplaced chemicals can be mistaken for food-safe products, and contamination from a single incident can cause acute poisoning.
The cafe also lacked a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked items. A French cafe menu often includes preparations, such as runny eggs, lightly cooked proteins, and certain pastry fillings, where customers who are pregnant, elderly, or immunocompromised need to know what they are ordering. No sign, no menu notation, no disclosure of any kind was documented.
Inspectors additionally found that food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, that employees were using improper handwashing technique, and that time was not being used correctly as a public health control. All three were flagged as high-severity. The three intermediate violations covered multi-use utensils with inadequate cleaning, equipment in poor repair, and ventilation deficiencies.
What These Violations Mean
Undercooking is not a close call. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit and can cause severe illness, particularly in children and older adults. When a cafe is also failing to properly clean food contact surfaces, the risk compounds: bacteria from one item can transfer to the next through a cutting board or prep surface that was never adequately sanitized.
The handwashing violation at My French Cafe goes a step further than simply skipping the sink. Improper technique means an employee may believe they have washed their hands while pathogens remain. Combined with improperly cleaned multi-use utensils, where bacterial biofilms can develop within 24 hours and resist standard cleaning, the kitchen had multiple overlapping failure points on October 5.
The time-as-public-health-control violation means the cafe was using an alternative food safety method, holding food in the temperature danger zone for a defined period rather than keeping it cold or hot. When that system is not followed correctly, food can remain at unsafe temperatures far longer than intended with no refrigeration or heat as a backup.
Toxic chemicals stored near food preparation areas represent a separate category of risk entirely. Unlike bacterial contamination, chemical poisoning can occur immediately and without any visible sign that something is wrong.
The Longer Record
My French Cafe: Recent Inspection Pattern
The October 2026 inspection was not an outlier. State records show 38 inspections on file for My French Cafe, with 439 total violations documented across that history. The cafe has never been emergency-closed.
In February 2025, a single inspection turned up 10 high-severity violations and 6 intermediate ones. A follow-up visit that same month still found 4 high-severity violations. In July 2025, inspectors returned and documented 7 high-severity violations. By January 2026, the count was back to 6 high-severity.
The October 2026 inspection marks the fourth time in roughly two years that inspectors have found exactly 6 high-severity violations at this location. The categories shift slightly from visit to visit, but the volume does not.
My French Cafe has accumulated 439 documented violations across 38 inspections without triggering an emergency closure. After the October 5 visit, with toxic chemicals near food, undercooked items leaving the kitchen, and no warning posted for raw preparations, the restaurant remained open for business.
