CLERMONT, FL. An employee at Original Goomba's Pizzeria on S US Highway 27 was observed not cooking food to the required minimum temperature during a July 20 state inspection, a violation that means customers may have eaten food still harboring live pathogens.
That was one of nine high-severity violations inspectors documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking violation sits at the top of the list because the consequences are immediate and direct. Salmonella survives in poultry below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A customer who ate undercooked food that day had no way of knowing.
Inspectors also cited employees for not reporting symptoms of illness, a finding that sits alongside the undercooking citation as the two violations most directly linked to multi-victim outbreaks. Together, they describe a kitchen where sick employees may have continued working and food may have left the line without reaching a safe internal temperature.
The allergen finding adds another layer. Inspectors documented that no allergen awareness was demonstrated at the restaurant. Food allergies affect 32 million Americans, and a kitchen without allergen protocols cannot reliably warn customers with life-threatening sensitivities.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled. That violation, combined with food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized and employees using improper handwashing technique, describes a kitchen where contamination had multiple pathways to the plate.
The person in charge was either absent or not performing duties. That finding, inspectors note, correlates with cascading failures across a kitchen, and on July 20 at Goomba's, the cascade was visible in nearly every category.
What These Violations Mean
Undercooking is not a paperwork problem. Salmonella, E. coli, and Campylobacter all survive in meat and poultry that hasn't reached the required minimum internal temperature. A customer who ordered a pizza with chicken or a meat topping on July 20 had no assurance that what reached their table had been cooked safely.
The illness-reporting violation compounds that risk. When employees are not required or trained to report symptoms, a worker with norovirus or Salmonella continues handling food. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, can be transmitted by a single infected food handler touching a surface that another employee then touches before handling food.
The allergen violation is its own category of danger. Without demonstrated allergen awareness, a customer with a tree nut allergy, a shellfish allergy, or a severe wheat sensitivity cannot rely on staff to accurately describe what is in a dish or flag cross-contact risks. The FDA links food allergy reactions to 30,000 emergency room visits annually, and most of those reactions trace back to a failure of communication at the point of service.
Improperly stored chemicals near food areas create the possibility of acute poisoning, not just gradual contamination. A mislabeled cleaning solution mistaken for a food ingredient, or a chemical stored above an uncovered food prep surface, is not a theoretical risk.
The Longer Record
Original Goomba's Pizzeria: Recent Inspection Pattern
July 20 was not an outlier. The restaurant has been inspected 33 times and has accumulated 386 total violations on record. It has never been emergency-closed.
Inspectors found nine high-severity violations on May 19, 2026. Eight days later, on May 27, they returned and found nine high-severity violations again. The July 20 inspection produced the same count. Three inspections across two months, each with nine high-severity findings, and the restaurant remained open through all of them.
The September 29, 2025 inspection also produced nine high-severity violations. The March 18, 2025 visit yielded eight. The pattern does not describe a kitchen that occasionally slips. It describes a kitchen that has been cited at the highest severity level, repeatedly, across more than a year, without a single emergency closure in its entire recorded history.
The restaurant served customers on July 20, 2026, with nine high-severity violations on the books and no emergency closure order on the door.
