PORT CHARLOTTE, FL. State inspectors visited Pita & Puff at 2665 Tamiami Trail on July 8 and documented that the restaurant had not followed proper parasite destruction procedures for fish or other proteins, a failure that leaves customers exposed to live parasites including Anisakis and tapeworm that survive in undercooked or improperly frozen food.
That was one of six high-severity violations inspectors cited that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction failure and the undercooking violation together describe a kitchen where proteins may reach customers without the heat or freezing protocols required to kill what lives inside them. Inspectors also found that food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch everything served, were not properly cleaned or sanitized.
Employees were observed using improper handwashing technique. That means hands were washed, but not correctly, leaving pathogens on the skin that then transfer directly to food or surfaces.
The restaurant also had no written employee health policy, meaning there is no formal system requiring sick workers to report illness or stay out of the kitchen. And there was no consumer advisory posted to inform diners that some items are served raw or undercooked.
The intermediate violation involved improper sewage or wastewater disposal, a finding that inspectors documented alongside the six high-severity citations.
What These Violations Mean
The parasite destruction failure is not a paperwork problem. When fish, pork, or wild game is not frozen to specific temperatures for specific durations, or cooked to the required internal temperature, parasites including Anisakis, which embeds in the stomach lining, and Trichinella, which migrates to muscle tissue, can survive and infect anyone who eats the food. Pita & Puff had both a parasite destruction failure and an undercooking violation on the same inspection day.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces are one of the most direct routes for bacterial transfer in a commercial kitchen. A cutting board or prep surface that carries Salmonella or Listeria from one protein to the next moves contamination invisibly through every dish that follows. Combined with improper handwashing technique, where the attempt was made but the method was wrong, the kitchen had two simultaneous failure points for pathogen transfer on July 8.
The missing employee health policy is the kind of violation that enables everything else. Without a written policy, a worker with Norovirus has no formal obligation to report it or stay home. Norovirus spreads through as few as 18 viral particles and can contaminate an entire prep area through a single ill employee. The restaurant had no posted consumer advisory either, meaning customers with compromised immune systems, elderly diners, pregnant women, and children had no way to know they were ordering something that carried elevated risk.
The sewage disposal violation adds a separate layer of concern. Improper wastewater handling creates the possibility of fecal contamination spreading through the facility, not confined to one station or one item.
The Longer Record
July 8 was not an outlier. State records show Pita & Puff has been inspected 11 times in total and has accumulated 44 violations across that history.
High-severity violations have appeared in eight of the nine most recent inspections. The pattern holds across years: three high-severity violations in January 2025, three more in April 2025, four in August 2025, three in November 2025, and one in February 2026. The July 8 inspection, with six high-severity citations, is the worst single inspection on record for this location.
The facility has never been emergency-closed. Not in 2023, not in 2024, not in 2025, and not on July 8, 2026, when inspectors left with a six-violation high-severity finding and an intermediate sewage citation in the report.
Still Open
The inspection record at Pita & Puff describes a restaurant that has logged high-severity violations consistently since at least early 2024, across multiple inspection cycles, in categories that include food temperature, food sourcing safety, and now parasite destruction and undercooking on the same visit.
After inspectors documented all of that on July 8, the restaurant on Tamiami Trail remained open for business.
