PORT ORANGE, FL. When a state inspector walked into Pizza Ray's Submarine Sandwiches on South Nova Road on May 29, they found food that had been contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards, food in poor condition or adulterated, and no functioning employee illness policy in place. The restaurant remained open.
The inspection turned up 8 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations at the 3340 S Nova Rd location. Florida's food safety code classifies high-severity violations as those most directly linked to foodborne illness outbreaks.
What Inspectors Found
The adulterated food violation alone carries serious implications. Food contaminated by chemicals, physical objects, or biological agents can cause immediate illness, and inspectors documented it alongside a separate finding that food was in poor condition or mislabeled. That is two distinct food-quality failures on the same visit.
The parasite destruction violation is specific to certain proteins, most commonly fish and pork, that require precise freezing or cooking temperatures to kill organisms like Anisakis or Trichinella. The citation indicates those procedures were not followed.
Improper sewage or wastewater disposal was among the intermediate findings. That violation creates the potential for fecal contamination to spread across a facility's surfaces and food contact areas.
What These Violations Mean
The cluster of illness-related violations at Pizza Ray's is the kind that public health officials describe as an outbreak waiting for conditions. There was no written employee health policy, employees were not reporting illness symptoms, and the person in charge was either absent or not performing oversight duties. Those three violations together mean a sick employee could have prepared food that day with no barrier in place to stop it.
Norovirus is transmitted almost entirely through infected food workers, and it accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year. A written health policy requiring sick workers to report symptoms and stay home is the primary prevention tool. Pizza Ray's did not have one in place on May 29.
Improper handwashing technique was also cited as high-severity. The distinction matters: this is not a missing soap citation. Inspectors documented that employees were making an attempt to wash their hands but doing it incorrectly, meaning pathogens remained on their hands after the attempt.
Food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized compounds all of the above. Any pathogen carried on an employee's hands or present in contaminated food can transfer to prep surfaces and then to the next item prepared on that surface.
The Longer Record
The May 29 inspection is not an anomaly at this location. Pizza Ray's has 40 inspections on record and 254 total violations documented across that history.
The pattern in recent years is difficult to ignore. The November 2025 inspection turned up 8 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. The March 2024 inspection found 7 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations. The November 2023 inspection also found 7 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations. The June 2023 inspection found 4 high-severity violations.
Between those spikes, the restaurant passed cleanly. March 2026 showed zero high-severity violations. May and April of 2025 each came back clean. That oscillating record, serious violations followed by clean inspections followed by serious violations again, suggests the problems are being corrected temporarily but not structurally.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed despite this cycle. The May 29 inspection marks the third time in roughly 18 months that inspectors have documented 7 or more high-severity violations at the same address.
The Longer Record in Numbers
Pizza Ray's High-Severity Violation History
State inspectors documented 8 high-severity violations at Pizza Ray's Submarine Sandwiches on May 29, 2026, including contaminated food, adulterated food, no employee illness policy, and improper sewage disposal. The restaurant was not closed.