WINTER GARDEN, FL. Inspectors visiting Servandos on West Colonial Drive on September 15 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning some of what the kitchen was serving that day had bypassed federal safety inspections entirely. The restaurant was not closed.
That finding was one of seven high-severity violations documented during the inspection, along with two intermediate violations. State records show the facility remained open after inspectors left.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious an inspector can document. When food enters a kitchen from an unapproved or unknown supplier, there is no chain of custody, no USDA or FDA inspection record, and no way to trace it back to a source if a customer gets sick.
Inspectors also found that food was not being cooked to required minimum temperatures. Undercooking is a direct survival route for pathogens: Salmonella in poultry, for example, survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
A separate high-severity violation noted that at least one employee was not reporting symptoms of illness. That finding, combined with the improper handwashing technique violation documented in the same inspection, means the kitchen had two simultaneous failure points on the most direct transmission route from worker to customer.
Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled somewhere in the facility. The inspector also found no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items, meaning customers with compromised immune systems, pregnant women, and the elderly had no way of knowing which dishes carried elevated risk.
No person in charge was present or performing duties at the time of the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
Food from unapproved sources is not a paperwork problem. If a customer gets sick after eating at Servandos, investigators tracing the source of contamination would hit a dead end the moment they tried to identify where that food came from. There is no lot number, no distributor record, no federal inspection stamp.
The undercooked food violation compounds that risk directly. Cooking to minimum temperature is the last kill step between a contaminated ingredient and a sick customer. When that step fails, whatever pathogens survived the supply chain survive the kitchen.
The illness-reporting and handwashing violations together describe a facility where sick employees could work a full shift without flagging their symptoms, and where handwashing, even when attempted, was not being done correctly. CDC data links both failures to multi-victim outbreaks, particularly norovirus, which spreads readily from food workers to customers through exactly this route.
The improper sewage disposal finding adds a separate contamination pathway. Raw sewage carries fecal bacteria, and when waste water is not properly managed, that contamination can spread through a kitchen without being visible.
The Longer Record
The September 15 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Servandos has been inspected 22 times and has accumulated 174 total violations across its history, with zero emergency closures.
The eight most recent inspections on record each produced high-severity violations. The May 2026 inspection, just four months before this one, found five high-severity and one intermediate violation. The September 2024 inspection found four high-severity violations. The February 2025 inspection found six high-severity and five intermediate violations, the highest combined count in the recent record before this month's inspection surpassed it.
Going back further, the pattern holds. The December 2023 inspection produced five high-severity violations. The March 2023 inspection produced five high-severity and three intermediate violations. The December 2022 inspection produced four high-severity and two intermediate violations.
Every single inspection in the eight-visit sample produced at least two high-severity violations. The September 15 inspection, with seven, is the worst of the group.
Still Open
Florida's inspection system allows inspectors to order an emergency closure when conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. That threshold was not reached on September 15, according to state records.
Seven high-severity violations, including food from an unknown source, undercooked food, an employee not reporting illness symptoms, and improperly stored toxic chemicals, were documented at Servandos that day.
The restaurant remained open.
