LONGWOOD, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into Simon Parrilla Bar and Grill on South Ronald Reagan Boulevard and found food being served from unapproved or unknown sources, a violation that means some of what customers ate that day had never passed through a USDA or FDA inspection checkpoint.
That single citation was one of seven high-severity violations documented during the April 6 visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source citation is notable on its own. When a restaurant sources food outside licensed suppliers, there is no inspection record and no chain of custody. If a customer gets sick, there is nothing to trace.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for failing to follow parasite destruction procedures. Certain fish, pork, and wild game must be frozen to specific temperatures for specific durations before being served raw or undercooked, in order to kill parasites including Anisakis and Trichinella. That step had not been taken.
Food was also found not cooked to required minimum temperatures. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. The record does not specify which food items were involved, but the citation stands as a documented finding.
The inspection also turned up inadequate shell stock identification records. Shellfish, including oysters and clams, are among the highest-risk foods served in any restaurant, particularly when consumed raw. Without harvest tags and proper documentation, there is no way to identify the source if customers become ill.
The restaurant had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked items. That notice exists specifically to warn elderly diners, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system that certain menu items carry elevated risk.
Employees were also cited for improper handwashing technique. This is not a paperwork violation. Pathogens remain on hands even when a washing attempt is made, if the technique is wrong.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled, creating a contamination risk near food. And multi-use utensils had not been properly cleaned, which allows bacterial biofilms to develop on surfaces that come into direct contact with food.
Eight violations total. Seven of them high-severity. The restaurant stayed open.
What These Violations Mean
The unapproved food source and shellfish traceability violations are linked by the same underlying danger: if someone gets sick, investigators have nothing to work with. Approved suppliers maintain records that allow public health officials to trace an outbreak back to a specific lot, a specific harvest date, a specific farm. When that chain is broken, as it was at Simon Parrilla in April, an outbreak can spread further before anyone identifies the source.
The parasite destruction and minimum cooking temperature violations compound each other. A restaurant serving fish that has not been properly frozen and cooking other items below required temperatures is presenting customers with multiple simultaneous pathogen and parasite exposure risks in a single meal.
The absence of a consumer advisory makes all of this worse for the most vulnerable diners. A healthy adult may recover from a Salmonella infection in a few days. For an elderly person, a pregnant woman, or someone undergoing chemotherapy, the same infection can be life-threatening. The advisory requirement exists precisely because those customers cannot always identify the risk themselves from a menu description.
The improperly stored chemicals add a separate category of risk entirely. Mislabeled or misplaced cleaning agents near food preparation areas have caused acute poisoning incidents at restaurants across the country. It is not a theoretical danger.
The Longer Record
The April 6 inspection did not occur in isolation. Simon Parrilla Bar and Grill has 36 inspections on record and 347 total violations documented across that history. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern leading into April 2026 was consistent. In November 2024, inspectors made three separate visits over four days, citing high-severity violations on each occasion, including four high and four intermediate on November 20 alone. A March 2024 inspection produced six high-severity violations. An October 2025 inspection found five high-severity violations. An April 2025 inspection, exactly one year before the visit that prompted this story, found seven high-severity violations and two intermediate ones.
That last point is worth sitting with. Seven high-severity violations in April 2025. Seven high-severity violations in April 2026. The number did not change.
After the April 6 inspection, records show a follow-up visit on April 16 that found four high-severity violations and another on April 27 that found one. The violations did not disappear after inspectors left in April. They diminished, then the record moves on.
The Longer Pattern
Three hundred forty-seven violations across 36 inspections works out to nearly ten violations per inspection on average. The high-severity citations have appeared in recurring categories: food sourcing, cooking temperatures, and food safety documentation. These are not one-time lapses caught on a bad day.
The restaurant has operated through all of it without a single emergency closure on record.
Customers who ate at Simon Parrilla Bar and Grill on South Ronald Reagan Boulevard in Longwood on April 6, 2026, or in the days surrounding that inspection, did so while the facility carried seven unresolved high-severity violations and remained open for business.