JACKSONVILLE BEACH, FL. State inspectors walked into Sizemore's Coastal Kitchen at 333 1st St N on September 14 and found food contaminated by chemical, physical, or biological hazards, toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled, no manager present and performing duties, and an employee who had not reported symptoms of illness. They cited seven high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. They did not close the restaurant.
What Inspectors Found
The contaminated food citation is the most direct threat to anyone who ate at the restaurant that day. That violation covers food that has come into contact with chemicals such as sanitizers or pesticides, physical hazards like glass or metal fragments, or biological contamination. It is not a paperwork violation.
Alongside it, inspectors cited toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled. When cleaning products or pesticides are stored near food or preparation surfaces without proper labeling, the contamination pathway is short and the consequences can be acute.
The absence of an active person in charge compounds every other finding on the list. Without supervisory oversight, there is no one to catch a sick employee before they touch food, no one to verify that surfaces are being sanitized, and no one to ensure chemicals are stored away from the food supply.
What These Violations Mean
The employee illness reporting failure carries a specific danger that is worth stating plainly. Food workers are the primary transmission route for norovirus, which spreads easily through contaminated food and surfaces and can sicken dozens of customers from a single shift. An employee who works through symptoms without reporting them, in a kitchen where handwashing facilities are cited as inadequate, is the sequence that produces multi-victim outbreaks.
The inadequate handwashing facilities violation makes the illness reporting failure worse. If the infrastructure for proper hand hygiene does not exist, it cannot be performed, regardless of how diligent any individual employee is. These two violations together, at the same inspection, at the same facility, create a compounding risk.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces add another layer. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that are not properly sanitized develop bacterial biofilms, which are layers of bacteria that resist standard cleaning once established. The multi-use utensil violation cited the same day reinforces that this was not an isolated lapse.
The sewage and wastewater disposal citation is its own category of concern. Improper sewage handling creates fecal contamination risk throughout a facility. That violation appearing on the same inspection report as a food contamination citation and inadequate handwashing facilities describes a kitchen with multiple simultaneous hygiene failures.
The Longer Record
The September 14 inspection is not an outlier in Sizemore's history. State records show 44 inspections on file for this location, with 274 total violations documented across that history. The restaurant has been emergency-closed three times, all for rodent activity, in December 2021, April 2023, and March 2024. Each time, it reopened within one to two days.
The inspection pattern over the past year tells its own story. On March 30, 2026, inspectors cited six high-severity and three intermediate violations. A follow-up two days later, on April 1, still showed two high-severity violations. The restaurant then passed two consecutive inspections in April before this September visit produced the highest single-day high-severity count in the recent record, seven.
The October 2025 sequence followed the same shape. Inspectors found five high-severity and two intermediate violations on October 20. Three days later, the restaurant passed. That cycle, a significant violation event followed by a passing inspection, has repeated across multiple years.
Three emergency closures for the same cause, rodent activity, across a four-year span at one address is a specific fact worth holding. The most recent was in March 2024, fourteen months before the October 2025 high-severity inspection, and eighteen months before the September 2026 visit that produced seven high-severity citations.
Open for Business
Two days after the September 14 inspection, on September 16, a follow-up visit found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. The state considers the facility to have met standards as of that date.
Between September 14 and September 16, Sizemore's Coastal Kitchen served customers. The inspection that documented contaminated food, improperly stored toxic chemicals, an unreported sick employee, and inadequate handwashing facilities did not result in a closure order. The restaurant stayed open.
