CLERMONT, FL. State inspectors walked into the Sonny's Real Pit Bar B Q at 1500 E Hwy 50 on September 18, 2026, and found food not cooked to the required minimum temperature, a violation that means Salmonella and other pathogens can survive and reach a customer's plate.
The restaurant was not closed.
Despite seven high-severity violations and two intermediate ones documented in a single visit, the Clermont location continued operating. The inspection record is now part of a pattern that stretches back years.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooked food violation sits at the top of the list for a reason. At a barbecue restaurant, poultry is the central product, and Salmonella in chicken survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Inspectors documented that the facility was not meeting required minimum cooking temperatures.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food. That is a direct contamination pathway, not a paperwork technicality.
The facility also had no written employee health policy, meaning there was no formal mechanism to keep a sick worker out of the kitchen. Inspectors additionally found that food contact surfaces, the cutting boards and prep equipment that touch every item served, were not being properly cleaned and sanitized.
Two more high-severity violations rounded out the visit. Time was not being used correctly as a public health control, meaning food sat in the bacterial growth zone of 41 to 135 degrees without being properly tracked or discarded. And the restaurant had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked items, leaving diners with no warning about elevated risk.
The two intermediate violations added sewage disposal problems and inadequate ventilation to the record.
What These Violations Mean
The undercooked food violation is among the most direct threats to a customer's health in any inspection report. Salmonella, which is commonly present in raw poultry, is destroyed by heat. When food does not reach the required minimum temperature, that destruction does not happen, and the bacteria reach the table.
The improper use of time as a public health control compounds that risk. Restaurants are permitted to hold certain foods at room temperature for a limited window if they track the time precisely and discard the food before bacteria multiply to dangerous levels. When that system breaks down, food that should have been thrown out keeps moving toward customers.
The absence of an employee health policy creates a separate and significant transmission route. Norovirus, one of the most contagious foodborne pathogens, spreads directly from an infected food worker to a customer through contaminated food. A written policy that requires sick employees to stay home is the primary barrier against that. This restaurant did not have one.
Improperly stored or mislabeled toxic chemicals carry a different kind of danger. A chemical that contaminates food or a container that is misread can cause acute poisoning, with effects that appear quickly and severely. The shell stock recordkeeping violation matters for a different reason: if someone becomes ill after eating shellfish here, investigators cannot trace the product back to its harvest source.
The Longer Record
Sonny's Real Pit Bar B Q, Clermont: Inspection History
The September 2026 inspection was not an outlier. State records show 33 inspections on file for this location, with 285 total violations accumulated across that history. Every single inspection in the past three years has produced high-severity violations.
The worst single visit in recent records was March 2026, when inspectors documented nine high-severity and five intermediate violations, six months before this inspection. January 2025 produced eight high-severity violations. July 2024 also produced nine high-severity violations and five intermediate ones.
The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The violations documented this September, including undercooked food and toxic chemical storage, are categories that have appeared across multiple prior visits. This is not a restaurant encountering a rough inspection for the first time. It is a location with 285 documented violations and a pattern of high-severity citations that has continued, inspection after inspection, without a single closure.
On September 18, 2026, inspectors left, and the restaurant stayed open.
