WEST MELBOURNE, FL. Food at Spiros Taverna on Palm Bay Road was not cooked to required minimum temperatures during a June 2 inspection, one of eight high-severity violations state inspectors documented at the Brevard County restaurant that day. The facility was not closed.
The undercooking violation alone carries serious consequences. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and a single serving of undercooked chicken can put a customer in the hospital. But the cooking temperature finding was not even the most structurally alarming problem inspectors found.
What Inspectors Found
Inspectors found food from unapproved or unknown sources in the kitchen. That means at least some of what the restaurant was serving had not passed through USDA or FDA inspection channels, and if a customer became ill, there would be no way to trace the food back to its origin.
Inspectors also found inadequate shell stock identification records. Spiros Taverna is a Greek restaurant, and shellfish appear on the menu. Oysters, clams, and mussels are high-risk foods, often consumed raw or lightly cooked, and state law requires that each batch be traceable to its harvest site. Without those records, a contaminated batch cannot be tracked.
Two separate violations involved toxic chemicals: one for improper storage or labeling, and a second for improper identification, storage, or use. Both were flagged as high-severity. Chemicals stored near food or mislabeled containers create an acute poisoning risk with no warning signs until a customer is already sick.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Cutting boards, prep tables, and slicing equipment that are not sanitized between uses become direct transfer points for bacteria from raw meat or contaminated food to whatever is prepared next.
The restaurant also had no written employee health policy. And it had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods, meaning customers who are elderly, pregnant, immunocompromised, or young children had no way of knowing what risks they were taking when they ordered.
The two intermediate violations were improper sewage or wastewater disposal and the reuse of single-use items. Sewage exposure inside a food preparation facility creates fecal contamination risk throughout the kitchen.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sources and inadequate shellfish records is particularly serious at a restaurant that serves Mediterranean cuisine. If a customer became ill after eating shellfish at Spiros Taverna on June 2, investigators would have no chain of custody to follow. Shellfish harvested from contaminated waters can carry Vibrio bacteria, Norovirus, and hepatitis A. The traceability requirement exists precisely because outbreaks have to be traced back to a harvest site to stop more people from eating the same batch.
The absence of an employee health policy means the restaurant has no formal system for keeping sick workers out of the kitchen. Norovirus is shed in enormous quantities by infected individuals and spreads easily to food through hand contact. A single sick employee without a policy requiring them to report illness or stay home can expose every customer served that shift.
The two chemical violations together suggest a kitchen where toxic substances are not being managed as a separate category from food and food equipment. Acute chemical poisoning from mislabeled or improperly stored cleaning agents can mimic foodborne illness, which means cases can go misattributed for days.
Undercooking, combined with improperly sanitized food contact surfaces, closes a dangerous loop. Pathogens that survive undercooking can also spread to other foods through shared surfaces that were not sanitized between uses.
The Longer Record
The June 2 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show 35 inspections on file for Spiros Taverna, with 292 total violations documented across that history.
The pattern of high-severity findings is consistent and recent. In December 2025, inspectors visited twice in two days. The first visit, on December 16, produced 10 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate violations. A follow-up the next day, December 17, still showed 2 high-severity violations remaining. In July 2025, an inspection logged 9 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. In May 2025, inspectors visited on consecutive days again: 9 high-severity violations on May 28, and 4 high-severity violations on May 29.
Going back further, the December 2024 inspection produced 9 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations. The July 2024 inspection cycle followed the same pattern: 10 high-severity and 8 intermediate violations on July 12, followed by 3 high-severity and 3 intermediate on July 15.
Eight of the last eight inspections on record produced high-severity violations. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
Still Open
State inspectors documented 8 high-severity violations at Spiros Taverna on June 2, 2026, including food from an unapproved source, shellfish with no traceability records, undercooked food, improperly stored toxic chemicals, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and no mechanism to keep sick employees out of the kitchen.
The restaurant was not closed.