JACKSONVILLE, FL. An inspector visiting Spliff's Gastropub on East Forsyth Street on September 10 found toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled near food, employees not reporting illness symptoms, and no functioning management oversight, and then left the restaurant open to serve customers.
The inspection logged seven high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. Under Florida's food safety framework, high-severity citations carry the greatest direct risk of illness or injury. Spliff's collected all seven in a single visit.
What Inspectors Found
The chemical storage violation is among the most immediately dangerous a food-service inspector can cite. Cleaning agents, pesticides, and other toxic compounds stored near or above food preparation surfaces can contaminate food directly, and mislabeled chemicals can be mistaken for food-safe substances by employees. The consequences can include acute poisoning.
The illness-reporting failure compounds that risk. Employees who do not report symptoms, or who work through illness under a management structure that does not enforce reporting, are the most direct route through which norovirus and other pathogens reach customers. Inspectors also found that handwashing facilities were inadequate and that employees were not washing their hands correctly, meaning the basic physical barrier between sick employees and served food was not functioning.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch the food before it reaches a plate, were also cited as improperly cleaned or sanitized.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of violations documented at Spliff's on September 10 describes a kitchen where the standard defenses against foodborne illness had broken down at multiple points simultaneously. That is not a coincidence, and the management violation explains why.
When no person in charge is present or performing duties, the CDC data is clear: establishments in that condition accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with active managerial oversight. A manager enforces handwashing, pulls sick employees from service, and ensures chemicals are stored away from food. Without one, each of those individual safeguards tends to fail at once, which is exactly the pattern the September 10 inspection captured.
The sewage and waste water disposal violation adds a separate and serious layer. Improper sewage disposal creates the risk of fecal contamination throughout a facility, a risk that directly interacts with the handwashing failures already documented. Inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities discourage employees from washing their hands at all, closing a loop that the inspection record laid out in detail.
Customers who ate at Spliff's on or around September 10 and who are elderly, pregnant, immunocompromised, or very young faced the greatest exposure. The raw and undercooked food advisory violation meant those customers had no way of knowing which menu items carried elevated risk.
The Longer Record
The September 10 inspection was not an anomaly. Spliff's Gastropub has 24 inspections on record and 178 total violations across that history.
The most recent prior inspection, conducted on March 4, 2026, produced an identical tally: seven high-severity violations and three intermediate violations. The inspection six months before that, on September 3, 2025, yielded eight high-severity and four intermediate violations. The November 2024 inspection found nine high-severity violations. The pattern is not a restaurant catching a bad day. It is a restaurant that generates a cluster of serious violations, passes a follow-up inspection, and then returns to the same violation counts within months.
The prior emergency closure tells the rest of the story. On September 9, 2024, inspectors ordered Spliff's shut for roach activity. The restaurant passed re-inspection and reopened on September 13, 2024. The three inspections conducted during that closure window all showed zero or minimal high-severity violations. By November 2024, the count was back to nine.
Across four inspection cycles over roughly two years, Spliff's has produced high-severity violation totals of nine, seven, eight, and seven. The facility has also passed follow-up inspections after each cluster, which is how it has remained open. The September 10, 2026, inspection was not a follow-up. It was a routine visit, and the restaurant was not closed.
Open for Business
Florida's emergency closure authority exists for situations where inspectors determine a facility poses an immediate threat to public health. Seven high-severity violations, including toxic chemical storage near food and a complete failure of illness-reporting protocols, did not trigger that determination on September 10.
Spliff's Gastropub remained open after the inspection.
