JACKSONVILLE, FL. A state inspector visiting St. Marys Seafood & More on Point Meadows Way on August 13 found that the restaurant was serving food from unapproved or unknown sources, meaning some of what landed on customers' plates had bypassed federal safety inspections entirely.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction citation is particularly pointed at a seafood restaurant. State rules require that fish served raw or undercooked be frozen to specific temperatures for specific durations, a process that kills parasites like Anisakis roundworm and tapeworm that can survive in raw or improperly handled fish. Records show those procedures were not being followed.
The inspector also cited the restaurant for not cooking food to required minimum temperatures, and for having no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked items. That advisory is the last line of warning for customers, particularly pregnant women, the elderly, and anyone with a weakened immune system, who face the highest risk from undercooked seafood.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled, and food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Two intermediate violations covered improper sewage or wastewater disposal and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
Food from unapproved sources is not a paperwork problem. When a restaurant buys seafood or other products outside licensed, inspected suppliers, there is no traceability. If a customer gets sick, investigators cannot trace the product back to a source, cannot issue a recall, and cannot determine how many other people were exposed. At a seafood restaurant, that gap is especially serious.
The parasite destruction failure compounds the risk. Anisakis, a roundworm found in marine fish, causes severe abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting and can require surgical removal if it embeds in the stomach lining. Proper freezing kills it. Without documented parasite destruction procedures, customers eating fish at St. Marys had no protection beyond whatever cooking was applied, and the undercooking violation suggests that cooking was not consistently reaching required temperatures either.
Improperly stored or unlabeled chemicals near food create a separate and acute hazard. Mislabeled cleaning compounds have been mistaken for food-safe products and caused acute poisoning. The combination of that violation with unsanitized food contact surfaces means customers could have been exposed to chemical residue and bacterial transfer from the same surfaces.
The sewage disposal violation adds a fecal contamination risk to a facility already struggling with food safety fundamentals.
The Longer Record
August 13 was not an anomaly. State records show 33 inspections on file for St. Marys Seafood & More, with 213 total violations accumulated across that history.
The pattern in recent years is consistent and serious. In October 2024, inspectors cited nine high-severity violations. In March 2025, eight high-severity violations. In August 2025, six high-severity violations. In February 2026, another round of six high-severity violations, followed by a re-inspection in early February that brought the count down briefly, and a clean inspection later that month. Now, six months later, the count is back to six high-severity violations.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. That fact sits alongside a record that includes at least six separate inspections, spread across three years, each documenting six or more high-severity violations.
Still Open
Florida's inspection system gives inspectors discretion to order an emergency closure when a facility poses an immediate threat to public health. The standard is not simply a high violation count. It accounts for the nature of the violations, the inspector's assessment of immediate risk, and other factors not always visible in the public record.
What the public record does show is this: on August 13, 2026, an inspector walked into St. Marys Seafood & More and found food from unknown sources, fish being served without parasite destruction controls, food not reaching required cooking temperatures, no warning posted for customers eating raw or undercooked items, chemicals improperly stored, and surfaces that had not been properly sanitized.
The restaurant remained open.
