DAYTONA BEACH, FL. Food was not cooked to the required minimum temperature at Stonewood Grill on LPGA Boulevard when state inspectors arrived on September 11, and that was not the only thing wrong.
Inspectors cited the restaurant for nine separate high-severity violations and three intermediate violations during that visit. The facility was not emergency-closed.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking citation is the most direct threat to anyone who ate at Stonewood Grill that day. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and pathogens in other proteins require sustained internal temperatures to be destroyed. A plate that looks finished is not necessarily safe.
Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled at the facility. Chemicals stored near or above food preparation surfaces can contaminate food through spills, mislabeling, or cross-contact, and the consequences can be acute.
The restaurant also had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. That disclosure exists specifically to warn customers who are elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised that certain menu items carry elevated risk. Without it, those customers have no way to make an informed choice.
Three more violations compounded the picture. Inspectors found that employees were not properly washing their hands, that food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and that multi-use utensils had not been properly cleaned. Each of those is a separate pathway for pathogens to reach a customer's plate.
The Management Collapse Behind the Numbers
Several of the nine high-severity violations point to the same underlying failure: no one was running the kitchen that day in any meaningful sense.
The person in charge was not present or not performing duties. The restaurant had no adequate employee health policy. Employees were not reporting symptoms of illness.
Those three violations together describe a kitchen operating without the basic oversight structure that food safety depends on. CDC data cited in the inspection records shows that establishments without active managerial control have three times as many critical violations as those with it. The September 11 inspection at Stonewood Grill did not find a single isolated lapse. It found a kitchen where the conditions for multiple simultaneous failures had been allowed to exist.
What These Violations Mean
The employee illness violations are worth reading carefully. A written health policy exists so that workers know they are required to report symptoms before they handle food. Without that policy, a sick employee has no formal instruction to stay home or alert a manager. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States annually, spreads readily through food handled by an infected worker.
The time-as-a-public-health-control violation adds a different layer of risk. When a kitchen uses time rather than temperature to keep food safe, it is operating under a specific protocol that requires precise tracking of how long food has been in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit. If that tracking breaks down, food that should have been discarded stays in service.
The improperly cleaned food contact surfaces and utensils violations matter because bacterial biofilms can develop on surfaces within 24 hours of inadequate cleaning. Those biofilms are resistant to standard sanitizers once established, meaning repeated light cleaning does not undo the contamination the way a proper wash-and-sanitize cycle would.
The toilet facility violation rounds out a picture of a restaurant where basic hygiene infrastructure was not being maintained, which in turn discourages proper handwashing by employees, the same handwashing that was already cited as improperly done.
The Longer Record
The September 11 inspection was not the first time Stonewood Grill accumulated this kind of citation list. State records show 32 inspections on file for this location, with 330 total violations across that history.
The pattern in the most recent inspections is consistent. In March 2026, inspectors returned twice in consecutive days: the first visit produced 11 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations; a follow-up the next day still found 5 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations. In September 2025, the restaurant drew 7 high-severity and 6 intermediate violations. In March 2025, it was 8 high-severity and 4 intermediate. The October 2024 follow-up inspection found 10 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations, one day after an initial inspection that itself found 5 high-severity violations.
Stonewood Grill: Recent Inspection History
No emergency closure has ever been ordered at this location across all 32 inspections on record. The violations documented on September 11 include undercooking, chemical storage failures, no illness policy, and no manager on duty.
The restaurant remained open.
