LADY LAKE, FL. Food from unapproved or unknown sources was among seven high-severity violations documented at Takis Greek Italian Restaurant on Highway 441 during a May 15 inspection, yet the Sumter County restaurant was not emergency-closed.
The inspection also found no written employee health policy, employees not reporting symptoms of illness, and no demonstrated allergen awareness, all in the same visit. State inspectors recorded seven high-severity and eight intermediate violations that day.
The restaurant remained open.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious an inspector can document. When food enters a kitchen from an unapproved or unknown source, it has bypassed USDA and FDA safety inspections entirely. If a customer gets sick, there is no supply chain to trace.
Alongside that finding, inspectors cited improper handwashing technique, meaning employees were attempting to wash their hands but doing it incorrectly. Studies show that flawed technique leaves enough pathogens on hands to contaminate food even when a worker believes they have washed.
Toxic substances were also found to be improperly identified, stored, or used. That violation creates a direct risk of chemical contamination of food or food-contact surfaces.
The Disease Transmission Cluster
Three of the seven high-severity violations at Takis on May 15 form what public health officials call a disease transmission cluster. No written employee health policy, no employee illness reporting, and improper handwashing technique each address the same pathway: a sick worker preparing food and serving it to customers without any systemic check in place.
Food workers who fail to report illness are the leading cause of multi-victim Norovirus outbreaks. Without a written health policy, there is no documented standard for what symptoms require a worker to stay home. Without correct handwashing technique, even a worker who tries to follow protocol can still transfer pathogens to food.
All three failures were present at the same time, in the same kitchen.
The allergen violation adds a separate layer of risk. Food allergies affect 32 million Americans and trigger approximately 30,000 emergency room visits annually. When kitchen staff cannot demonstrate allergen awareness, customers with serious allergies have no reliable way to assess whether a dish is safe.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sourcing and no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked items puts the most vulnerable diners, including elderly customers, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems, at compounded risk. They cannot make an informed choice about what they are eating if the menu carries no warning, and the food itself may have entered the building without any federal safety inspection.
The inadequate cooling equipment violation, classified as intermediate, compounds the temperature risk. Equipment that cannot maintain required cold-holding temperatures allows food to drift into the bacterial growth zone between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, where pathogens including Salmonella and E. coli can multiply rapidly.
Single-use items improperly reused and multi-use utensils not properly cleaned were also cited. Together with the improper sanitizing solution violation, those three intermediate findings suggest that contamination control across the kitchen was broadly failing on the day of the inspection, not isolated to one station or one worker.
Inadequate toilet facilities, also cited as intermediate, matter beyond basic comfort. When employee restroom access is compromised, proper handwashing before returning to food preparation becomes less likely.
The Longer Record
The May 15 inspection is not an anomaly. State records show Takis Greek Italian has accumulated 152 violations across 24 inspections on record, and the facility was emergency-closed once before, in August 2016, for roach activity. It reopened the following day.
The inspection history shows a pattern of high-severity violations recurring across multiple years. The August 2022 visit found eight high-severity and five intermediate violations. The June 2023 inspection found seven high-severity and two intermediate violations, a nearly identical profile to the May 2026 findings. The December 2024 visit found five high-severity violations.
In between those heavier inspections, lighter visits recorded one or two high-severity violations, suggesting the problems are not fully resolved between cycles but sometimes surface more severely than others.
The seven high-severity violations on May 15, 2026 match the second-highest single-inspection count in the facility's documented history, tied with June 2023 and trailing only the August 2022 visit. The restaurant has now recorded seven or more high-severity violations in a single inspection on three separate occasions.
After all of it, including 152 total violations, one emergency closure, and a decade of recurring high-severity findings, inspectors left Takis Greek Italian open on May 15.