FLEMING ISLAND, FL. Inspectors visiting Tijuana Flats Burrito Co. at 1647 CR 220 on September 28 found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning that food had bypassed USDA and FDA safety inspections entirely before reaching customers' plates. The restaurant was not closed.
The visit turned up seven high-severity violations and four intermediate ones, a total of eleven citations at a facility that has now accumulated 185 violations across 25 inspections on record.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation is among the most serious an inspector can document. When food enters a kitchen outside regulated supply chains, there is no paper trail if a customer gets sick, and no way to trace an outbreak back to a specific lot, farm, or distributor.
Alongside that, inspectors found the restaurant had no written employee health policy and documented that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness. Those two violations together describe a kitchen where a worker could come in sick with Norovirus and there would be no formal mechanism requiring them to disclose it or stay home.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique, meaning workers were making handwashing attempts that still left pathogens on their hands. Combined with food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned or sanitized, the conditions for cross-contamination were documented at multiple points in the kitchen's workflow.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled, a violation that carries the risk of acute poisoning if a chemical contaminates food or is misidentified during food prep. Inspectors also noted the absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods, leaving diners with no notice that certain menu items carried additional risk.
On the intermediate tier, inspectors found inadequate cooling and cold holding equipment, improper sewage or wastewater disposal, single-use items being reused, and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and no illness reporting is not a paperwork problem. It is the documented precondition for a multi-victim outbreak. Food workers are the number one source of Norovirus transmission in restaurant settings, and a written health policy is the primary tool for keeping symptomatic workers out of the kitchen. At this Fleming Island location, neither safeguard was in place on September 28.
The food from unapproved sources violation adds a separate layer of risk. Regulated supply chains exist so that if Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli contamination is detected anywhere in a food lot, health authorities can identify which restaurants received that food and act quickly. Food that enters outside those channels cannot be recalled. If a customer got sick, investigators would have nowhere to start.
Improperly stored chemicals near food is a violation that can cause harm immediately and invisibly. A mislabeled container or a chemical stored above a prep surface does not require a pattern of behavior to hurt someone. It requires one mistake.
The inadequate cold holding equipment citation compounds the temperature risk. A unit that cannot maintain required temperatures does not announce itself to kitchen staff. Food can sit in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, without anyone in the kitchen knowing it.
The Longer Record
The September 28 inspection was not an anomaly. The facility has 25 inspections on record and 185 total violations, and the pattern across the most recent eight inspections is consistent.
The August 2023 inspection produced seven high-severity violations and four intermediate ones, an identical count to the September 2026 visit. The January 2025 inspection found six high-severity violations. The July 2024 and January 2024 inspections each found five high-severity violations paired with four intermediate ones.
The facility has never been emergency-closed across all 25 inspections on record.
The Pattern
What the history shows is not a restaurant that had one bad inspection. It is a restaurant that has produced high-severity violation counts in the range of four to seven on every documented visit going back to at least 2022, with no emergency closure at any point.
The January 2026 inspection, the most recent before September, found two high-severity violations and one intermediate, the lowest count in the recent record. Three inspections later, in terms of the data available, the facility was back to seven high-severity violations.
The September 28 inspection left Tijuana Flats Burrito Co. open for business.
