BOCA RATON, FL. Toxic chemicals were stored improperly alongside food hazards at TooJay's Deli on Yamato Road during a September 9 inspection that turned up six high-severity violations and zero intermediate ones, yet the restaurant was never ordered to close.
The inspection found no person in charge present or performing duties, employees not reporting illness symptoms, inadequate handwashing facilities, improper handwashing technique, missing shellfish identification records, and the improperly stored toxic chemicals. Every single violation was rated high severity. Not one was minor.
What Inspectors Found
The chemical storage violation sits at the top of the list for a reason. Toxic substances stored near or improperly labeled around food preparation areas create a direct contamination path, and mislabeled chemicals have caused acute poisoning incidents when workers mistake them for food-safe products.
The shellfish violation compounds the picture. TooJay's serves deli food that can include shellfish items, and without proper shell stock identification tags and records, there is no way to trace oysters, clams, or mussels back to their source if a customer gets sick.
No person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties at the time of the inspection. That is not a paperwork issue. It is the condition that allows every other violation on this list to exist simultaneously.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting violation is the one that most directly touches anyone who ate at TooJay's in the days around September 9. Food workers who do not report symptoms of illness are the primary driver of multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus, in particular, spreads with devastating efficiency from a single symptomatic employee to dozens of customers through contaminated food. There is no way to know from the inspection record whether any employee was sick that day. The violation documents that the system requiring them to report it was not working.
The handwashing violations work together as a compounding failure. Inspectors cited both inadequate facilities and improper technique. That means even when an employee attempted to wash their hands, the physical setup was deficient, and the technique being used would not have reliably removed pathogens anyway. Studies consistently show that improper handwashing leaves enough contamination on hands to transmit illness through food contact.
The absence of any person in charge performing supervisory duties is what health researchers call a management control failure. CDC data shows that establishments without active managerial oversight accumulate critical violations at roughly three times the rate of those with engaged management. On September 9, every other violation on this list existed in a location where no one in authority was monitoring or correcting them.
The Pattern
This was not an anomalous bad day. The inspection record for this Yamato Road location stretches back 26 inspections and 112 total violations.
The visit on March 24, 2026, turned up six high-severity violations and one intermediate, an identical high-severity count to September's inspection. Before that, a January 28, 2025 inspection found four high-severity violations, followed by a clean inspection the next day. The location appears to cycle between serious findings and follow-up clearance visits without resolving the underlying conditions.
The most serious prior event came on July 30, 2025, when an inspector found roach activity and the state ordered an emergency closure. The restaurant reopened the following day after a follow-up inspection found three high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. That sequence, a closure for pest activity followed by a reopening that still carried high-severity violations, raises a specific question the record cannot answer: what changed between July 30 and July 31.
The Longer Record
The November 2024 inspection found four high-severity violations and one intermediate. The February 2024 visit found two high-severity and one intermediate. In eight documented inspections spanning roughly two years, this location has produced a clean result, meaning zero violations at any severity, exactly twice.
Those two clean inspections both immediately followed inspections that found serious violations. The July 31, 2025 clean result came one day after the emergency closure for roaches. The January 29, 2025 clean result came one day after four high-severity violations. The pattern of serious findings followed by same-day or next-day clearances is consistent across the record.
One hundred and twelve total violations across 26 inspections works out to an average of more than four violations per visit. The September 9 inspection, with six high-severity findings and nothing rated below that threshold, sits at the worse end of this location's documented range.
A follow-up inspection on September 10, the day after the six-violation visit, found one high-severity violation and none at the intermediate level. The restaurant had been open throughout.
