NEW SMYRNA BEACH, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into Touch of Italy Inc. on S. Atlantic Avenue and found employees who were not reporting illness symptoms to management, a violation inspectors flag as one of the most direct routes to a multi-victim outbreak. That citation was one of six high-severity violations documented during the April 9 inspection. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The April 9 inspection produced 10 total violations: six high-severity and four intermediate. The high-severity list covered nearly every major risk category in a food service operation, from sick workers and unsanitary surfaces to mislabeled food and chemicals stored where they could contaminate a meal.
Inspectors found the restaurant had no written employee health policy, or an inadequate one, and separately documented that at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms as required. Those two violations are listed independently in state records because they represent two distinct failures: one is a structural gap in management, the other is an active, ongoing risk.
The citation for food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized compounds the illness risk. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that carry bacteria from one food to the next are among the most common sources of cross-contamination in a kitchen. Inspectors also cited food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated, a finding that raises traceability concerns if a customer reports getting sick.
Toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled rounded out the high-severity findings. Chemicals stored near food or without proper labeling create a poisoning risk that is distinct from bacterial illness and can produce immediate acute symptoms.
The restaurant also lacked a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods on its menu, leaving customers with compromised immune systems, pregnant women, and elderly diners without the information they need to make an informed choice.
What These Violations Mean
The pairing of no health policy and an employee not reporting symptoms is the violation combination most directly linked to multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus, which causes the majority of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads through exactly this mechanism: a sick worker with no protocol requiring them to stay home, handling food that goes directly to customers. A single infected employee can expose dozens of diners in a single shift.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly sanitized extend that risk. If a cutting board or prep surface carries bacterial contamination from raw protein and is not cleaned between uses, every item prepared on that surface becomes a potential vehicle. At Touch of Italy, both the human vector and the surface vector were flagged on the same inspection date.
Improperly stored chemicals near food represent a separate and faster-acting danger. Contamination from a cleaning agent or pesticide does not require hours of bacterial growth. It can cause acute illness in the same meal. The intermediate citation for improper waste disposal matters too, because accumulated waste is what draws the cockroaches that have already forced this restaurant to close three times.
The Longer Record
The April 9 inspection did not represent a new low for Touch of Italy. It represented a continuation of a pattern that state records have documented across 50 inspections and 406 total violations.
The restaurant was emergency-closed for roach activity in July 2022, again for roach and fly activity in July 2023, and again for roach activity in October 2024. Each time, it passed a follow-up inspection within a day and reopened. The October 2024 follow-up inspection recorded zero violations. Three months later, the pattern resumed.
Since the start of 2025, inspectors have visited the restaurant at least seven times. The December 18, 2025 inspection produced nine high-severity and four intermediate violations, the worst single-visit total in the recent record. A follow-up inspection the next day, December 19, still found five high-severity violations. The April 9, 2026 inspection came four months after that.
The April 13 follow-up to the April 9 inspection reduced the count to three high-severity and three intermediate violations. That is an improvement on paper. It is also the fourth time in roughly 16 months that inspectors have returned to this address to verify corrections that should not have been needed in the first place.
Still Open
State inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Touch of Italy on April 9, 2026, including an employee not reporting illness symptoms and food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned. The restaurant was not emergency-closed.
It remained open to customers on S. Atlantic Avenue in New Smyrna Beach.