ISLAMORADA, FL. When state inspectors walked into Wahoo's Bar and Grille at 83413 Overseas Hwy on June 3, they found food not cooked to the minimum required temperature, toxic substances improperly stored, and no functioning system to keep sick employees away from the food being prepared for customers. They cited six high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. Then they left, and the restaurant stayed open.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking violation is the one that most directly put customers at risk. State code sets minimum internal temperatures for a reason: Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit and can cause severe illness within hours of ingestion. The inspection record does not specify which item was undercooked, but the citation stands as a high-severity finding.
Inspectors also found toxic substances improperly identified, stored, or used, a violation that carries an immediate risk of chemical contamination of food or food-preparation surfaces. That finding, alongside improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, meant customers may have been exposed to both biological and chemical hazards on the same visit.
The remaining high-severity violations built on each other. The restaurant had no written employee health policy, and at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms. Those two findings together represent a direct route for Norovirus transmission, the pathogen behind the majority of foodborne illness outbreaks traced to restaurants in the United States. There was also no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items, meaning customers with compromised immune systems, elderly diners, pregnant women, and young children had no way to make an informed choice about what they ordered.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of undercooking and no consumer advisory is particularly significant. Florida requires restaurants that serve raw or undercooked animal products to post a visible advisory so customers can weigh their own risk. Without it, a pregnant woman or an immunocompromised diner has no warning before ordering a dish that could send them to the hospital.
The employee illness violations are, in some ways, the most structurally dangerous findings in the June 3 report. A written health policy is not a formality; it is the mechanism that gives workers both the instruction and the permission to stay home when they are sick. Without that policy in place at Wahoo's, there was no documented standard governing whether a worker with Norovirus symptoms should be preparing food or not.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, cited as a separate high-severity violation, compound the illness risk. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that are not properly sanitized between uses transfer bacteria and viruses directly from one food item to the next. Pair that with inadequate cold-holding equipment, which was flagged at the intermediate level, and the conditions for bacterial growth were present on multiple fronts simultaneously.
The toilet facility violation may seem minor by comparison, but inspectors flag it specifically because inadequate restroom infrastructure discourages handwashing by employees, a handwashing failure being one of the most direct vectors for spreading illness from person to food.
The Longer Record
Wahoo's Bar and Grille: Recent Inspection Pattern
June 3 was not an aberration. State records show Wahoo's has accumulated 262 total violations across 29 inspections on record. In every inspection going back to at least March 2023, the restaurant has drawn multiple high-severity citations.
The October 2025 inspection produced the identical high-severity count as June 3, six high violations and two intermediate. The April 2024 inspection recorded five high violations and three intermediate. The pattern is not one of a restaurant occasionally slipping; it is one of a restaurant that consistently generates serious findings and continues operating.
In none of those 29 inspections has the state ordered an emergency closure.
The June 3 report added six more high-severity violations to that total, including one for food not cooked to the required minimum temperature and one for toxic substances mishandled in the kitchen. Wahoo's Bar and Grille remained open after inspectors left.
