WEST PALM BEACH, FL. A restaurant on Okeechobee Boulevard had no written employee health policy, no system for tracking where its shellfish came from, and no consumer advisory telling diners they were being served raw or undercooked food, all in the same inspection week.
State inspectors cited Mr. Mack Island Grill at 2400 Okeechobee Blvd for six high-severity violations during the week of May 6, 2026, the highest total among three West Palm Beach restaurants flagged for serious food safety failures in that period.
What Inspectors Found at Mr. Mack Island Grill
The six high-severity violations at Mr. Mack Island Grill covered the core failure points that inspectors treat as the most direct routes to a customer getting sick. The restaurant had no adequate employee health policy, meaning there was no written system requiring workers to report illness symptoms before handling food.
A separate violation noted that an employee was not reporting symptoms of illness, which is not a paperwork problem but an active one. Inspectors also cited improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning that even when workers attempted to wash their hands, the method left pathogens behind.
The shellfish violations compounded the picture. The restaurant had inadequate shell stock identification records, which means inspectors could not verify where the oysters, clams, or mussels served there came from. A second shellfish-related violation noted the absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods, leaving customers with no warning that what they ordered carried elevated risk.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for improper use of time as a public health control. When a kitchen uses time rather than temperature to manage food safety, food is allowed to sit in the temperature danger zone for a defined period before being discarded. The violation means that system was not being followed correctly.
A seventh violation, classified as intermediate, involved single-use items being reused.
Los Catrachos and Eatalia
Los Catrachos Restaurant at 4654 Gun Club Rd drew three high-severity violations and two intermediate citations during the same inspection week. The most foundational of the high-severity findings was that the person in charge was either not present or not performing their duties.
The restaurant also had inadequate shell stock identification records, the same shellfish traceability failure documented at Mr. Mack Island Grill. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, a violation that inspectors flag as a primary vehicle for bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat foods.
Both intermediate violations at Los Catrachos involved cleaning failures. Multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned, and single-use items were being reused, the same intermediate violation cited at Mr. Mack Island Grill.
Eatalia at 7750 Okeechobee Blvd was cited for two high-severity violations and no intermediate violations. The person in charge was not present or not performing duties, and an employee was not reporting symptoms of illness.
That second violation, the failure to report illness symptoms, connects Eatalia directly to Mr. Mack Island Grill. Both restaurants had workers who, according to inspection records, were not following the reporting requirement that is the first line of defense against a foodborne illness outbreak.
What These Violations Mean
The employee illness violations at Mr. Mack Island Grill and Eatalia are not procedural findings. A food worker with Norovirus who handles ready-to-eat food can infect dozens of customers in a single shift. Norovirus is the leading cause of multi-victim foodborne outbreaks in the United States, and the primary transmission route in restaurant settings is an infected employee who did not report symptoms and was not removed from food handling duties.
At Mr. Mack Island Grill, the problem was layered. There was no written health policy, and an employee was not reporting symptoms. The absence of a policy means there is no documented standard workers are trained to follow, and no record that management has established one.
The shellfish traceability violations at both Mr. Mack Island Grill and Los Catrachos carry a specific risk that goes beyond the individual meal. Shellfish are filter feeders that concentrate bacteria and viruses from the water they grow in, including Vibrio and hepatitis A. Tag records are required so that if customers become ill, investigators can trace the harvest location and pull product from the same source. Without those records at either restaurant, that traceability chain is broken.
The absence of a person in charge at Los Catrachos and Eatalia is not a technicality. CDC data cited in the inspection records indicates that establishments without active managerial control have three times more critical violations than those with a manager actively overseeing operations. When no one is in charge, the violations documented at both restaurants during this week are consistent with what that gap produces.
The Longer Record
Mr. Mack Island Grill has 50 prior inspections on record, the most of any facility in this week's findings. Six high-severity violations in a single week, after five decades of inspection history, raises a straightforward question about whether the most serious categories of failure have been addressed across that record.
Los Catrachos Restaurant has 38 prior inspections on record. The combination of a missing person in charge, shellfish traceability failures, and unsanitized food contact surfaces in the same inspection visit, at a facility with that many inspections behind it, suggests these are not first-time discoveries.
Eatalia has 23 prior inspections on record, the fewest of the three. Two high-severity violations at a relatively newer location in its inspection history, including the employee illness reporting failure, indicates the restaurant is accumulating serious citations early in its record.
Across all three facilities, the shellfish traceability violation appeared at two of them in the same week. Mr. Mack Island Grill and Los Catrachos both lacked adequate shell stock identification records, and neither had a prior inspection record short enough to explain the gap as an oversight by a new operator.
The employee illness reporting failure appeared at both Mr. Mack Island Grill and Eatalia. Mr. Mack Island Grill compounded that violation with the absence of any written health policy at all, meaning the reporting failure was not a deviation from a documented standard but an absence of one entirely. As of the inspection records available for this week, that policy had not been documented at the restaurant.