Jacksonville, Fla - If you're looking for Mexican and you're in Ponte Vedra, a popular local spot is Salsas Mexican restaurant. It's located in the busy Sawgrass Village shopping center. The state health inspector has been here several times in the last few weeks for repeat critical violations including ice cream in the freezer contaminated by blood from raw meat. You can see those reports by clicking
here and
here.
When we walked inside, we were greeted by the Assistant Manager, Roger Contreras. He showed us the freezer where the inspector found blood in the ice cream. "So you don't recall blood running into the ice cream?" Contreras replied, "I wasn't here at that time." Contreras says the ice cream never would have never been served to a customer anyway.
Other repeat violations at Salsas - a gap in the outside door leading into the kitchen. The inspector noted it needed to be fixed on several previous inspections. It has now been repaired.
The inspector also gave Salsas a critical violation for not having handsoap in the employee handwash sink on six different inspections in the last year, including the most recent.
Contreras told us, "You can check all of them. All of them have soap." We did check and they all had soap in the dispensers.
Contreras has this to say to customers, "If you guys decide not to come eat here that's your choice... but everything's OK we don't have no major problems that would affect people's health."
Other restaurants at the top of the list this week for violations are:
Anastasia Lanes in Saint Augustine Beach. An emergency order was issued and the bowling alley was shut down for a day by the inspector. 20 fresh rodent droppings and others were found in the kitchen. You can see that report
here.
The manager Denise tells us, "It was a situation we were unaware of because if was behind a storage cabinet. It has been cleaned and taken care of."
At
Tokyo Tai Restaurant in Saint Augustine the inspector found 25 violations, 18 critical including:
Personal fish stored with restaurant foods in the walk in cooler.
At
Cattlemens Real Pit BBQ the inspector found 22 violations, 15 critical including:
Live flies in the kitchen.
Here are the clean plate award winners this week. The following places received perfect health inspections:
VIC'S SANDWICH SHOP IN JACKSONVILLE
FIVE GUYS BURGERS AND FRIES ON APPLECROSS ROAD IN JACKSONVILLE
PEARL'S CATERING IN JACKSONVILLE
EAT-N-RUN CURBSIDE GRILL IN JACKSONVILLE
BIG D'S SMOKEHOUSE IN PALATKA
SURF CLUB PATIO IN PONTE VEDRA BEACH
THE SNACK BAR IN PONTE VEDRA BEACH
GOURMET SHOP IN PONTE VEDRA BEACH
