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Jacksonville Beach restaurant shut down for roaches, blames lightning strike

A Jacksonville Beach restaurant claimed on social media it was shut down for several days because of a lightning strike, but that’s not what inspection reports show.

Gusto Italian Restaurant posted twice on Facebook that a lightning strike affected its coolers, forcing the restaurant to temporarily shut its doors last week.

The Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation inspection reports last week show inspectors shut Gusto down because more than a dozen live roaches and more than 40 dead roaches were found at the restaurant.

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Inspectors reported they found roaches crawling under the pizza oven, under the sink, behind clean dishes and more.

The DBPR forced the restaurant to close from Wednesday until Saturday.

Action News Jax asked Gusto Italian Restaurant co-owner and business manager Walter Bianchi if the business’s Facebook posts were misleading.

“In hindsight, yes. But I remind you that the moment in which that was posted – and again, we use a social media guru who does all these things for us -- at the moment in time, that’s all we knew. We had not yet observed any infestation,” said Bianchi.

The first inspection where roaches were found was dated June 12; Action News Jax pointed out to Bianchi that the restaurant’s Facebook posts blaming a lightning strike were on June 15 and 16.

“We did not update as frequently as we should have. Once that became known, we should have updated. We didn’t. And that was my mistake,” said Bianchi.

Bianchi said every nook and cranny of the restaurant was resealed, sanitized and fumigated.

Inspection reports show Gusto is also operating with an expired Divisions of Hotels and Restaurants license.

Bianchi said the restaurant paid to renew its license after our interview.

The restaurant is back open and is having its three-year anniversary party Tuesday night.

A DBPR spokesperson confirmed that the agency also got an anonymous complaint about a roach infestation at the restaurant in 2016. Inspectors went out there a few days later and found dead roaches and rodent droppings.