The Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation (FL DBPR) shut down the Market Street Cafe (701 Front St.) today for health code violations. The report is available on the State’s web site. I’ll wait if you want to check it out.

Back? Ok, a few thoughts. Generally wouldn’t post this kind of thing here. As a resident of Celebration, these kinds of things reflect negatively on the community; publishing about them even more so. But it is part of my experience here in Celebration, and perhaps some good will eventually come of it, so I’m letting the filter down for tonight.

First: from what I understand, the bar is kinda high to force a restaurant to close its doors.
Second: there’s a pattern of poor practices, judging from history available on the FL DBPR web site. Inspections this year on 2/11, 4/14, and 6/17 required follow-up inspections.
Third: health-wise, they’re out of their league vs the other eating establishments in Celebration. Some of the other restaurants here have violations, but not with the same frequency as the Cafe, and as far as I’ve been able to research, none that have closed the doors. They’ve been inspected every 2 months since February.
Fourth: food-wise, they’re also out of their league vs Celebration. This is more subject to personal opinion (I’m not a diner person), but there are pages and pages of complaints on the internal Celebration resident message boards about food and service at the Cafe.
Fifth: who are the owners? Do they not know? Do they know and not care? Do they know and care, but not know how to fix it?
Sixth: what of the landlord, Lexin Capital? This casts a shadow on all the other businesses here, which if left unchecked makes the downtown less desirable, thus increasing vacancies and driving down rents.
Seventh: am I hearing the true story? My primary venue for Celebration chatter is the internal forum, which, as I mentioned, is only open to residents. Perhaps tourists think the Cafe is the best thing to happen since the moon landing but aren’t sharing those experiences in places that I’d see them.

So what now? Will Management paint over the problem and go about business as usual, or will fundamental changes be made? Will any heads roll? What can residents do, besides voting with their wallets… the effects of which are unknown because of the tourist element?

I don’t have any answers. But I also don’t run a restaurant.

Update 2009-Oct-28: Reports are that they’re open for business today.