WEST PALM BEACH, FL. A food worker at Bull Top Taste Restaurant on 45th Street was not reporting symptoms of illness to management, according to state inspection records from September 8, 2026. That single violation is among the most direct routes by which foodborne illness spreads from a kitchen to a dining room.
The restaurant collected six high-severity violations during that visit. Not one was intermediate or basic. And the restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector documented that the restaurant had no adequate employee health policy, meaning there was no written protocol directing sick workers to stay out of the kitchen or report symptoms before their shift. A separate violation noted that at least one employee was, in fact, not reporting illness symptoms.
Those two violations together describe the same breakdown from two directions: no system to catch sick workers, and a sick worker the system failed to catch.
The inspector also cited improper handwashing technique. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, a violation that creates a direct transfer path for bacteria between prep sessions, between proteins, and between raw and ready-to-eat food.
Shellfish identification records were inadequate. Oysters, clams, and mussels served at the restaurant could not be traced to their harvest source. And toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled near food.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting violation is not a paperwork problem. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads through the hands of infected food workers onto surfaces and directly into food. A single sick employee working a full shift can expose dozens of customers. At Bull Top Taste, the inspector found both the absence of a policy designed to prevent that scenario and an employee actively not following the standard the policy would have required.
Improper handwashing technique compounds the risk. Studies have shown that most people who believe they are washing their hands correctly are not scrubbing long enough or covering all surfaces. In a commercial kitchen, that means pathogens survive the sink and travel to the next surface touched.
The shellfish traceability violation carries a different kind of danger. Oysters, clams, and mussels are filter feeders that concentrate bacteria and viruses, including Vibrio and hepatitis A, from the water they grow in. When harvest records go missing or are never kept, there is no way to trace an illness back to a contaminated harvest lot, no way to issue a recall, and no way to warn other customers who may have eaten from the same batch.
Toxic chemicals stored near or improperly labeled around food areas create acute poisoning risk. Mislabeled containers mean a worker can mistake a cleaning agent for a food-safe product. Improperly stored chemicals can contaminate food through proximity, spill, or spray drift.
The Longer Record
The September 8 inspection was not the first time Bull Top Taste has drawn serious citations. State records show 20 inspections on file for the restaurant, with 79 total violations documented across that history.
The March 2026 inspection, six months before this one, produced the same result: six high-severity violations, zero intermediate. The September 2024 inspection logged four high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. The March 2024 inspection found five high-severity violations.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. It passed a clean inspection in December 2025, three months after a September 2025 visit that found one high-severity violation, and three months before the March 2026 inspection that matched this week's total.
That pattern, a clean visit followed within months by a cluster of serious violations, has repeated itself across multiple inspection cycles. The December 2025 passing inspection sits between two inspections that each produced six high-severity citations.
Still Open
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when violations pose an immediate threat to public health. That order was not issued on September 8, 2026, despite six high-severity violations that included an employee not reporting illness, no written health policy, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and toxic chemicals stored without proper labeling.
Bull Top Taste at 3111 45th Street remained open after the inspection.
