ORLANDO, FL. State inspectors walked into Chens at 7350 Curry Ford Road on August 24 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, toxic chemicals improperly stored near food, and no written employee health policy to keep sick workers out of the kitchen. They cited 8 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate ones. Then they left the restaurant open.
What Inspectors Found
The food-sourcing violation is the one that most directly threatened anyone who ate at Chens that day. Food from unapproved or unknown suppliers has not passed USDA or FDA inspection. If a customer gets sick, there is no supply chain to trace, no lot number to pull, no distributor to contact. The origin of whatever made them ill simply does not exist in any record.
The chemical storage citation compounds that concern. Toxic chemicals stored or labeled improperly near food create a direct contamination path. The risk is not theoretical: a mislabeled cleaner used on a food-contact surface, or a chemical stored above an open prep area, can introduce acute poisons into a meal without anyone in the kitchen knowing it happened.
The absence of an employee health policy means there was nothing in writing requiring sick workers to stay home or report illness to management. That gap matters because Norovirus, one of the most common causes of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads primarily through infected food handlers.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of violations at Chens on August 24 represents nearly every layer of a restaurant's food safety system failing at once. The sourcing violation means the raw ingredients themselves may never have been inspected. The chemical storage violation means those ingredients could have been contaminated during prep. The handwashing technique citation means the people handling the food were not effectively removing pathogens even when they did wash their hands.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, cited here as a high-severity violation, are one of the most direct routes for bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat foods. When sanitizer concentration is also wrong, which the intermediate citation for improper sanitizing solution confirms, surfaces that appear clean are not actually safe.
The citation for time as a public health control not properly used means food was allowed to sit in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, longer than the rules permit, without the temperature documentation that would allow inspectors to verify it was safe. That violation, combined with the specialized processes citation, suggests procedures that require precise execution were not being followed with any documented accuracy.
Single-use items being reused, also cited here, adds one more contamination vector. Items designed to be discarded after one use, cups, foil, certain utensils, accumulate bacteria with each additional use in ways that standard washing does not address.
The Longer Record
Chens on Curry Ford Rd: Inspection History
August 2026 was not an off day. State records show Chens has been inspected 33 times and has accumulated 404 total violations. Every single inspection in the past three years has produced at least 6 high-severity citations. The worst single visit on record, September 2023, produced 11 high-severity and 7 intermediate violations.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed. Not once in 33 inspections.
The categories repeat. High-severity violations appear in every inspection listed in the records. The count fluctuates but never drops to a level that would suggest the underlying problems were resolved between visits. Six high one visit, eight the next, nine the one after that.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when an inspector determines that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. Eight high-severity violations at Chens on August 24, including food from an unknown source and toxic chemicals stored near food, did not meet that threshold.
The restaurant served customers that day, and the days after.
