JACKSONVILLE, FL. State inspectors ordered Bo Sushi on Old St. Augustine Road shut down on April 28 after documenting roach activity inside the restaurant, triggering an emergency closure that required the facility to vacate by April 29.
The restaurant, located in a shopping center at 13820 Old St. Augustine Rd., Suite 145, reopened later on April 29 after a follow-up inspection. That reinspection found one remaining high-severity violation, a citation for food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized.
What Inspectors Found
Bo Sushi: Recent Inspection Severity
The April 28 inspection produced nine high-severity violations and four intermediate violations. Roach activity was the finding that crossed the threshold for an emergency shutdown order.
The reinspection on April 29 cleared most of those violations. The single remaining high-severity citation involved food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, a finding inspectors documented even after the closure had been resolved.
What This Means
Roach activity inside a food service facility is one of the conditions Florida regulators treat as an immediate public health hazard, serious enough to justify pulling a restaurant's right to operate the same day inspectors walk out the door. Roaches move between drains, trash, raw food, and food preparation surfaces without any barrier. Every surface they cross becomes a potential transfer point for bacteria including Salmonella and E. coli.
For a sushi restaurant, the risk is compounded. Much of what Bo Sushi serves is raw or minimally processed, meaning there is no cooking step to kill bacteria that might be introduced through pest contamination. A customer eating raw fish at a table where roaches have been active on prep surfaces has no thermal safety net.
The food contact surface violation that survived into the April 29 reinspection adds a layer of concern. Improperly cleaned and sanitized surfaces, cutting boards, prep counters, utensils, are the primary mechanism by which bacteria move from one food to another. At a sushi operation, that means bacteria from one protein can reach another without any visible sign that contamination has occurred.
The Pattern
This closure was not a sudden finding at an otherwise clean restaurant. The April 28 shutdown was the second emergency closure in Bo Sushi's documented history with state inspectors.
The facility has accumulated 251 total violations across 33 inspections on record. That volume, spread across three-plus years of documented visits, reflects a restaurant that has cycled repeatedly through serious citations without sustaining a clean record.
The inspection immediately before this closure, on February 10, 2026, produced three high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. The visit before that, in November 2025, found five high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. The pattern extends further: August 2025 produced eight high-severity violations and one intermediate, numbers that mirror the scale of the April 28 inspection that ultimately triggered the shutdown.
The facility did pass two inspections in the fall of 2024, recording zero high-severity violations in both September and December of that year. But December 10, 2024, a separate visit the day before the passing score, had produced five high-severity violations and one intermediate. The clean reinspection the following day cleared those findings, but the underlying cycle, serious violations followed by a passing reinspection, has repeated itself across nearly every quarter since.
The Longer Record
Bo Sushi's 33 inspections on record and 251 total violations place it among facilities where the inspection file itself tells a story. The prior emergency closure, before April 28, means regulators have now twice determined conditions inside this restaurant posed an immediate enough risk to customers that the facility could not remain open.
The gap between the two closures is notable. A facility that earns a second emergency closure has, by definition, resolved the first one, passed reinspection, and then returned to conditions serious enough to warrant another shutdown. The inspection record shows that the periods between closures were not clean ones. High-severity violation counts of eight and nine appeared in consecutive inspection cycles even before roach activity brought inspectors back to the closure threshold.
The one remaining high-severity violation documented on April 29, after the restaurant had already been closed and cleaned, is the detail the record leaves unresolved. Food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized is the citation that survived the overnight remediation effort. Whether that violation was corrected before service resumed is not reflected in the data available.
Bo Sushi was licensed to operate as a permanent food service facility and had reopened by 11:29 a.m. on April 29. The inspection file, with 251 violations across 33 visits and two emergency closures, will be updated as regulators continue routine oversight of the facility.