SOUTH PASADENA, FL. State inspectors ordered Hong Kong at 2525 Pasadena Ave S closed on May 14 after finding roach activity inside the restaurant, the third emergency closure at the location since records began.
The closure order required the restaurant to vacate by May 15. A follow-up inspection that same day found three remaining high-severity violations and one intermediate violation, and the restaurant was permitted to reopen at 11:25 a.m.
What Inspectors Found
Hong Kong: Recent Inspection Severity
The closure on May 14 logged four high-severity violations alongside the roach activity finding. The inspection the following morning, the callback visit that would determine whether the restaurant could reopen, still turned up three high-severity violations: improper hand and arm washing technique, food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, and no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods.
The ventilation and lighting citation, classified as intermediate, rounded out the May 15 findings.
What These Violations Mean
Roach activity is among the handful of conditions Florida law treats as grounds for immediate closure without warning. Roaches are documented carriers of salmonella, E. coli, and other pathogens. They move between sewage, garbage, and food preparation surfaces, and a single live roach observed near food or equipment is considered evidence of an active infestation, not an isolated incident.
The handwashing violation documented on May 15 compounds that concern directly. Improper technique means that even when an employee goes through the motion of washing their hands, the pathogens are not being removed. In a kitchen where roach activity has just been confirmed, the handwashing station is the primary barrier between contamination and the customer's plate. A technique failure collapses that barrier.
Food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized is the second leg of the same problem. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that carry bacteria from one food item to the next are a primary vehicle for cross-contamination. Combined with active pest activity and a handwashing failure, the picture the inspector documented on May 15 was not a kitchen that had fully corrected the conditions that triggered the closure the day before.
The missing consumer advisory is a separate category of risk. Without a posted notice, customers who are elderly, pregnant, immunocompromised, or otherwise vulnerable have no way of knowing that a dish contains raw or undercooked proteins. That information gap is especially significant in a seafood-forward restaurant.
The Pattern
The May 14 closure was not the first time state regulators have ordered Hong Kong shut down. In September 2019, inspectors closed the restaurant for rodent activity. It reopened the following day.
That 2019 closure came after a documented history of serious violations. The pattern did not stop there. In October 2023, inspectors cited eight high-severity violations in a single visit. The following September, in 2024, that number climbed to nine high-severity violations. December 2025 brought seven high-severity violations and four intermediate ones.
Every inspection in the eight most recent visits on record produced at least two high-severity violations. Not one visit in that stretch came back clean.
The Longer Record
Across 33 inspections on record, Hong Kong has accumulated 345 total violations. That averages out to more than 10 violations per inspection visit, a figure that reflects consistent and recurring findings rather than a single bad stretch.
The two prior emergency closures, one for rodent activity in 2019 and now one for roach activity in 2026, bracket a seven-year period during which the facility's inspection scores showed no sustained improvement. The September 2024 inspection, which turned up nine high-severity violations, came less than a year before the December 2025 visit that produced seven more. The May 2026 closure followed five months after that.
Facilities with this kind of history tend to show one of two patterns in state records: a genuine turnaround, where violation counts drop sharply and stay low across multiple consecutive inspections, or a cycle of closure, correction, and relapse. The eight most recent inspections at Hong Kong show the latter.
The restaurant was permitted to reopen on the morning of May 15. Three high-severity violations remained on the books at the time inspectors cleared it.