APOPKA, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into Pho Que 91 on South Orange Blossom Trail and found roach activity serious enough to order the restaurant vacated on the spot.
The closure came on April 1. By 1:35 that afternoon, inspectors returned and cleared the restaurant to reopen, but not before documenting five additional violations during the follow-up visit, including food sourced from an unapproved or unknown supplier.
What Inspectors Found
Pho Que 91: Recent Inspection Pattern
The roach finding was the trigger for the emergency order, but the follow-up inspection that same afternoon turned up violations of its own. The most serious: food from an unapproved or unknown source, a high-priority citation that inspectors flagged alongside four intermediate-level violations.
Those intermediate violations covered a range of problems. Single-use items, such as gloves, cups, or utensils designed for one-time use, were being reused. Ventilation and lighting were inadequate. Wiping cloths were being used improperly. And toilet facilities were inadequate or improperly maintained.
What These Violations Mean
Roach activity is one of the most direct grounds for an emergency closure under Florida food safety rules. Live roaches in a food preparation or service environment can carry and deposit pathogens across surfaces, equipment, and food. A single roach crossing a cutting board or landing near open food is enough to transmit bacteria to customers. Inspectors do not wait for an infestation to grow before ordering a shutdown.
The food sourcing violation documented in the follow-up inspection carries a different but equally serious risk. When food enters a restaurant from an unapproved or unknown supplier, it has bypassed the federal and state inspection systems that screen for Listeria, Salmonella, and other pathogens. If a customer gets sick, investigators have no supply chain to trace.
Reusing single-use items creates contamination pathways that are easy to overlook but hard to control. A glove or container used a second time after contact with raw protein can transfer bacteria to ready-to-eat food. Improperly used wiping cloths work the same way, spreading rather than removing contaminants if they move between surfaces without sanitizing in between.
Inadequate toilet facilities may seem like a building maintenance issue, but in a food service context they directly undermine handwashing compliance by staff. That gap closes the loop between poor hygiene infrastructure and foodborne illness risk.
The Longer Record
The April 2026 closure was not the first time state regulators ordered Pho Que 91 to stop serving customers. The restaurant has accumulated two emergency closures across 23 inspections on record, with a total of 161 violations documented over its history at the 713 S. Orange Blossom Trail location.
The inspection log leading up to April reads as a consistent pattern of high-severity findings. In May 2024, inspectors cited seven high-severity violations in a single visit, the steepest single-visit count in the recent record. A follow-up that same month in June 2024 found three more high-severity violations. By October 2024, another inspection produced three high-severity citations.
The pace did not slow in 2025. A March inspection that year turned up three high-severity violations. A September visit found four. In each case, the restaurant was not closed, suggesting inspectors determined the findings did not meet the threshold for an emergency order at those moments. The April 2026 roach finding crossed that line.
What the record shows across those 23 inspections is a facility that has cycled through high-severity citations repeatedly, corrected enough to pass follow-up visits, and then accumulated new serious violations at the next routine inspection. The categories shift, but the severity level does not.
After the Closure
The April 1 timeline moved quickly. Inspectors ordered the restaurant vacated, pest control or cleaning work was done, and a follow-up inspection cleared Pho Que 91 to reopen the same day, at 1:35 p.m. The restaurant is licensed for permanent food service.
The five violations documented during that follow-up inspection, including the unapproved food source finding, were on record as of the reopening. Whether those violations were corrected before service resumed, or flagged for a subsequent visit, is not reflected in the data available for this report.