ORLANDO, FL. State inspectors ordered Pho Vinh on N Primrose Drive closed on September 28 after finding live roach activity inside the restaurant, the third emergency closure at this address since February 2023.
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation gave the restaurant until September 29 to vacate. Pho Vinh passed a follow-up inspection and reopened at 10:44 a.m. the following morning.
What Inspectors Found
Pho Vinh: Recent Inspection Severity
The September 28 inspection turned up 8 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations. Roach activity was the finding that triggered the closure order.
The follow-up inspection on September 29 showed significant improvement, but two high-severity violations and two intermediate violations remained at the time of reopening. Those outstanding violations included improper hand and arm washing technique and food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized.
Two intermediate violations also carried over: improper sewage or waste water disposal and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
Live roach activity in a food service environment is one of the conditions Florida law treats as an immediate threat to public health, which is why inspectors have authority to close a restaurant on the spot. Roaches travel between sewage, trash, and food preparation surfaces, spreading pathogens including Salmonella and E. coli. A customer eating at Pho Vinh on September 28 had no way of knowing insects had been documented in the kitchen.
The handwashing violation that remained on the follow-up inspection compounds that risk. Improper technique, even when an employee goes through the motion of washing, leaves pathogens on hands that then transfer directly to food. It is not a paperwork violation. It is a direct transmission route from a contaminated surface to a customer's bowl.
Food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, also still present at reopening, are a primary vehicle for bacterial transfer. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that carry residue from one food to the next can spread contamination across an entire prep line.
The sewage disposal violation is the most acute of the intermediate findings. Improper waste water handling creates the possibility of fecal contamination spreading through a facility, a risk that does not resolve on its own between inspections.
The Pattern
This was not a restaurant caught off guard by an unexpected finding. Pho Vinh has accumulated 309 violations across 24 inspections on record, an average of nearly 13 violations per inspection visit.
The March 2024 inspection produced 9 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate violations, the worst single-visit count in the recent record. September 2024 brought 5 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations. January 2026 added 6 high-severity violations.
The only clean inspection in the recent history was November 6, 2025, a single visit with zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. It came one day after a November 5 inspection that found 2 high-severity and 2 intermediate violations, a pattern consistent with a facility that corrects problems for the follow-up and then reverts.
The Longer Record
The September 28 closure was the second emergency shutdown at Pho Vinh in less than four years. The first came on February 23, 2023, when inspectors found roach and rodent activity. That closure lasted one day. The restaurant reopened February 24, 2023.
Three and a half years later, inspectors returned and found roaches again.
The two prior emergency closures, combined with the 309 total violations across 24 inspections, place Pho Vinh in a category beyond routine non-compliance. The same category of violation, pest activity, has now triggered two separate shutdown orders at this address. The January 2026 inspection, which found 6 high-severity violations roughly eight months before this closure, did not result in a shutdown but showed the facility was not operating cleanly between enforcement actions.
Pho Vinh reopened the morning of September 29 with two high-severity violations still on the books.
