KEY WEST, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into Azur Restaurant on Grinell Street and documented that the kitchen was serving food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means no safety inspection trail exists for whatever was on the plate.
That was one of eight high-severity violations cited during the April 7 inspection. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation stood alongside two violations that, together, describe a kitchen where sick employees had no formal obligation to report their symptoms and no written policy telling them they should. Inspectors cited both the absence of an employee health policy and the failure of workers to report illness symptoms as separate high-severity findings.
The handwashing picture was equally serious. Inspectors found both that the physical facilities for handwashing were inadequate and that employees were using improper technique. Those two violations compound each other: even when a worker tried to wash up, the attempt was not sufficient to remove pathogens.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards and prep areas where raw ingredients meet the knife, were not being properly cleaned or sanitized. Inspectors also found that toxic substances were improperly identified, stored, or used somewhere in the facility. And customers eating raw or undercooked items had no consumer advisory warning them of that risk.
The four intermediate violations added to the picture. Inspectors cited improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, single-use items being reused, and inadequate ventilation and lighting.
What These Violations Mean
The food sourcing violation is one that health officials treat with particular seriousness, because it eliminates the paper trail. When food enters a restaurant through approved, licensed suppliers, there is a documented chain of custody. If customers get sick, investigators can trace the ingredient back through the distribution system. Food from unapproved or unknown sources has no such trail, meaning an outbreak could occur with no way to identify what caused it or where it came from.
The illness-reporting failures at Azur described a structural breakdown, not a single bad day. Without a written health policy, workers have no formal guidance on when to stay home. Without a reporting requirement, a worker with Norovirus symptoms has no mechanism, and arguably no obligation, to flag the problem before handling food. Norovirus spreads through the fecal-oral route and is the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings.
The handwashing violations compounded that risk directly. Inadequate facilities mean proper hygiene is physically impossible in parts of the kitchen. Improper technique means that even where facilities exist, the attempt is not eliminating what it should. Those two violations, alongside improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, describe multiple pathways for pathogens to move from hands to surfaces to food.
The toxic substance violation carries a different category of danger. Chemical contamination can happen quickly, with no visible sign in food, and can cause acute illness within minutes of ingestion.
The Longer Record
The April 2026 inspection did not represent a new low for Azur. It represented a continuation of a pattern visible across years of state records.
The restaurant has 23 inspections on record and 283 total violations documented across that history. In August 2024, inspectors cited 10 high-severity violations in a single visit, the highest single-inspection total in the available record. Three months earlier, in June 2024, there were four high-severity violations. In June 2023, eight high-severity violations. In May 2023, seven high-severity violations, followed the next day by a clean inspection with zero violations of any kind, suggesting a rapid corrective effort that did not hold through subsequent visits.
The pattern across 2023, 2024, and 2025 shows high-severity violation counts ranging from four to ten per inspection, with no sustained period of clean results. The August 2025 and May 2025 inspections each produced four high-severity violations. The April 2026 inspection, with eight, fell in the upper range of what this facility's record shows.
Azur has never been emergency-closed across its 23 inspections on record.
Open for Business
State inspectors left Azur Restaurant on April 7, 2026 having documented eight high-severity violations, including food from an unknown source, employees not reporting illness, no written health policy, and improper handwashing in a kitchen where the facilities for handwashing were themselves inadequate.
The restaurant remained open.
