JACKSONVILLE, FL. The most alarming thing inspectors found at Bo Sushi on Old St. Augustine Road on April 28 was not a pest, not a broken refrigerator, and not a single lapse. It was the combination: fish and shellfish served raw to customers, with no way to trace where the shellfish came from, no consumer advisory warning diners about the risks, and no evidence that employees had been reporting illness symptoms before handling food.
State inspectors cited the restaurant for nine high-severity violations in a single visit. The facility was not emergency-closed.
What Inspectors Found
The shellfish violations are particularly pointed at a sushi restaurant. Inspectors cited both unapproved or unknown food sources and inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning there was no reliable documentation of where the shellfish served to customers had originated.
Compounding that, the restaurant had no consumer advisory posted to warn diners that raw or undercooked items carry elevated risk. At a restaurant where raw fish is the core of the menu, that omission reaches every table.
Inspectors also cited inadequate handwashing by food employees and employees failing to report illness symptoms before working with food. Those two violations together describe a direct, unbroken route from a sick food handler to a customer's plate.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. The restaurant's use of time as a public health control, a method that allows food to sit at room temperature for set periods instead of being kept cold, was not being applied correctly. And the person in charge was either not present or not performing supervisory duties.
Four intermediate violations accompanied the nine high-severity ones. Inspectors found multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, single-use items being reused, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and improper use of wiping cloths.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sources and missing shell stock records is not a paperwork problem. If a customer becomes ill after eating shellfish here, investigators need those records to trace the harvest location, the harvest date, and the distributor. Without them, an outbreak investigation stalls before it starts. Shellfish filter-feed from coastal waters and can concentrate bacteria and viruses, including Vibrio and hepatitis A, at levels that cause serious illness even when the shellfish looks and smells normal.
The illness-reporting failure is the violation that most directly affects the person sitting at the sushi bar. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants, spreads through exactly this route: an infected food handler who has not reported symptoms continues preparing food. A single infected employee can expose dozens of customers in a single shift.
Improper handwashing reinforces that risk. Hands are the most common vehicle for transferring contamination between surfaces, raw proteins, and ready-to-eat food. At a restaurant where much of the food is handled directly and served without cooking, that transfer has no heat step to interrupt it.
The missing consumer advisory matters in a specific, practical way. Pregnant women, elderly diners, and people with immune-compromising conditions face substantially higher risk from raw fish and shellfish. The advisory is not a formality. It is the only mechanism by which those customers receive the information they need to make a different choice.
The Longer Record
Bo Sushi Inspection History, Selected Visits
The April 28 inspection is not an anomaly. State records show 33 inspections on file for this location, with 251 total violations documented across that history.
The pattern is consistent and specific. In August 2025, inspectors cited eight high-severity violations. In September 2024, another eight high-severity violations. In both cases, a follow-up inspection the next day showed the restaurant had addressed enough issues to pass. Then, months later, the counts climbed again.
December 10, 2024 produced five high-severity violations. The facility passed a re-inspection the next day and then had a clean inspection in September 2024 before that. The record describes a cycle: violations accumulate, a follow-up visit prompts corrections, and the underlying conditions reassert themselves.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history.
Open for Business
A follow-up inspection on April 29, the day after the nine-violation visit, showed one remaining high-severity violation and no intermediate violations. The restaurant was not closed at any point.
Customers who ate at Bo Sushi on April 28 did so at a restaurant where shellfish could not be traced to its source, where no sign warned them their food was raw, and where the person responsible for overseeing food safety was not doing that job. The state's own records show that version of the restaurant has appeared before.
It remained open.