ORLANDO, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into Boi Brazil Churrascaria on International Drive and found food coming from unapproved or unknown sources, a violation that means the restaurant was serving guests meat or other items that had bypassed federal safety inspections entirely.
That was one of eight high-severity violations documented during the April 6 inspection. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
Inspectors cited the restaurant for having no written employee health policy and for employees not reporting symptoms of illness. Those two violations travel together: without a formal policy, workers have no documented obligation to stay home when sick, and without reporting, there is no mechanism to catch it when they don't.
The handwashing record was worse still. Inspectors cited both inadequate handwashing by food employees and improper hand and arm washing technique as separate violations, meaning the problem wasn't just frequency, it was execution. Workers were making handwashing attempts that left pathogens on their hands.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Multi-use utensils were also cited as improperly cleaned, a separate intermediate violation that compounds the surface contamination picture.
The restaurant also failed to maintain adequate shellfish identification records and lacked a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. At a churrascaria where meat is served at varying temperatures and shellfish may be on the menu, the absence of both traceability records and menu warnings narrows the margin for error to nothing.
What These Violations Mean
The food-from-unapproved-sources violation is the one that most directly affects every customer who ate at Boi Brazil in the period leading up to the April inspection. Food that enters a kitchen outside of USDA or FDA-regulated supply chains has no inspection trail. If someone gets sick, there is no supplier to trace, no lot number to pull, no recall to issue. The contamination simply stops at the restaurant's back door.
The illness-reporting failures carry a different kind of risk. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads aggressively through food handled by infected workers. A single sick employee working a busy night on International Drive, where tourist foot traffic runs high, can expose hundreds of guests before anyone knows there is a problem. The absence of a written health policy means that risk had no formal check against it.
The dual handwashing citations matter because technique failures are not caught by simply telling employees to wash their hands more often. A worker who goes through the motions of handwashing but doesn't use proper technique, duration, or coverage is still transferring bacteria to every surface and food item they touch afterward. Combined with unsanitized food contact surfaces and improperly cleaned utensils, the contamination pathways documented in this inspection were stacked on top of each other.
The missing consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods is a direct risk to elderly guests, pregnant women, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system. At a restaurant that serves meat from a rotating spit at varying internal temperatures, diners in those groups need that warning to make informed decisions. In April, it wasn't there.
The Longer Record
The April 2026 inspection was not an outlier. State records show 32 inspections on file for Boi Brazil Churrascaria, with 762 total violations accumulated across that history.
The eight most recent inspections before April 2026 tell the same story on a loop. In September 2025, inspectors cited seven high-severity and four intermediate violations. In March 2025, five high and five intermediate. In September 2024, eight high and three intermediate. On a single day in August 2024, inspectors documented eight high-severity violations, returned the same day for a follow-up, and found two more high-severity violations still unresolved. In November 2023, the count reached nine high-severity violations in one visit.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history.
That last fact is the one that stays with you. Eight high-severity violations in April 2026, including food from unapproved sources, no illness reporting system, and improperly sanitized food contact surfaces, and the doors stayed open on International Drive.