OCOEE, FL. Sick employees with no obligation to report their symptoms. Toxic chemicals stored improperly near food. No one on site capable of demonstrating allergen awareness. On September 2, a state inspector walked into Cheng's Asian Bistro on West Colonial Drive and documented nine high-severity violations and five intermediate ones. The restaurant did not close.
That detail, that the bistro kept serving customers after one of its worst inspection days on record, sits at the center of what state records show about this Ocoee location.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector cited the restaurant for having no person in charge present or performing duties. That single finding is significant on its own. When no one is actively overseeing operations, other violations tend to multiply, and the September 2 inspection bears that out.
The restaurant had no written employee health policy and no system in place requiring workers to report illness symptoms. Those two violations operate together. Without a policy, sick employees have no formal obligation to stay home or alert a manager.
Inspectors also found that handwashing facilities were inadequate and that employees were not washing their hands and arms correctly. Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep stations and tools that touch every dish before it reaches a customer, were not properly cleaned or sanitized.
Two violations stood apart for the breadth of customers they could affect. The restaurant had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods, leaving diners with no notice that certain menu items carry elevated risk. And staff demonstrated no allergen awareness, meaning no one in the kitchen could reliably tell a customer whether a dish contained peanuts, shellfish, tree nuts, or any of the other major allergens regulated under federal food code.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled. Improper sewage or wastewater disposal was cited as an intermediate violation. Single-use items were being reused, and multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned between uses.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and no requirement to report illness symptoms is what public health officials describe as an outbreak enabler. Norovirus, the pathogen responsible for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads most efficiently through food workers who prepare meals while symptomatic. A written policy is not paperwork. It is the mechanism that keeps a sick cook out of the kitchen.
The allergen finding carries a different kind of urgency. Food allergies affect an estimated 32 million Americans, and allergic reactions send roughly 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year. A restaurant where no staff member can demonstrate allergen awareness is a restaurant where a customer asking about shellfish or peanuts cannot trust the answer they receive. At Cheng's Asian Bistro, inspectors found that awareness was absent.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces are a primary route for bacterial transfer between raw and cooked foods. Cutting boards and prep surfaces that are not sanitized between uses can carry Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria from raw proteins to dishes that will not be cooked again before serving.
Improper sewage disposal, cited as an intermediate violation, introduces the possibility of fecal contamination moving through the facility. That violation, alongside inadequate handwashing infrastructure and improper technique, compounds the risk from every other finding on the September 2 report.
The Longer Record
Cheng's Asian Bistro: Inspection History
The September 2 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Cheng's Asian Bistro has been inspected 28 times and has accumulated 317 total violations across its history. The restaurant was emergency-closed once, in August 2017, for roach activity. It reopened the next day.
In the three years since 2023, high-severity violation counts at the restaurant have trended upward. The July 2024 inspection produced eight high-severity citations. The September 2026 inspection produced nine, the highest single-inspection total in the recent record.
The categories have remained consistent across multiple visits. High-severity citations for food safety management, employee health practices, and sanitation appear repeatedly in the inspection history, not as isolated incidents but as a pattern that has persisted across years and inspections.
Two days after the September 2 inspection, a follow-up visit on September 4 found three remaining high-severity violations. Five intermediate violations from the original inspection were cleared. Three high-severity ones were not.
The restaurant on West Colonial Drive remained open through all of it.
