TAMPA, FL. State inspectors walked into China Wok on Ehrlich Road on April 22 and found food coming from unapproved or unknown sources, a violation that means inspectors could not confirm where the restaurant's ingredients originated or whether they had passed any federal safety screening.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented that afternoon. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The shellfish citation is among the most serious on the list. Inspectors noted inadequate shell stock identification and records, meaning that if a customer became ill after eating oysters, clams, or mussels at this restaurant, health officials would have no documentation to trace the product back to its harvest site or distributor.
China Wok also had no written employee health policy and, separately, employees were found not reporting symptoms of illness. Those two violations together describe a workplace where a sick food handler has no formal obligation to disclose their condition and no written guidance telling them to stay home.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and equipment that touch ingredients before they reach a plate, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. And the restaurant had posted no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods, leaving customers with no warning that certain items carry elevated risk.
Two intermediate violations rounded out the inspection: multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities.
What These Violations Mean
The unapproved food source violation is not a paperwork problem. When ingredients bypass USDA and FDA inspection channels, there is no verification that they were handled, stored, or transported safely before arriving at the restaurant. If a customer gets sick, investigators have no supply chain to trace.
The shellfish traceability failure compounds that risk specifically. Shellfish are filter feeders that concentrate whatever pathogens are present in the water they are harvested from. State and federal rules require restaurants to keep shellstock tags, the labels attached to each bag or container of oysters, clams, and mussels, for 90 days precisely so that illness cases can be matched to a specific harvest lot. Without those records, an outbreak investigation stops cold.
The combination of no employee health policy and no illness symptom reporting describes a direct transmission pathway. Norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads person-to-person and through contaminated food. A single infected food worker who does not know they are required to report symptoms, and has no written policy telling them to, can expose every customer served during a shift.
Improper handwashing technique closes the loop on that risk. Even when an employee makes an attempt to wash their hands, the wrong technique, skipping steps, insufficient time, or bypassing soap, leaves pathogens on the skin. Combined with unsanitized food contact surfaces, the conditions documented on April 22 describe a kitchen where contamination could move from an infected employee to a prep surface to a finished plate without interruption.
The Longer Record
The April 22 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show China Wok has been inspected 26 times and has accumulated 211 total violations across that history.
Every inspection on record for the past three years has included high-severity violations. The February 2023 inspection produced seven high-severity violations and one intermediate, matching the count from April 22. The August 2023 visit generated four high-severity violations. The February 2025 inspection found five high-severity violations and one intermediate.
The pattern holds across the full visible history: high-severity violations at every inspection, year after year, with counts that have never dropped to zero and have now reached their highest single-visit total in the available record.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed. Not once across 26 inspections.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when inspectors determine that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. Seven high-severity violations at China Wok on April 22 did not meet that threshold, at least not as inspectors applied it that day.
The restaurant at 5373 Ehrlich Road, Suite 202, remained open after the inspection concluded.
Customers who ate there that week had no way of knowing that the food on their table may have come from sources that bypassed federal safety inspection, that the surfaces used to prepare it had not been properly sanitized, or that the employees who handled it were operating without any written requirement to report if they were sick.