TAMARAC, FL. State inspectors visiting Chow Time Grill and Buffet on West Commercial Boulevard in May found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers being served to customers at a restaurant with no written employee health policy, no person in charge performing duties, and toxic chemicals stored improperly near food. The inspection, conducted May 19, 2026, produced eight high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is the one that carries the longest tail of risk. Inspectors documented food arriving from unapproved or unknown suppliers, meaning that food bypassed the federal inspection chain entirely. If someone had gotten sick, there would have been no supplier records to trace.
The management picture was equally stark. No person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties. There was no written employee health policy in place. Employees were not reporting illness symptoms. Those three violations exist as a cluster: without a manager enforcing policy, and without a policy to enforce, sick workers have no formal mechanism to stay off the line.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique, food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, and multi-use utensils not properly cleaned. Together, those three violations describe a kitchen where pathogens can transfer from surface to food to customer through multiple routes simultaneously.
The toxic chemicals citation added a separate and more immediate hazard. Improperly stored or unlabeled chemicals near food areas create a direct contamination risk that has nothing to do with bacteria.
What These Violations Mean
The food-from-unapproved-sources violation is not a paperwork issue. USDA and FDA inspections exist specifically to screen for Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli at the supplier level. When a restaurant bypasses that chain, the first sign of contamination is often a sick customer, not a flagged shipment.
The combination of no health policy, no illness reporting, and no active person in charge is what epidemiologists describe as an outbreak-enabling environment. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads most efficiently when infected food workers handle food without anyone in authority stopping them. A written health policy is the mechanism that requires a sick employee to report symptoms and stay home. Without one, there is nothing.
Improper handwashing technique is distinct from not washing hands at all. Studies show that an incomplete wash, skipping the scrubbing duration or missing parts of the hands, leaves enough pathogen load to transfer contamination to food. At a buffet, where food sits in open serving trays and is handled repeatedly during service, that risk compounds.
The time-as-public-health-control violation applies specifically to buffet operations. When a restaurant uses time rather than temperature to keep food safe, it must document when food was placed out and discard it within four hours. If those records are not kept or the protocol is not followed, food can sit in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, indefinitely.
The Longer Record
The May 2026 inspection was not a departure from Chow Time's history. It was the continuation of one.
The restaurant has 29 inspections on record and 199 total violations across that history. In February 2024, inspectors cited four high-severity violations. Two weeks later, in January 2024, there were five high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. The following month brought seven high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. By September 2025, there were two more high-severity violations. The inspection on April 9, 2025, turned up six high-severity violations and one intermediate.
The April 10, 2025, follow-up inspection showed zero high-severity violations, as did a second visit that same day. That pattern, a clean follow-up after a bad inspection, followed months later by another round of serious citations, has repeated itself across the record.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed in 29 inspections. The May 2026 visit, with eight high-severity violations including food from unknown sources and no active management oversight, did not change that.
The Longer Pattern
Eight high-severity violations at a buffet, where food is displayed openly and served continuously to a rotating dining room, represents a concentration of risk that is difficult to compartmentalize. The violations documented on May 19 did not occur in isolation: they describe a kitchen operating without management control, without a disease-reporting structure, with food from suppliers the state cannot verify, and with chemicals stored near the food supply.
Chow Time Grill and Buffet on West Commercial Boulevard in Tamarac was open for business the day inspectors left.