CLEARWATER, FL. Inspectors visiting CS Kobe & Italian at 13505 Icot Blvd. on May 13 found the restaurant serving food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means inspectors cannot trace what entered the kitchen, where it came from, or whether it passed any federal safety screening. The restaurant was not emergency-closed.
That single violation sat alongside six other high-severity citations, two intermediate violations, and a facility history that now spans 42 inspections and 650 total violations on record.
What Inspectors Found
The food-sourcing violation is among the most serious an inspector can document. When a restaurant cannot identify where its food originated, there is no chain of custody, no USDA or FDA inspection record, and no way to issue a targeted recall if customers fall ill.
Inspectors also cited food not cooked to the required minimum temperature. For poultry, that threshold is 165 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which Salmonella is destroyed. Below that temperature, the pathogen survives and reaches the plate.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near food areas. Mislabeled or misplaced chemicals can contaminate food directly, and workers who cannot identify containers cannot respond correctly if something goes wrong. That violation was compounded by food contact surfaces found not properly cleaned or sanitized, a condition that creates a direct transfer route for bacteria between prep cycles and dishes.
The restaurant also had no written employee health policy. Without one, there is no formal mechanism to keep a sick worker out of the kitchen. The inspector additionally cited improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning that even when employees attempted to wash their hands, the technique left pathogens behind.
Rounding out the high-severity count: no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. Customers who are elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised have no way of knowing they are ordering food that carries elevated risk.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sources and undercooking is particularly dangerous because the two failures compound each other. Food that bypassed federal inspection may already carry higher pathogen loads, and if that food is then undercooked, whatever bacteria entered the kitchen survives to the table.
Improper handwashing technique is a violation that often surprises people, because it implies an attempt was made. But studies show that handwashing without proper duration, soap coverage, and rinsing leaves pathogen counts high enough to transfer Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States annually. At CS Kobe & Italian, that failure existed alongside surfaces that were not properly sanitized between uses, meaning contamination had multiple pathways.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked items is a quiet but serious gap. A restaurant that serves sushi, tartare, or undercooked proteins is required to tell diners that fact in writing. Without it, a pregnant woman or a diner on immunosuppressant medication has no basis on which to make an informed choice.
Improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals near food areas represent a different category of risk entirely: acute chemical poisoning, which can occur without any warning and produces symptoms that are often misattributed to foodborne illness rather than chemical exposure.
The Longer Record
The May 13 inspection is not an outlier. It is the continuation of a documented pattern stretching back years.
The February 2026 inspection produced 6 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate. The December 2025 inspection produced 7 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate. October 2024 produced 6 high-severity violations. March 2024 produced 5. December 2023 produced 7. In eight inspections spanning roughly two and a half years, the facility has never logged fewer than 5 high-severity violations in a single visit, with one exception in March 2025 following an emergency closure.
That closure, on March 20, 2025, was ordered after inspectors found roach and rodent activity. The restaurant was allowed to reopen the following day. A 2018 closure for roach activity lasted two days.
Across 42 inspections on record, the facility has accumulated 650 total violations. Two of those inspections ended in emergency closure orders. The May 13 inspection, with 7 high-severity violations, did not.
The Longer Pattern
What the inspection history shows is a facility that returns to high violation counts within months of each inspection, including after the events that triggered emergency closures. The March 2025 closure was followed by a December 2025 inspection with 7 high-severity violations and a February 2026 inspection with 6.
The May 2026 inspection matched that December 2025 high-severity count exactly: 7.
CS Kobe & Italian on Icot Boulevard remained open after inspectors left on May 13.