CLEARWATER, FL. State inspectors walked into Delhi Palace at 25000 US Highway 19 N on September 24, 2026, and found food sourced from suppliers that had never been vetted by federal safety regulators, a kitchen where employees had no written policy telling sick workers to stay home, and food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized. Seven of the ten violations cited that day were high-severity. The restaurant was not closed.
That finding sits against a record that includes six prior emergency closures and 1,097 total violations across 80 inspections on file with the state.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious a restaurant can receive. When food bypasses USDA or FDA inspection, there is no chain of documentation connecting it to a licensed processor. If a customer gets sick, there is no paper trail to trace back to the origin.
The absence of an employee health policy compounds that risk directly. Without a written policy requiring sick workers to stay home, an employee with Norovirus or Salmonella can legally walk into the kitchen and handle food. Norovirus is responsible for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and a single infected food handler is enough to trigger an outbreak.
The food contact surface violation closes the loop. Even if food arrives in good condition, surfaces that have not been properly cleaned and sanitized become transfer points for bacteria between every dish prepared on them.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique, a violation distinct from simply skipping handwashing. It means workers made an attempt but used a method that left pathogens on their hands. The misuse of time as a public health control means food was allowed to sit in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, beyond safe limits, without the temperature monitoring that would catch the problem.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of violations documented at Delhi Palace on September 24 represents multiple simultaneous failure points in a kitchen's basic safety system, not a single lapse.
Food from unapproved sources is not a paperwork problem. If that food contains Listeria or Salmonella and someone gets sick, investigators have no way to identify the source, pull the product, or warn other customers. The risk is invisible until someone ends up in an emergency room.
The employee health policy violation and the improper handwashing citation together describe a kitchen where sick employees are not formally prohibited from working, and where the employees who do work are not washing their hands in a way that actually removes pathogens. Those two conditions together are a direct transmission route for Norovirus, Hepatitis A, and Shigella.
The consumer advisory violation affects the most vulnerable customers specifically. Elderly diners, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems face a significantly higher risk from raw or undercooked proteins. Without an advisory posted on the menu, those customers have no way to make an informed choice about what they order.
The Longer Record
The September 24 inspection was not an outlier. Four days later, on September 28, inspectors returned and found six high-severity violations and one intermediate violation, a worse high-severity count than the inspection that preceded it.
Delhi Palace has accumulated 1,097 total violations across 80 inspections on state record. The facility has been emergency-closed six times. Three of those closures came within a 16-month window: rodent activity in July 2024, a combined rodent, roach, and fly infestation in August 2024 that required a single day to reopen, and roach activity again in November 2024. The August closure was resolved in one day.
The inspection on May 20, 2026, produced 10 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate violations, the highest single-inspection count in the recent record. The four inspections between May and September of this year each produced high-severity violations, with counts of 10, 4, 2, and 7 respectively.
The two inspections in November 2024, on the 18th and 19th, each showed 3 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations, coming less than two weeks after the November 6 emergency closure for roach activity.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when an inspector determines that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. The violations documented on September 24 did not meet that threshold, at least not in the judgment of the inspector on site that day.
Seven high-severity violations, food from an unapproved source, no employee health policy, unsanitized food contact surfaces, improperly used time controls, and food in poor condition were not enough to close the doors.
Delhi Palace at 25000 US Highway 19 N remained open for business.
