HOLLYWOOD, FL. A state inspector walked into Dragon City on Stirling Road on August 12 and documented eight high-severity violations, including food not cooked to required minimum temperatures and an employee who had not reported symptoms of illness, and the restaurant stayed open.
No emergency closure order. No orange sticker on the door. Customers kept coming in.
What Inspectors Found
The eight violations spanned nearly every critical food safety category: cooking temperatures, employee health reporting, handwashing infrastructure, handwashing technique, food condition, shellfish recordkeeping, consumer disclosure, and chemical storage.
Not one of the eight was classified below high severity. There were zero intermediate violations.
The inspector returned the following day, August 13, and found one remaining high-severity violation. The restaurant had not been closed in the interim.
What These Violations Mean
The violation for food not cooked to required minimum temperatures is among the most direct routes to customer illness on the inspection report. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A restaurant serving undercooked protein has, in effect, skipped the last line of defense against bacteria that were present in the raw product.
The employee illness reporting failure compounds that risk in a specific way. Norovirus, one of the most contagious pathogens in a food service environment, spreads through infected food workers who continue to handle food while symptomatic. A single ill employee who is not sent home can expose dozens of customers in a single shift. The violation documented at Dragon City on August 12 means the system for catching that scenario before it reaches a plate was not functioning.
Inadequate handwashing facilities and improper handwashing technique were cited together, which matters. The first violation means the physical infrastructure for washing hands was deficient. The second means that even when handwashing attempts were made, the technique was insufficient to remove pathogens. Both violations at the same inspection means the gap between contaminated hands and food preparation was effectively unaddressed.
The shellfish traceability violation carries a specific risk that most diners do not consider. Oysters, clams, and mussels are consumed raw or lightly cooked, and without proper shell stock identification tags, there is no way to trace an illness back to a harvest location if customers get sick. That traceability is not a paperwork formality. It is the mechanism that allows a public health response to happen before more people are exposed.
The Pattern
Dragon City's inspection on August 12 was not an outlier. It was the continuation of a documented pattern stretching back years.
State records show the restaurant has been inspected 37 times and has accumulated 307 total violations across its history. Every inspection on record in the past two and a half years has included high-severity violations. The July 2025 inspection logged seven high-severity violations. The April 2025 inspection logged seven. The January 2026 inspection logged five.
The August 12 inspection, at eight high-severity violations, was the highest single-inspection count in the recent record.
Dragon City was emergency-closed once before, in March 2024, after an inspector documented roach activity. The restaurant reopened the following day. One week after that closure, the March 12, 2024 inspection found three high-severity violations and two intermediate violations.
The Longer Record
Three hundred and seven violations across 37 inspections works out to more than eight violations per inspection on average. That average, held over years of state oversight, describes a facility where compliance problems are not occasional lapses.
The categories that appeared on August 12, including food temperature, handwashing, and food condition, are not new to Dragon City's record. High-severity violations have appeared in every inspection captured in the prior history data, without exception. The single-day follow-up inspection on August 13 reduced the count to one remaining high-severity violation, but the underlying pattern predates any single visit by years.
For context, a facility with 37 inspections on record has had extensive contact with state inspectors. The violations documented on August 12 were not the result of inspectors encountering Dragon City for the first time.
The restaurant had one prior emergency closure, for roaches, in March 2024. The inspections that followed that closure continued to produce high-severity findings at every documented visit.
On August 12, 2026, a state inspector cited Dragon City on Stirling Road for eight high-severity violations, including food not cooked to required temperatures, an employee who had not reported illness symptoms, and toxic chemicals stored improperly near food. The restaurant was not closed. It remained open for service.
