ST. JOHNS, FL. Fancy Sushi at 155 Bartram Market Drive was serving food from unapproved or unknown sources when a state inspector arrived on July 20, meaning some of what customers ate that day had bypassed the federal safety inspections designed to catch Listeria, Salmonella, and other pathogens before they reach a plate.
That was one of eight high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation is among the most serious a restaurant can receive. When a supplier is not USDA or FDA approved, there is no paper trail. If a customer becomes ill, investigators have nowhere to start.
The inspector also documented that Fancy Sushi had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. For a sushi restaurant, where raw fish is the primary product, that omission is not a technicality. Pregnant women, elderly customers, and people with compromised immune systems rely on that warning to make an informed choice about what they order.
Two separate chemical violations were cited on the same visit. Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled, and toxic substances were improperly identified, stored, or used. Both violations create a direct route to chemical contamination of food, either through mislabeling or physical proximity to food preparation areas.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, a violation that state records flag as a primary vehicle for bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat items. In a sushi kitchen, where raw fish and finished rolls share the same prep environment, that risk is acute.
The inspector also found that time was not being properly used as a public health control. When a facility opts to track time rather than temperature for certain foods, it accepts responsibility for removing those items before they become dangerous. The records show that standard was not being met.
Rounding out the high-severity list: no written employee health policy, meaning there is no formal mechanism to keep a sick worker off the line, and improper handwashing technique, meaning even when employees washed their hands, the method left pathogens behind. A single intermediate violation, for multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, completed the inspection report.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sourcing and no consumer advisory is particularly dangerous at a raw-fish restaurant. Sushi-grade fish is supposed to move through a documented cold chain from a licensed supplier. Food from an unknown source has no verified history, no temperature logs, and no federal inspection stamp. If that fish carries a parasite or a bacterial load, there is no way to trace it back once someone gets sick.
The two chemical violations compound the picture. Improperly stored or unlabeled chemicals near food preparation areas can contaminate food directly, or can be mistaken for food-safe products. The inspector cited both improper storage and improper identification on the same visit, suggesting the issue was not isolated to a single container out of place.
The handwashing technique violation deserves attention because it is often misread as minor. An employee who goes through the motion of washing hands but uses the wrong method, too brief, wrong temperature, skipping certain surfaces, can transfer Norovirus or Salmonella just as effectively as someone who skips washing entirely. Norovirus accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and direct hand-to-food transmission is one of its primary routes.
The absence of an employee health policy means the restaurant has no written protocol for what happens when a worker shows up sick. Without that policy, the decision is informal, and informal decisions in a busy kitchen frequently go the wrong way.
The Longer Record
The July 20 inspection was not an outlier. It was the fifth consecutive inspection at Fancy Sushi to produce five or more high-severity violations. The May 2026 visit found eight high-severity and four intermediate violations. The December 2025 inspection found seven high-severity violations. May 2025 produced six high-severity violations. August 2024 matched July's total with eight high-severity citations.
Across 15 inspections on record, the facility has accumulated 185 total violations. The single clean inspection in the dataset, a May 2024 visit with zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations, stands as the exception across three years of records.
The September and January 2023 inspections each produced ten high-severity violations, the highest single-visit totals in the facility's recorded history. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
Still Open
State inspectors documented eight high-severity violations at Fancy Sushi on July 20, 2026, including food from a source that bypassed federal safety inspection, no warning to customers eating raw fish, and two separate chemical hazards in the kitchen.
The restaurant remained open.
