BRANDON, FL. A state inspector walked into a Brandon all-you-can-eat hibachi and sushi restaurant on June 2 and found food sourced from suppliers that have never been vetted by federal safety regulators, employees who had not reported illness symptoms, and no written policy requiring them to do so. The restaurant stayed open.
Fountain Plus Endless Hibachi and Sushi BBQ Eatery at 11245 Causeway Blvd in Brandon drew eight high-severity violations and one intermediate violation in a single inspection. Not one of those findings triggered an emergency closure order.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation sits at the top of any honest read of this inspection. When a restaurant acquires food from unapproved or unknown suppliers, those products have bypassed the federal inspection systems designed to catch Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli before they reach a kitchen. At a sushi and hibachi concept where raw fish is central to the menu, the traceability gap is not abstract.
The shellfish violation compounds that concern. Inspectors cited inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning the restaurant could not demonstrate where its oysters, clams, or mussels came from. Shellfish are consumed raw or lightly cooked and are a well-documented vehicle for Vibrio, Norovirus, and hepatitis A. Without harvest records, there is no way to trace an illness back to a contaminated batch.
Inspectors also found that employees were not reporting illness symptoms, and that the restaurant had no written health policy requiring them to do so. Those two violations work together. A worker with Norovirus who does not know they are supposed to stay home, or who is not asked, can contaminate dozens of plates before a single customer feels sick.
Food contact surfaces were found improperly cleaned and sanitized, and inspectors documented improper handwashing technique. Even employees who attempt to wash their hands can leave pathogens behind if the technique is wrong, and unsanitized cutting boards and prep surfaces transfer bacteria from one food item to the next without any visible sign that it happened.
Toxic chemicals were stored improperly or without adequate labeling. At a restaurant where food prep surfaces were already flagged as unsanitized, chemical mislabeling raises the possibility of contamination through a second, separate pathway.
The restaurant also lacked a consumer advisory for raw and undercooked foods. Customers who are pregnant, elderly, immunocompromised, or very young rely on that disclosure to make informed choices about dishes like sashimi or lightly seared proteins. There was none posted.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness is what public health officials describe as an outbreak-enabling condition. Norovirus spreads person-to-person through contaminated food with startling efficiency. A single sick worker touching shared prep surfaces or plating dishes can generate dozens of cases from a single service. The reason health policies are required in writing is precisely because verbal culture in a busy kitchen is not reliable.
The food sourcing and shellfish traceability violations carry a different but equally serious risk. If a customer becomes ill after eating raw fish or shellfish at Fountain Plus, investigators would have no verified chain of custody to follow. That matters not just for the individual case but for any broader outbreak investigation. Without records, regulators cannot pull a contaminated product from other restaurants that may have received the same shipment.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces and flawed handwashing technique represent the most routine pathway for cross-contamination in restaurant kitchens. Raw proteins leave bacteria on cutting boards and prep surfaces. If those surfaces are not properly sanitized between uses, the next item placed on them, including ready-to-eat foods like sushi rice or fresh vegetables, picks up whatever was left behind.
Chemical storage violations are the outlier on this list in terms of mechanism, but not in terms of severity. A cleaning product stored near or above food prep areas, or in an unlabeled container, can contaminate food directly or be mistaken for a food-safe product. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation treats this as a high-severity finding for exactly that reason.
The Longer Record
The June 2 inspection was not an anomaly. Fountain Plus has been inspected 30 times and has accumulated 217 total violations across its history. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern in the most recent inspections is consistent. In November 2025, inspectors cited seven high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. In April 2025, four high-severity violations. In December 2024, inspectors visited twice within two days, finding three high-severity violations on the second visit after the first. The restaurant cycled through a clean inspection in February 2025 with zero high or intermediate violations, then returned to four high-severity findings two months later in April 2025.
Going back further, the record shows high-severity violations in every year on file: five in November 2023, four in June 2023, four in April 2024. The categories rotate, but the severity level does not improve in any sustained way.
The June 2026 inspection produced the highest single-visit high-severity count in the data, eight findings. That includes violations in food sourcing, illness reporting, handwashing, surface sanitation, shellfish traceability, chemical storage, and consumer disclosure simultaneously.
Still Open
Florida law gives inspectors the authority to order an emergency closure when conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. Eight high-severity violations at a raw seafood restaurant, including food from unapproved sources, employees not reporting illness, and no health policy in place, did not meet that threshold on June 2.
Fountain Plus Endless Hibachi and Sushi BBQ Eatery was still serving customers when the inspector left.