CLEARWATER, FL. A state inspector walked into Green Mint Asian Grill on US Highway 19 North on September 1 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means no one, including the restaurant, can trace where that food came from if a customer gets sick.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector also cited employees for not reporting illness symptoms and for the restaurant having no written employee health policy at all. Those two violations sit alongside each other in the record, and together they describe a kitchen where a sick worker has no obligation to stay home and no system requiring them to say anything.
Food contact surfaces were documented as not properly cleaned or sanitized. Multi-use utensils were cited at the intermediate level for the same failure.
The inspector also noted that food was not being cooked to required minimum temperatures, and that the restaurant had no consumer advisory on the menu for raw or undercooked items. That missing advisory leaves elderly customers, pregnant women, and anyone with a compromised immune system without the information they need to make a safe choice.
Toilet facilities were cited as inadequate or improperly maintained, a finding that connects directly back to handwashing. Employees who avoid using poorly maintained facilities are less likely to wash their hands between restroom use and food preparation.
What These Violations Mean
Food from unapproved sources is not a paperwork problem. When an ingredient lacks a verified supply chain, there is no way to identify its origin if someone develops a foodborne illness after eating there. Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli have all been traced to uninspected food sources in outbreak investigations. Without that chain of custody, a sick customer has no path to a recall or a responsible party.
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is how Norovirus spreads through a dining room. Norovirus is transmitted person to person, and a single infected food worker handling ready-to-eat items can expose dozens of customers in a single shift. A written health policy is the mechanism that legally and operationally requires workers to report symptoms and stay out of the kitchen. Green Mint Asian Grill did not have one as of September 1.
Undercooked food compounds the sourcing problem. If the food arrives from an unverified supplier and then is not cooked to the temperatures required to kill Salmonella or Campylobacter in poultry, two failure points stack on top of each other. Neither one alone guarantees illness. Both together significantly raise the odds.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces and multi-use utensils that have not been sanitized create what food safety scientists call bacterial biofilm, a layer of bacteria that adheres to surfaces and resists routine wiping. Biofilms can persist for days and transfer pathogens to every item prepared on that surface.
The Longer Record
September 1 was not an anomaly. State records show Green Mint Asian Grill has been inspected 36 times and has accumulated 283 total violations across that history.
The eight most recent prior inspections, going back to November 2024, all included high-severity violations. The March 27, 2026 inspection logged nine high-severity violations and one intermediate. The April 2025 inspection found seven high-severity violations and three intermediate ones, a nearly identical profile to the September 1 findings. The December 2024 inspection found six high-severity violations and five intermediate ones.
There has never been an emergency closure in the facility's inspection record.
That last fact is worth holding. Across 36 inspections and 283 violations, including repeated high-severity findings in food sourcing, temperature control, and employee illness protocols, the state has never ordered the restaurant shut down. The September 1 inspection added seven more high-severity violations to that total.
Still Open
The violations documented on September 1 cover nearly every critical control point in a commercial kitchen. Food sourcing. Cooking temperatures. Employee illness reporting. Handwashing technique. Surface sanitation. Consumer notification.
All nine violations were cited. The restaurant remained open.
