YULEE, FL. A sushi restaurant serving raw fish to customers had no consumer advisory warning them of the risk, no written employee health policy to keep sick workers out of the kitchen, and food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers — and state inspectors left Hana Sushi on Homegrown Way open after documenting all of it on September 11, 2026.
The inspection turned up 10 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations, one of the heaviest single-day tallies the Nassau County restaurant has produced in a history that now spans 14 inspections and 129 total violations on record.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious on the list. Inspectors cited the restaurant for obtaining food from unapproved or unknown sources, a finding that cuts to the foundation of the operation: if inspectors cannot verify where the fish came from, there is no way to trace it if a customer gets sick.
Alongside that, inspectors cited inadequate shell stock identification records. A sushi restaurant serving oysters, clams, or other shellfish raw or lightly cooked is required to maintain tags proving the shellfish came from a certified, inspected harvest site. Those records were not in order.
The consumer advisory violation is particularly pointed at a restaurant whose menu centers on raw fish. Without a written notice on the menu warning customers that consuming raw or undercooked seafood carries risk, diners with compromised immune systems, pregnant women, the elderly, and young children have no way to make an informed choice.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Time as a public health control, a method sushi operations use to manage raw fish safety in place of refrigeration, was not being applied correctly.
The person in charge was either not present or not performing supervisory duties. That finding tends to explain everything else on the list.
What These Violations Mean
At a sushi restaurant, the absence of a consumer advisory is not a paperwork problem. It is a direct failure to warn the most vulnerable customers that the food they are about to eat carries documented biological risk. The FDA identifies raw fish as a significant vehicle for Vibrio, Listeria, and parasitic infection. Customers who would choose differently if warned never got the chance.
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms creates a direct transmission route for Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year and spreads rapidly through food handled by infected workers. A written health policy, required under Florida food code, is the primary mechanism for keeping sick workers away from food. Hana Sushi did not have one.
Food from unapproved sources bypasses the federal inspection chain entirely. If a customer becomes ill after eating there, investigators tracing the source of contamination would hit a dead end. There is no supplier record to pull, no lot number to check, no recall to issue.
Improperly stored or labeled chemicals near food preparation areas carry the risk of acute poisoning through direct contamination or mislabeling. The absence of allergen awareness, a separate high-severity citation, means staff could not reliably identify or communicate which dishes contain common allergens, a gap that sends roughly 30,000 people to emergency rooms annually in the United States.
The Longer Record
Hana Sushi Inspection History
September 11 was not an unusual day for Hana Sushi. It was a familiar one.
Of the 14 inspections on record, inspectors have documented 8 or more high-severity violations on five separate occasions. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed. It has accumulated 129 total violations across its inspection history.
The April 28, 2026 inspection produced the same tally as September 11: 10 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate. A follow-up two days later on April 30 still found 2 high-severity violations, meaning the most serious problems were not fully resolved even after a callback visit.
The September 2025 inspection found 8 high-severity and 4 intermediate violations. The September 2024 inspection found 8 high-severity violations. The pattern is not a restaurant that stumbled once. It is a restaurant that has produced high-severity violation counts in the double digits across three consecutive inspection years without a single emergency closure on its record.
Hana Sushi was still open for business after the September 11 inspection.
