LAKE MARY, FL. When a state inspector walked into Hangry Bison at 951 Market Promenade Ave on May 18, 2026, they found a restaurant with no written employee health policy, no system for workers to report illness symptoms, and no procedures in place to destroy parasites in fish and meat. They cited seven high-severity violations and one intermediate. Then they left the restaurant open.
The parasite destruction failure stands out. Without proper freezing protocols or verified cooking temperatures, parasites including Anisakis in fish and Trichinella in pork survive and reach the customer's plate. Hangry Bison serves a menu built around meat. The inspector documented that the facility was not following required parasite destruction procedures.
What Inspectors Found
The illness policy violations go together and compound each other. Hangry Bison had no written employee health policy, meaning workers had no formal guidance on when to stay home. And the inspector documented that employees were not reporting illness symptoms. Without reporting, a worker with Norovirus, Salmonella, or Hepatitis A handles food and surfaces, and no policy requires them to disclose it or stop working.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Cutting boards, prep surfaces, and equipment that touch raw meat become transfer points for bacteria when sanitization breaks down.
Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled near food. Mislabeled or misplaced chemicals can contaminate food directly, and in a kitchen without an active manager on site, that risk goes unmanaged.
There was also no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items. Customers who are elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised have no warning that certain dishes carry elevated risk. The restaurant serves items that require that disclosure.
The intermediate violation, improper sewage or wastewater disposal, rounds out a picture of a facility where basic operational controls had broken down on the same day.
What These Violations Mean
The absence of an employee health policy is not a paperwork technicality. It is the foundational control that stops a sick worker from triggering a multi-victim outbreak. Norovirus alone causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers are a primary transmission vector. When Hangry Bison had no policy and employees were not reporting symptoms, there was no mechanism to identify a sick worker before they handled food served to customers in the Market Promenade dining area.
Parasite destruction is a specific, documented process. Fish served raw or undercooked must be frozen to prescribed temperatures for a minimum period to kill Anisakis and related parasites. Pork and game meat carry Trichinella. Skipping these steps does not change how the food looks or smells, so a customer has no way to detect the risk.
Improperly stored or unlabeled toxic chemicals near food represent a different category of danger entirely. Chemical contamination, unlike bacterial illness, can cause acute poisoning with rapid onset. In a kitchen where the person in charge was not present or not performing supervisory duties, a mislabeled container is a hazard with no one positioned to catch it.
The sewage violation adds a layer that is difficult to overstate. Improper wastewater disposal creates pathways for fecal contamination to reach food preparation surfaces. Combined with food contact surfaces that were not properly sanitized, the facility had two simultaneous routes for contamination to travel from waste to food.
The Longer Record
Hangry Bison Inspection History
Hangry Bison has 21 inspections on record and 141 total violations documented across those visits. The May 2026 inspection was not an isolated bad day.
In November 2025, inspectors cited 10 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations in a single visit. A follow-up inspection six days later still found 1 high-severity violation remaining. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed despite that November 2025 tally and the seven high-severity violations found this month.
The facility did pass a clean inspection in May 2025 with zero high-severity or intermediate violations. That makes the pattern more difficult to read as simple negligence and more consistent with a facility that can meet standards when it chooses to, or when it is prepared for scrutiny, but does not sustain those standards.
Prior inspections in 2022, 2021, and 2020 each produced high-severity violations. The categories shift across inspections, but the recurrence of serious citations across six years and 21 inspections is documented in the state record.
Still Open
Seven high-severity violations, including failures on parasite destruction, illness reporting, chemical storage, and wastewater disposal, did not result in an emergency closure order on May 18, 2026. Hangry Bison remained open for business at the Market Promenade in Lake Mary.