FORT MYERS, FL. A state inspector walked into Ichibian Food Inc. at 1520 Broadway on April 21 and found food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers being served to customers, a violation that means there is no way to trace that food back through the supply chain if someone 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 the facility for food not cooked to required minimum temperatures, meaning food was served to customers without reaching the heat needed to kill pathogens that survive in raw or undercooked product.
Two of the seven high-severity citations involved sick workers. The facility had no written employee health policy, and employees were found not reporting symptoms of illness. Together, those two violations describe a kitchen where a worker showing symptoms of a contagious illness had no formal obligation to report it and no documented protocol requiring them to stay away from food.
The handwashing citation adds another layer. Improper technique, as the inspector documented, means that even when an employee made an attempt to wash their hands, pathogens were not reliably removed. The record does not show handwashing was skipped entirely. It shows it was done wrong.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and the facility was also cited for improper use of time as a public health control. When a kitchen uses time, rather than temperature, to manage food safety, it is operating under a strict window that requires careful tracking. The inspector found that system was not being followed correctly.
Three intermediate violations accompanied the seven high-severity ones: multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, improper sanitizing solution or procedures, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities.
What These Violations Mean
The unapproved food source violation is the one that carries the longest potential shadow. Food sourced outside of USDA and FDA-approved supply chains has not been inspected for Listeria, Salmonella, or other pathogens at the point of origin. If a customer at Ichibian became ill after this inspection, investigators would have no reliable way to trace that ingredient back through the supply chain to find the source of contamination.
The undercooked food violation compounds that risk directly. If ingredients arrived from an uninspected source and were then not cooked to the temperature required to kill surviving pathogens, the two violations function together as a single failure chain.
The sick worker findings at Ichibian represent what public health researchers consistently identify as the primary driver of multi-victim restaurant outbreaks. Norovirus, in particular, spreads rapidly when an infected food handler continues working without restriction. The absence of a written health policy means there is no documented standard against which employee behavior can be measured, and no record of what a sick employee was told to do.
The sanitizer failure citation reinforces the surface contamination risk. Sanitizer mixed at the wrong concentration, whether too weak or too strong, leaves pathogens alive on the surfaces it is supposed to clean. Combined with the food contact surface citation, the April 21 record describes a kitchen where both the cleaning process and the sanitizing process were found to be inadequate on the same day.
The Longer Record
The April 21 inspection was not an aberration. State records show 30 inspections on file for Ichibian Food Inc., with 193 total violations documented across that history.
The most direct comparison is the October 2025 inspection, which also produced seven high-severity violations alongside six intermediate ones. That visit was the most severe on record before April 21. The facility was not closed after that inspection either.
High-severity violations appeared in seven of the eight most recent inspections on record. The sole exception was November 2024, when the facility drew zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. That clean visit sits between a September 2024 inspection that produced three high-severity citations and a February 2025 inspection that produced two more.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its 30 inspections on record. The pattern that emerges across those inspections is one of recurring high-severity findings, a single clean visit, and then a return to high-severity findings, with the two most recent inspections representing the highest violation counts in the facility's documented history.
Still Open
State inspectors documented food from unapproved sources, undercooked food, sick employees with no health policy, failed handwashing technique, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and a broken time-control system, all in a single visit.
Ichibian Food Inc. remained open after the April 21 inspection.