JACKSONVILLE, FL. A Jacksonville sushi restaurant was cited for serving food from unapproved or unknown sources on August 18, a violation that means inspectors could not confirm the fish, shellfish, or other ingredients on customer plates had ever passed a federal safety inspection.
Kazu Japanese Restaurant on San Jose Boulevard collected nine high-severity violations and three intermediate violations during that single inspection. The state did not close it.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation was not the only one that pointed directly at the food leaving the kitchen. Inspectors also cited the restaurant for inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning there was no documentation to trace where its oysters, clams, or mussels came from. Shellfish are consumed raw or lightly cooked at a Japanese restaurant, and without harvest tags or supplier records, there is no way to trace an illness back to a specific batch if a customer gets sick.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. That means cutting boards, prep surfaces, and utensils that touched raw fish could have transferred bacteria to the next item placed on them.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for improper use of time as a public health control. When a restaurant chooses to track time rather than temperature for items like sushi rice, the food is allowed to sit in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, for a defined window before it must be discarded. If that system is not followed correctly, food stays in the danger zone longer than it should, with no temperature log to show it.
Kazu also had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods, which means customers ordering raw fish dishes had no written notice of the risk. That warning exists specifically to protect pregnant women, elderly diners, and anyone with a compromised immune system.
Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled inside the facility.
The Disease Transmission Problem
Three of the nine high-severity violations on August 18 pointed to the same underlying failure: the restaurant had no written employee health policy, employees were not reporting symptoms of illness, and handwashing technique was improper.
Those three violations, taken together, describe a kitchen where a sick employee could prepare food, handle surfaces, and serve customers with no formal system in place to stop it. Food workers who fail to report illness symptoms are the leading cause of multi-victim outbreaks, and improper handwashing technique means that even when an employee does wash their hands, pathogens can remain.
The intermediate violations compounded the picture. Inspectors cited improper sewage or wastewater disposal, inadequate ventilation and lighting, and inadequate or improperly maintained toilet facilities. Inadequate toilet facilities, the state notes, discourage proper restroom use and handwashing by employees.
What These Violations Mean
The food sourcing violation carries a specific consequence that most violations do not. When food enters a kitchen from an unapproved or unknown source, it has bypassed USDA and FDA safety inspections. If a customer becomes ill, investigators have no supply chain to trace. The ingredient that caused the illness may never be identified, and any recall that could protect other people cannot be issued.
The shellfish traceability failure compounds that risk. Oysters and clams are filter feeders that concentrate bacteria and viruses, including Vibrio and Norovirus, from the water they grow in. Harvest tags and dealer records exist so that a sick customer's illness can be matched to a specific harvest location and date. Without those records at Kazu on August 18, that chain of accountability was broken.
The illness reporting and handwashing failures matter because they are the most direct route from a sick employee to a sick customer. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurants, spreads through exactly this mechanism: an ill worker, no policy requiring them to stay home, and inadequate handwashing that leaves the virus on food and surfaces.
The Longer Record
The August 18 inspection was not an outlier. State records show Kazu has accumulated 324 violations across 40 inspections on record, and the pattern of high-severity findings is not new.
On July 9, 2025, inspectors cited the restaurant for nine high-severity violations and three intermediate violations, an identical count to the August 18, 2026 inspection. A follow-up visit the next day, July 10, 2025, showed zero high-severity violations. On December 4, 2025, inspectors returned and found seven high-severity violations and three intermediate violations.
The cycle repeated in August 2026. The inspection on August 18 produced nine high-severity violations. A follow-up on August 19 showed one high-severity violation. By August 20, the count was zero.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed across all 40 inspections on record, despite accumulating violations in categories including food sourcing, shellfish traceability, illness reporting, and handwashing on multiple separate visits.
On August 18, 2026, with nine high-severity violations documented at Kazu Japanese Restaurant on San Jose Boulevard, the state inspector left and the restaurant stayed open.
