ORLANDO, FL. Inspectors visiting Kingdom Sushi at 5632 International Drive on September 30 found the restaurant was not following parasite destruction procedures, a critical requirement for any establishment serving raw or undercooked fish.
At a sushi restaurant, that violation is not a paperwork problem. It is the difference between fish that is safe to eat raw and fish that may still contain living parasites.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented in a single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction failure was not the only food safety violation in the record. Inspectors also cited the restaurant for not cooking food to required minimum temperatures, meaning items may have left the kitchen with pathogens still alive inside them.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Those are the cutting boards, prep surfaces, and equipment that touch every item prepared in the kitchen.
Two separate handwashing violations were documented on the same visit. Inspectors cited both inadequate handwashing and improper technique, meaning employees were either skipping handwashing entirely in some instances or performing it incorrectly when they did wash.
The restaurant also had no written employee health policy and at least one employee was not reporting illness symptoms. Together, those two violations mean there was no formal system in place to keep sick workers away from food.
The intermediate violations added to the picture. Multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned, and single-use items were being reused.
What These Violations Mean
Parasite destruction is not optional at a sushi restaurant. State and federal food codes require that fish intended to be served raw or undercooked be frozen to specific temperatures for specific time periods before it reaches a customer. That process kills parasites including Anisakis, a roundworm found in many saltwater fish species, and tapeworm larvae. When those procedures are skipped or improperly documented, there is no reliable way to know whether the fish on a customer's plate was ever rendered safe.
The undercooking violation compounds the risk. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Pathogens in ground beef survive below 155 degrees. When food does not reach required internal temperatures, the heat that is supposed to kill bacteria simply does not do its job.
The two handwashing violations, taken together, describe a kitchen where the most basic contamination control was breaking down. Improper technique, not just absence of handwashing, is cited here. Studies show that even a 20-second wash with soap removes the vast majority of pathogens. A wash that is too brief, or done without soap, or skipped after touching a contaminated surface, leaves those pathogens on the hands that are preparing food.
The employee illness violations are what public health officials call an outbreak enabler. Norovirus is shed in enormous quantities by infected individuals and can contaminate food through the briefest contact. Without a written health policy and without employees reporting symptoms, a sick worker has no structured reason to stay home, and no one in the kitchen has a formal obligation to send them home.
The Longer Record
The September 30 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Kingdom Sushi has been inspected 23 times, accumulating 204 total violations across that history, and has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern of high-severity violations is consistent and recent. In January 2026, inspectors documented eight high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. In July 2025, the count was ten high-severity violations and three intermediate ones. In September 2024, it was eight high and two intermediate.
The single clean inspection in the recent record came in July 2024, when inspectors found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. That visit stands alone against seven other inspections in the past two years that each produced multiple high-severity citations.
Kingdom Sushi: Recent Inspection History
The violations are not rotating through different categories each visit. Handwashing failures, food safety process breakdowns, and sanitation problems appear repeatedly across multiple inspections. That is not a restaurant correcting problems between visits and encountering new ones. That is a restaurant returning to the same problems.
Still Open
Kingdom Sushi sits on International Drive, one of the most heavily trafficked tourist corridors in Florida. The restaurants along that stretch serve a continuous flow of visitors who have no way of knowing an establishment's inspection history before they walk in.
On September 30, 2026, state inspectors left the restaurant having documented seven high-severity violations, including a failure to follow parasite destruction procedures at a restaurant whose menu is built around raw fish.
The restaurant remained open.
