PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL. When state inspectors walked into KOI on US Highway 1 on August 25, 2026, they found a restaurant serving shellfish it could not account for, with no records to trace those oysters, clams, or mussels back to any approved source if a customer got sick.
That single finding, inadequate shell stock identification and records, is the kind of violation that turns a routine stomach illness into an unsolvable public health puzzle. It was one of six high-severity violations documented that afternoon. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
Inspectors cited KOI for food arriving from unapproved or unknown sources, a violation that strips any ability to trace contaminated product back through the supply chain. At a restaurant that serves raw fish and shellfish, that gap is not procedural. It is the difference between containing an outbreak and losing track of it entirely.
The shellfish records violation compounds the sourcing problem. Shellfish, consumed raw or lightly cooked, carry elevated risk of Vibrio, norovirus, and hepatitis A. State and federal rules require restaurants to keep detailed tags for every lot of oysters, clams, or mussels they receive, specifically so health officials can identify and pull product if customers report illness. KOI had neither adequate identification nor adequate records.
Inspectors also found that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness, and that handwashing technique was improper. Those two violations together describe a kitchen where sick workers may have been handling food without anyone stopping them, and where the one intervention that could break a transmission chain was not being performed correctly.
The menu at a restaurant like KOI, which serves sushi and other raw preparations, makes each of these violations more consequential than they would be at a fully cooked-food operation. KOI also had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods, meaning customers with compromised immune systems, elderly diners, pregnant women, and young children had no warning that what they ordered carried elevated risk.
The person in charge was either not present or not performing their duties, which inspectors flagged as its own high-severity violation.
On the intermediate side, inspectors documented improper sewage or wastewater disposal, multi-use utensils not properly cleaned, single-use items being reused, and toilet facilities that were inadequate or improperly maintained.
What These Violations Mean
The food-from-unapproved-sources violation is not a paperwork technicality. Approved sources are facilities that have passed USDA or FDA inspection and operate under sanitation controls. When food enters a restaurant from outside that system, there is no verification that it was handled, stored, or transported safely. For a sushi restaurant serving raw product, that means no assurance against Listeria, Salmonella, or Vibrio contamination before the fish reaches a customer's plate.
The shellfish records requirement exists for one reason: outbreak traceability. If three customers call the St. Johns County health department in the same week reporting Vibrio illness after eating oysters at KOI, investigators need to know which harvest area those oysters came from, which dealer shipped them, and which lot number was on the bag. Without those tags, the investigation stalls and any contaminated product still in circulation cannot be recalled.
The illness-reporting failure is the violation that public health officials cite most often in post-outbreak investigations. Food workers who come to work with norovirus symptoms, or who develop them during a shift and do not report, are the documented cause of the majority of restaurant-linked multi-victim outbreaks. The improper handwashing technique violation means that even workers who attempted to wash their hands may have left pathogens on their skin.
Sewage disposal violations carry a distinct risk: fecal contamination introduced into a food preparation environment. Combined with improperly cleaned multi-use utensils that can harbor bacterial biofilms, the picture at KOI on August 25 was a kitchen where multiple contamination pathways were operating simultaneously.
The Longer Record
KOI has five inspections on record, and the August 25 inspection is by far the worst. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The prior inspection history shows a pattern that makes the August 25 findings harder to dismiss as an isolated bad day. On July 18, 2025, inspectors cited the restaurant for five high-severity violations and one intermediate, a total that already ranked as serious. The two inspections that followed, on July 29 and August 21 of 2025, produced zero violations each, suggesting the restaurant could meet standards when it chose to. Then came August 25, 2026, with six high-severity violations and four intermediate ones, the highest single-inspection total in the facility's record.
Across all five inspections, KOI has accumulated 34 total violations. The two inspections with the highest severity counts, July 2025 and August 2026, share a category: management failure. In July 2025 the facility was already drawing high-severity citations. In August 2026 the number climbed, and the violations now include food sourcing and shellfish traceability problems that were not present in earlier records.
The day after the August 25 inspection, a follow-up visit on August 26, 2026 found zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. KOI passed.
It had never stopped serving customers in between.
