OVIEDO, FL. Employees at a Seminole County sushi restaurant were not reporting symptoms of illness to management during a May 7 state inspection, one of six high-severity violations documented at the restaurant that day. The facility was not closed.
State records show inspectors cited Koi Sushi at 3635 Aloma Ave for six high-priority violations and one intermediate violation during the May 7, 2026 visit. The findings included no person in charge performing supervisory duties, inadequate handwashing by food employees, improper hand and arm washing technique, food contact surfaces not properly cleaned or sanitized, and no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items.
The illness reporting failure stands apart from the rest. When employees do not disclose symptoms, there is no mechanism to pull a sick worker off the line before they handle food.
What Inspectors Found
The handwashing violations are worth reading carefully. Two separate citations were issued: one for employees not washing hands adequately, and a second for employees using improper technique when they did attempt to wash. Both violations were present on the same inspection day, meaning the problem was not just frequency but execution.
The food contact surface citation compounds that picture. Surfaces that touch raw fish, rice, and other menu items were not being properly cleaned or sanitized, creating a direct transfer route for whatever was on employees' hands or on prior batches of food.
The missing consumer advisory is specific to a sushi operation. Florida law requires restaurants serving raw or undercooked items to post a notice warning customers, particularly those who are pregnant, elderly, or immunocompromised, that consuming those items carries elevated risk. No such notice was present during the May 7 inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The illness reporting failure is the violation with the most direct potential for a multi-victim outbreak. Food workers are the documented primary source of norovirus transmission in restaurant settings. When a sick employee is not required to disclose symptoms, and when no person in charge is actively monitoring the floor, there is no checkpoint between that worker and the food being served.
The two handwashing violations together describe a kitchen where contamination control was not functioning. Inadequate handwashing means hands were not being washed at required intervals. Improper technique means that even when washing occurred, pathogens were not reliably removed. At a sushi restaurant, where much of the food is served raw and handled directly, that combination is acute.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces are a primary vehicle for bacterial transfer, according to state health risk documentation. At Koi Sushi on May 7, those surfaces were in contact with food being served to customers that same day.
The consumer advisory violation is not a paperwork technicality. Pregnant women, elderly diners, and people with weakened immune systems face materially higher risk from raw fish. Without the posted advisory, those customers had no information on which to base their choices.
The Longer Record
The May 7 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Koi Sushi has been inspected 28 times and has accumulated 269 total violations across that history. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The inspection the day before, on May 6, was worse. Inspectors documented 10 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate violations in a single visit, the highest single-day high-priority count in the recent record. The May 7 inspection, with 6 high-priority violations, was the follow-up.
The pattern holds across years. Inspectors found 6 high-severity violations in December 2025, 7 in December 2024, 7 in March 2024, and 6 in November 2023. The count has never dropped to zero for high-priority violations across any of the eight most recent inspections on record.
The Longer Record in Numbers
The illness-reporting violation that appeared on May 7 is particularly notable in context. A kitchen where employees are not disclosing symptoms, where no manager is actively overseeing operations, and where handwashing is both infrequent and improperly executed describes a set of conditions that, according to CDC data cited in state inspection records, produces three times as many critical violations as establishments with active managerial control.
Koi Sushi has now logged high-severity violations in every documented inspection going back through at least 2023. The violations on May 7 included the same categories that appeared in multiple prior visits: management failure, employee hygiene, and surface sanitation.
The restaurant remained open after the May 7 inspection.