PLANTATION, FL. Inspectors who visited Koume Japanese Restaurant at 11905 W Sunrise Blvd on July 30 documented food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a finding that means no government agency inspected that food before it reached customers' plates.
The restaurant logged nine high-severity violations and three intermediate violations during that single inspection. It was not emergency-closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food source violation is among the most serious an inspector can cite at a restaurant that serves raw fish. When food bypasses USDA or FDA inspection channels, there is no documented safety check, no chain of custody, and no reliable way to trace the product if customers become sick.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for failing to maintain adequate shellfish identification records. Koume is a Japanese restaurant, meaning shellfish consumed raw or lightly cooked, such as oysters, clams, or mussels, are plausible menu items. Without proper tagging records, regulators cannot identify the harvest source if a customer reports an illness.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled near the food operation. That violation carries an acute risk: a mislabeled or misplaced chemical can contaminate food directly, and employees who cannot identify a container cannot know what they are handling.
The restaurant also had no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. At a sushi restaurant, where raw fish is a primary offering, that omission means elderly diners, pregnant women, and customers with compromised immune systems had no written notice that their meal carried elevated health risk.
The Illness and Sanitation Failures
Employees were cited for not reporting symptoms of illness to management. That violation is the documented starting point for the most severe multi-victim foodborne outbreaks, particularly norovirus, which spreads person-to-person through contaminated food prepared by a sick worker.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique. The distinction matters: an employee who washes their hands incorrectly still has pathogens on their hands when they return to food preparation. The violation was paired with improperly used wiping cloths, which, when shared across surfaces or left wet, become a transfer vehicle for bacteria across the kitchen.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Multi-use utensils were also cited at the intermediate level for the same failure. Bacterial biofilms can establish on improperly cleaned surfaces within 24 hours and resist standard cleaning once set.
The restaurant was additionally cited for not properly using time as a public health control. When temperature refrigeration is not used for certain foods, time limits are the backup safeguard. Inspectors found those limits were not being followed, meaning food sat in the temperature danger zone, between 41 and 135 degrees Fahrenheit, without a documented safety check.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of an unapproved food source, inadequate shellfish records, and no consumer advisory at a raw-fish restaurant creates a specific layered risk. A customer who orders sashimi or a raw shellfish dish has no way of knowing the sourcing of that product was not verified by a federal inspector, and no written warning that their immune status might make that meal dangerous.
The illness-reporting failure compounds every other violation on the list. A sick employee who does not report symptoms, who then washes their hands incorrectly, and who uses shared wiping cloths across surfaces that are not properly sanitized, represents a direct transmission chain from one person to dozens of customers in a single shift.
Chemical storage violations near food are treated as high-severity because the consequences of a mislabeling error are immediate. Unlike a temperature violation that requires bacterial growth over hours, a chemical contaminant can cause acute illness in a single meal.
The Longer Record
The July 30 inspection was not an aberration. Koume has now accumulated 252 total violations across 30 inspections on record, and the pattern of high-severity findings stretches back through multiple consecutive inspection cycles.
In February 2026, inspectors cited four high-severity and three intermediate violations. In December 2025, five high-severity and one intermediate. In February 2025, a routine inspection found zero violations, but just days earlier, on February 18, inspectors had cited five high-severity violations. The same count, five high-severity, appeared again in January 2025 and in October 2024.
The July 30 total of nine high-severity violations is the highest single-inspection count in the available record. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed across all 30 inspections on file.
Koume Japanese Restaurant remained open after the July 30 inspection.
