LADY LAKE, FL. A restaurant that served food from unapproved or unknown sources, had no written employee health policy, and failed to follow parasite destruction procedures walked away from a September inspection with eight high-severity violations and its doors still open.
State inspectors visited Koyame Asian Express at 1558 Bella Cruz Dr. on September 14, 2026, and documented ten violations in total, eight of them classified as high severity. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation did not issue an emergency closure order.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious on the list. Inspectors cited the restaurant for obtaining food from unapproved or unknown sources, meaning some of what was served that day had not passed through USDA or FDA inspection channels.
Compounding that, inspectors also flagged inadequate shellfish traceability records. Shellfish, including oysters, clams, and mussels, are frequently consumed raw or lightly cooked, and without proper identification tags, there is no way to trace them back to a licensed harvester if a customer becomes ill.
The parasite destruction citation adds another layer. Fish and pork served without proper freezing or cooking can harbor live parasites, including Anisakis in fish and Trichinella in pork. The violation indicates the restaurant was not following the procedures required to kill them before serving.
Two violations targeted the workforce directly. Inspectors found that employees were not reporting illness symptoms, and that the restaurant had no written employee health policy in place. Both violations were cited on the same day.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, toxic chemicals stored or labeled incorrectly, and improper handwashing technique rounded out the high-severity findings. The two intermediate violations covered single-use items being reused and inadequate ventilation.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of unapproved food sources and missing shellfish records is particularly dangerous because it eliminates the ability to trace an outbreak. If a customer became ill after eating shellfish at Koyame Asian Express on or around September 14, investigators would have no supplier records to follow. That traceability gap is not a paperwork problem. It is the difference between containing an outbreak and losing track of it entirely.
The illness-reporting failures are a separate but overlapping risk. Food workers who do not report symptoms are the leading cause of multi-victim outbreaks. Norovirus, which spreads through contaminated food handled by sick workers, can infect dozens of people from a single shift. Without a written health policy, there is no formal mechanism requiring workers to stay home or report symptoms to management before handling food.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, such as cutting boards and prep tables, transfer bacteria directly from one food to the next. Paired with improper handwashing technique, which leaves pathogens on hands even when a worker goes through the motions of washing, the conditions for cross-contamination were documented on multiple fronts in the same inspection.
Toxic chemicals stored near or above food present a distinct and acute risk. Mislabeled or improperly stored cleaning agents have caused chemical poisoning incidents in restaurant settings, and the citation indicates inspectors observed conditions that created that exposure pathway at Koyame Asian Express.
The Longer Record
The September 14 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Koyame Asian Express has been inspected 33 times and has accumulated 302 total violations across its history.
The most recent prior inspection, in May 2026, produced five high-severity and two intermediate violations. The inspection before that, in December 2025, found two high-severity violations. In December 2024, inspectors documented nine high-severity violations in a single visit, the highest single-inspection count in the recent record. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern across the last three years shows repeated high-severity findings with no sustained period of clean inspections. The restaurant did pass two inspections in 2024, in April, but the December 2024 visit that followed produced nine high-severity violations.
High-severity violations involving food safety fundamentals, including food sourcing, illness policies, and handwashing, have appeared in multiple inspection cycles. The September 2026 inspection brought that pattern to its most concentrated point yet, with eight high-severity violations in a single visit.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when inspectors determine that conditions pose an immediate threat to public health. On September 14, 2026, state inspectors documented food from unapproved sources, shellfish with no traceability records, workers not reporting illness, no health policy, parasite destruction failures, unsanitized food contact surfaces, improperly stored chemicals, and improper handwashing, all at the same facility, on the same day.
Koyame Asian Express was not closed.
