TAMPA, FL. State inspectors walked into a Tampa Indian restaurant in May and found food that could not be traced to any approved source, a kitchen with no employee health policy, and surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized. Namaste Express at 17503 Preserve Walk Lane collected six high-severity violations and two intermediate violations on May 19, 2026. The restaurant was not closed.
The food sourcing violation is the one that should stop anyone who has eaten there recently. When food arrives from an unapproved or unknown source, it has bypassed USDA and FDA safety inspections entirely. There is no chain of custody. If a customer gets sick, investigators have nowhere to start.
What Inspectors Found
Six of the eight violations cited on May 19 carried the state's highest severity designation. The list reached across nearly every layer of food safety: sourcing, hygiene, surface sanitation, time management, and customer disclosure.
The handwashing citation is worth reading carefully. Inspectors did not find that employees skipped handwashing entirely. They found that the technique was wrong, meaning workers went through the motions and still left pathogens on their hands. That distinction matters because it is harder to correct than a simple reminder to wash up.
The time-as-public-health-control violation addresses food held without refrigeration. When a kitchen uses time rather than temperature to keep food safe, strict written procedures are required, and the clock must be tracked. Inspectors found those controls were not properly in place.
There was also no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked menu items. For most diners that is an inconvenience. For elderly customers, pregnant women, and anyone immunocompromised, the absence of that notice removes the only warning they would have before ordering something that carries elevated risk.
What These Violations Mean
The food-from-unapproved-sources violation is not a paperwork technicality. Approved suppliers are inspected and licensed specifically so that contaminated product can be identified and traced. When that supply chain is bypassed, Listeria, Salmonella, and other pathogens can enter a kitchen with no record of where they came from or how long they have been there.
The absence of an employee health policy compounds every other violation on the list. Without a written policy, there is no formal mechanism to keep a sick worker out of the kitchen. Norovirus spreads through exactly this route, and a single infected food handler can expose dozens of customers in a single shift.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces and multi-use utensils create a second transmission pathway that operates independently of the employee. Bacterial biofilms form on cutting boards and utensils within 24 hours of inadequate cleaning and are substantially more resistant to sanitizers than free-floating bacteria. At Namaste Express, both the surfaces and the utensils were cited on the same inspection.
Taken together, these four violations describe a kitchen where contaminated food could arrive undetected, be prepared by a sick employee using improperly washed hands, on a surface that had not been sanitized, and served to a vulnerable customer who had no advisory warning on the menu.
The Longer Record
The May 2026 inspection was not an outlier. State records show 27 inspections on file for Namaste Express, with 192 total violations documented across that history.
The two most recent inspections before May 2026 each produced five or six high-severity violations. The January 2026 inspection logged six high and three intermediate. The June 2025 inspection logged five high and two intermediate. The pattern in the most recent year is not one of a restaurant trending toward compliance.
The restaurant was emergency-closed once before, on October 2, 2024, after inspectors found roach activity. It passed a follow-up inspection the next day and reopened. That closure came between two inspections that each found multiple high-severity violations, in June 2025 and January 2026, suggesting the closure did not interrupt the broader pattern.
The one clean inspection in the recent record, October 3, 2024, was the follow-up visit conducted the day after the roach closure. Zero high violations and zero intermediate violations. That result, sandwiched between the pest closure and a return to five and six high-severity findings in subsequent visits, is the sharpest data point in the file.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when an inspector determines an immediate threat to public health exists. On May 19, 2026, the inspector cited food from an unknown source, no employee health policy, improper handwashing technique, unsanitized food contact surfaces, misused time controls, and no consumer advisory, and determined that threshold had not been met.
Namaste Express was not closed. It continued serving customers that day.