ORLANDO, FL. State inspectors walked into Nan King Restaurant on Old Winter Garden Road on September 10, 2026, and documented that the kitchen was not following parasite destruction procedures for fish or other proteins, meaning customers could have been served food carrying live Anisakis worms or tapeworm larvae. The restaurant was not closed.
That single violation was one of seven high-severity citations issued that day, a list that also included improperly stored toxic chemicals, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and no written employee health policy. Two intermediate violations accompanied them. By state standards, inspectors had enough in front of them to justify emergency closure. They did not pull the trigger.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction failure means the kitchen was not applying the required freezing or cooking protocols that kill organisms like Anisakis in fish or Trichinella in pork. Those parasites survive inside the body and can cause severe gastrointestinal illness. The fix is procedural, but skipping it leaves customers with no protection.
Toxic chemicals stored or labeled improperly near food is a different category of danger entirely. A mislabeled container, or a chemical stored above a prep surface, can contaminate food directly. The exposure can cause acute poisoning, and because the contamination is invisible, a customer would have no way to know.
Food contact surfaces that are not properly cleaned and sanitized function as a transfer point for whatever bacteria or pathogens were on the last item prepared there. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils all qualify. If those surfaces carry Salmonella or Listeria from one food item to the next, the contamination spreads silently across every dish that follows.
The three violations tied to employee health, illness reporting, and handwashing technique form a cluster that state regulators treat as acutely dangerous. A sick employee who does not report symptoms, has no written health policy to consult, and does not wash hands correctly is the most direct route from a sick kitchen worker to a sick customer. Norovirus, which spreads through exactly this pathway, causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods means customers with compromised immune systems, pregnant women, elderly diners, and young children had no notice that any menu item carried elevated risk.
What These Violations Mean
The parasite destruction failure is not an abstract regulatory checkbox. When a kitchen skips proper freezing protocols for fish, the parasites inside that fish remain viable. Anisakis larvae, common in raw or undercooked fish, can embed in the stomach lining and require surgical removal in severe cases. Customers ordering dishes with fish at Nan King on September 10 had no way to know this step had been skipped.
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is what epidemiologists call a structural outbreak condition. It does not require a single dramatic failure. It requires only that one sick employee comes to work, handles food, and touches surfaces that other employees also touch. The handwashing violation compounds this: even when employees made an attempt to wash their hands, improper technique left pathogens behind.
Improperly disposed sewage or wastewater introduces fecal contamination into a food preparation environment. That is not a plumbing inconvenience. Raw sewage carries E. coli, Hepatitis A, and other pathogens that survive on surfaces long enough to reach food. The intermediate classification does not reduce the biological reality of what sewage contains.
Reusing single-use items, the second intermediate violation, creates contamination pathways that those items were specifically designed to eliminate. Gloves, cups, and foil containers are manufactured for one use because reuse defeats the barrier they provide.
The Longer Record
September 10 was not a bad day at Nan King Restaurant. It was a typical one.
State inspection records show the facility at 6618 Old Winter Garden Road has been inspected 36 times and has accumulated 475 total violations across its history. The most recent inspection before September 10 was conducted on January 7, 2026, and produced 13 high-severity violations and 4 intermediate violations, the worst single-day tally in the recent record.
The pattern across the prior eight inspections is consistent. Every visit going back to August 2023 produced at least 3 high-severity violations. The August 2025 inspection found 10 high violations and 4 intermediate. The January 2025 inspection found 7 high and 4 intermediate. The restaurant was emergency-closed in December 2023 after inspectors documented roach activity. It reopened two days later, on December 13, 2023, and the violations continued.
The follow-up inspection the day after the September 10 visit, conducted September 11, 2026, found 5 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate violations still present. The restaurant remained open after that visit as well.
Still Open
Seven high-severity violations on September 10. Five more the following day. A prior emergency closure for roaches. Four hundred seventy-five violations across 36 inspections.
Nan King Restaurant on Old Winter Garden Road was not closed after any of it.
