TAMPA, FL. When state inspectors walked into New Bamboo Express at 5322 Kelly Road on May 20, they found a restaurant with no written employee health policy, workers who had not reported illness symptoms, and food contact surfaces that had not been properly cleaned or sanitized. They left it open.
The inspection logged seven high-severity violations and one intermediate violation. Not one of them was resolved by closing the restaurant.
What Inspectors Found
The illness-reporting violation is among the most direct threats to customers. Inspectors cited the restaurant both for having no written employee health policy and for employees not reporting illness symptoms, two separate failures that together create an unbroken path from a sick worker to a customer's plate.
The handwashing findings compounded that risk. Inspectors cited inadequate handwashing facilities and improper handwashing technique as separate violations. That means the infrastructure for hand hygiene was deficient, and even when workers did wash their hands, they did not do it correctly.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and multi-use utensils had not been properly cleaned. Those two violations, taken together, describe a kitchen where the tools used to prepare food and the surfaces those tools touch were both carrying contamination risk.
No person in charge was present or performing duties at the time of the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is the documented setup for a multi-victim outbreak. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness in the United States, spreads readily from a sick food worker to customers when no policy exists to keep that worker off the line. At New Bamboo Express on May 20, neither safeguard was in place.
Inadequate handwashing facilities means proper hand hygiene was structurally impossible, regardless of worker intent. Improper technique means that even the handwashing that did occur was not removing pathogens. Studies show that correct handwashing reduces bacterial contamination on hands by more than 99 percent. Incorrect technique provides far less protection, and in some cases creates a false sense of cleanliness.
Unsanitized food contact surfaces are a primary vehicle for bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat foods. When cutting boards, prep counters, and similar surfaces are not properly cleaned between uses, bacteria from one food item move directly to the next. Combined with improperly cleaned multi-use utensils, the inspection describes a kitchen where cross-contamination was a structural condition, not an isolated lapse.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods is a separate concern. Customers with compromised immune systems, pregnant women, the elderly, and young children face acute risk from undercooked proteins. Without a posted advisory, they have no way to make an informed choice.
The Longer Record
New Bamboo Express: Recent Inspection History
The May 20 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show 25 inspections on file for New Bamboo Express, with 197 total violations accumulated across that history. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The February 9, 2026 inspection, just three months before this one, produced an identical tally: seven high-severity violations and one intermediate. The categories were not identified as different in the records. The restaurant logged the same severity profile twice in the same calendar year.
Going back further, the pattern holds. Six high-severity violations in August 2023. Five high-severity violations in January 2023. Four high-severity violations in both August 2024 and May 2025. The single clean inspection in this stretch, June 2025, produced zero high-severity violations and one intermediate. One month later, the high-severity violations had returned.
In eight of the most recent inspections on record, the restaurant produced high-severity violations every time but one. The violations in the illness-reporting and handwashing categories are not new problems documented for the first time in May 2026. They are recurring findings at a restaurant that, as of the date of this inspection, remained open for business.