DELAND, FL. Inspectors visiting O Poke Express LLC on East International Speedway Boulevard on August 20, 2026 found that the restaurant was serving food sourced from unapproved or unknown suppliers, a violation that means the ingredients on customers' plates had bypassed federal safety inspections entirely.
That was one of seven high-severity violations documented during the single visit. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The unapproved food sourcing citation is among the most serious a food service establishment can receive. When ingredients arrive outside the USDA and FDA inspection chain, there is no paper trail if a customer becomes ill, and no way to trace contamination back to a supplier.
Inspectors also found that at least one employee had not reported symptoms of illness, a direct pathway for diseases like norovirus to move from a worker's hands to a customer's bowl. That violation appeared alongside a citation for improper handwashing technique, meaning that even when employees did wash their hands, they were not doing so in a way that reliably removes pathogens.
The list continued. Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, containers, and prep tools that touch ingredients directly, were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled near food. The person designated to be in charge of the operation was either absent or not actively performing supervisory duties. And the restaurant was using time as a public health control without following proper protocols, meaning food was being held in the temperature danger zone without the documentation and limits that make that practice safe.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of violations found at O Poke Express on August 20 represents nearly every major transmission route for foodborne illness operating at once. Unapproved sourcing means the fish and produce arriving at the restaurant may never have been inspected for Listeria, Salmonella, or other pathogens. If a customer gets sick, investigators have no supplier records to pull.
The illness-reporting failure compounds that risk acutely. Norovirus, one of the most common causes of restaurant-linked outbreaks, spreads with devastating efficiency when a symptomatic worker handles ready-to-eat food. The improper handwashing citation means the one intervention that could interrupt that chain was not being executed correctly.
Improperly sanitized food contact surfaces create a secondary transfer route. Bacteria from raw fish can survive on a cutting board and transfer to the next ingredient prepared on it. At a poke restaurant, where raw seafood is a central ingredient, that risk is not theoretical.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is particularly significant in a poke context. When a restaurant opts to use time rather than temperature to keep food safe, state rules require strict tracking of when food was removed from temperature control and when it must be discarded. Without that documentation and discipline, food can sit in the bacterial growth zone well past safe limits.
The Longer Record
O Poke Express: High-Severity Violations by Inspection, 2022-2026
August 20, 2026 was not an anomaly. State records show O Poke Express has accumulated 111 total violations across 18 inspections on record. Every single inspection in the available history produced high-severity violations.
The pattern has no clean period. The January 2024 inspection produced six high-severity violations. The July 2025 inspection produced four. The February 2026 inspection, six months before this one, produced two. None of those inspections resulted in an emergency closure.
What the record shows is a facility that has never passed an inspection without at least two high-severity citations, across more than four years of documented visits. The categories that appeared on August 20, including management failures and food safety control breakdowns, are consistent with a kitchen operating without reliable supervisory structure over an extended period.
O Poke Express has never been emergency-closed.
Still Open
After inspectors documented seven high-severity violations at the DeLand restaurant on August 20, 2026, including food from an unknown source, an employee not reporting illness, and improperly stored toxic chemicals, the state did not order the facility to close.
O Poke Express remained open for business.
