LAKE MARY, FL. Food at Persis Indian Grill on International Parkway was not cooked to required minimum temperatures during a state inspection on August 25, one of eight high-severity violations documented that day at the Lake Mary restaurant. The facility remained open.
The inspection record lists violations across nearly every layer of food safety: no person in charge actively performing duties, no written employee health policy, employees not reporting illness symptoms, improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, undercooking, toxic chemicals stored or labeled incorrectly, toxic substances improperly identified or used, and no demonstrated allergen awareness. Two intermediate violations, covering ventilation and equipment condition, rounded out the findings.
What Inspectors Found
The undercooking violation is the most direct threat to anyone who ate there that day. Poultry carries Salmonella that survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A restaurant serving Indian cuisine, where chicken dishes are central to the menu, that cannot demonstrate food is reaching required temperatures is not a theoretical risk.
The allergen violation compounds that concern. Food allergies affect 32 million Americans, and when staff cannot demonstrate allergen awareness, a customer with a tree nut, dairy, or shellfish allergy has no reliable way to know what is actually in their food. That gap sends roughly 30,000 people to emergency rooms each year nationally.
The two chemical violations, covering both storage and labeling, add a separate category of danger entirely. Chemicals stored near food or mislabeled can contaminate ingredients directly, and the consequences can be acute rather than delayed.
What These Violations Mean
The absence of an active person in charge is not a paperwork problem. CDC data shows establishments without active managerial control accumulate critical violations at three times the rate of those with engaged management. Every other violation on this list, the undercooking, the chemical storage failures, the allergen gap, is more likely to occur and less likely to be caught when no one is running the kitchen with authority.
The employee illness violations, both the missing health policy and the failure to report symptoms, work together. Without a written policy, workers may not know they are required to report symptoms. Without reporting, a sick employee handles food and surfaces, and Norovirus, which causes 20 million illnesses in the United States annually, spreads directly to customers. These two violations are not redundant; they describe a system with no mechanism to catch illness before it reaches a plate.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch food directly, are a primary route for bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat items. Combined with undercooking, that pathway becomes a direct line from contaminated surface to customer.
Equipment in poor repair, listed as an intermediate violation, is not minor in this context. Cracks, chips, and corroded areas in kitchen equipment cannot be effectively sanitized. They hold bacteria between cleaning cycles.
The Longer Record
The August 25 inspection was not an anomaly. Persis Indian Grill has 21 inspections on record and 146 total violations documented across that history.
The pattern in the most recent inspections is consistent. The October 7, 2025 inspection produced five high-severity and three intermediate violations, and that same day the restaurant was emergency-closed for roach activity. It reopened the following day after a follow-up inspection found two high-severity violations still present. The December 2025 inspection logged six high-severity violations. The April 2025 inspection logged five. The October 2025 inspection, conducted one day after the emergency closure, still found two high-severity violations.
Two inspections in late 2024, in November and January 2025, produced zero high-severity violations. That stretch now looks like an exception rather than a correction.
The September 2, 2026 inspection, conducted eight days after the inspection that is the subject of this article, found three high-severity violations and one intermediate. The violations are not resolving between visits.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented eight high-severity violations at Persis Indian Grill on August 25, including food not cooked to required temperatures, no allergen awareness, and improperly stored toxic chemicals. The restaurant was not emergency-closed.
A follow-up inspection eight days later found three more high-severity violations.
The restaurant remained open throughout.
