PINELLAS PARK, FL. Inspectors found that Pho 97 Inc. on 49th Street North was serving food from unapproved or unknown sources when they visited the restaurant on June 29, 2026, meaning at least some of what went into customers' bowls had bypassed federal safety inspection entirely.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented during the visit. The state did not close the restaurant.
What Inspectors Found
The June 29 inspection turned up no intermediate violations. Every single violation the inspector documented was high-severity.
Two of the six citations involved employee illness. The restaurant had no written health policy requiring workers to disclose illness symptoms, and inspectors found that employees were not, in fact, reporting symptoms. Those two violations appeared together on the same inspection report.
The shellfish citation added another layer of concern. Inspectors found inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning the restaurant could not document where its shellfish, whether oysters, clams, or mussels, had come from. Food contact surfaces were also cited as not properly cleaned or sanitized.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting symptoms is the condition that precedes most large-scale foodborne illness outbreaks. Norovirus, the virus responsible for the majority of restaurant-linked outbreaks, spreads directly from sick food workers to customers through contaminated food. A written policy does not stop illness, but it creates the reporting chain that keeps a sick employee out of the kitchen. Pho 97 had neither the policy nor the practice on June 29.
The food sourcing violation carries a different kind of risk. When food enters a kitchen from an unapproved or unknown source, it has not passed through USDA or FDA inspection. If that food harbors Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli, there is no paper trail to trace an outbreak back to the supplier. For a restaurant that serves broth-based dishes built on proteins and produce, the sourcing chain matters.
The shellfish traceability violation compounds the sourcing problem. Shellfish are filter feeders that concentrate bacteria and viruses from the water around them. They are frequently consumed raw or lightly cooked, which means they rely almost entirely on the integrity of the harvest record to be safe. Without adequate shell stock identification at Pho 97, there is no way to determine where those shellfish came from or whether the harvest area was approved.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces, the sixth violation, close the loop. Surfaces that carry residue from one food preparation cycle to the next are a direct transfer route for whatever pathogens entered the kitchen through the other five violations.
The Longer Record
The June 29 inspection was not an aberration.
Pho 97 Inc. Inspection Pattern, 2024 to 2026
State records show Pho 97 has been inspected 43 times and has accumulated 554 total violations. The restaurant was emergency-closed in October 2024 for rodent, roach, and fly activity, and was allowed to reopen four days later. In the eight inspections documented since that closure, the lowest high-severity violation count in any single visit was one, recorded in June 2025 during a routine follow-up.
The worst single visit in the recent record was June 13, 2025, when inspectors cited 12 high-severity violations and 5 intermediate violations in one visit. The March 30, 2026 inspection, three months before the June 29 report, produced the same tier of findings: 6 high-severity violations.
In the inspection immediately before the emergency closure, and in every inspection since, high-severity violations have appeared on every report. The pattern at Pho 97 is not one of occasional lapses followed by correction. It is one of sustained, documented, high-severity failure across nearly two years of records.
After the June 29 inspection, the restaurant on 49th Street North remained open.
