TAMPA, FL. Food workers at Rice and Spice on Sheldon Road were not reporting symptoms of illness to management on May 29, according to state inspection records, and the restaurant had no written health policy requiring them to do so. Inspectors cited both as high-severity violations. The restaurant stayed open.
The May 29 inspection turned up six high-severity violations and zero intermediate ones. That combination, all citations at the most serious level, with none at the lower tiers, is not a paperwork problem. It reflects failures at the core of how a kitchen prevents its workers from making customers sick.
What Inspectors Found
The illness-reporting violation and the missing health policy are not separate problems. They are the same problem documented twice. Without a written policy, workers have no formal instruction to stay home or report symptoms. Without reporting, a worker sick with Norovirus handles food, and customers eat it.
Inspectors also cited improper handwashing technique and inadequate handwashing facilities. Both were flagged on the same visit, which means the problem is not just that workers were washing their hands incorrectly. The physical setup of the kitchen was not supporting proper hygiene in the first place.
The sixth violation, unsanitized food contact surfaces, closes the loop. A worker who does not wash hands properly, at a sink that does not meet standards, then touches a cutting board or prep surface that is not cleaned between uses, creates a direct transfer route for whatever pathogen that worker is carrying.
What These Violations Mean
Food workers who fail to report illness are the leading cause of multi-victim restaurant outbreaks in the United States. Norovirus, which spreads through contaminated food and surfaces, requires fewer than 20 viral particles to infect a person. A sick worker who touches a prep surface once can expose every customer who eats food prepared on that surface for the rest of the service period.
The handwashing violations compound that risk in a specific way. Improper technique, meaning washing too briefly, skipping soap, or missing contact areas on the hands, leaves pathogens in place even when a worker believes they have washed. At Rice and Spice, inspectors found both the technique and the infrastructure deficient. That is not a single lapse. It is a systemic gap.
Unsanitized food contact surfaces are a separate transmission route running in parallel. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensil surfaces that are not properly cleaned between uses allow bacteria to accumulate and transfer to food that never came near a sick worker. At Rice and Spice, all three pathways, sick workers, hand contamination, and surface contamination, were present on the same day.
The missing consumer advisory affects a narrower group but a more vulnerable one. Customers who are pregnant, elderly, immunocompromised, or managing certain conditions rely on menu disclosures to make informed choices about raw or undercooked items. Without that notice, they have no way to know the risk they are taking.
The Longer Record
The May 29 inspection was the twelfth on record for Rice and Spice. Across those twelve visits, inspectors have documented 51 total violations. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern in the inspection history is difficult to ignore. High-severity violations appeared in April 2023 (four), October 2023 (three), April 2024 (three), May 2025 (three), and April 2026 (seven). The April 2026 inspection, just six weeks before the May 29 visit, was the worst single inspection in the facility's recorded history at that point, with seven high-severity citations and one intermediate. A clean inspection followed ten days later on April 24. Then May 29 produced six high-severity violations again.
That sequence, a high-violation inspection in April, a clean bill in the same month, then another high-violation inspection five weeks later, suggests the fixes applied after the April inspection did not hold. The illness-reporting and health policy violations on May 29 are not the kind of problem that resolves itself between visits and then reappears by accident. They reflect how a kitchen is managed when no inspector is present.
In eight inspections dating back to October 2022, Rice and Spice has recorded zero high-severity violations exactly twice. Every other visit has produced at least three.
Open for Business
State inspectors documented six high-severity violations at Rice and Spice on May 29, 2026. Among them: no system for workers to report illness, workers not reporting illness, handwashing infrastructure that did not meet standards, improper handwashing technique, unsanitized food contact surfaces, and no advisory for customers eating raw or undercooked food.
The restaurant was not closed.
It had accumulated 51 violations across its inspection history, including seven high-severity citations just six weeks earlier. It had never been emergency-closed.
After the May 29 inspection, Rice and Spice on Sheldon Road remained open.