JACKSONVILLE, FL. Inspectors visiting Sushi Q Japanese Restaurant on Gate Parkway on May 20 found that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness, a violation that public health officials link directly to multi-victim foodborne outbreaks. The restaurant walked away with eight high-severity violations that day. It was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspection record for May 20 lists violations across nearly every critical control point in the kitchen. No person in charge was present or performing duties. Handwashing facilities were inadequate, and employees who did attempt to wash their hands used improper technique.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for failing to maintain shell stock identification records, a requirement that applies to any shellfish served raw or lightly cooked. Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized. Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled. Required procedures for specialized processes, a category that covers reduced-oxygen packaging and similar techniques used in sushi preparation, were not followed.
A single intermediate violation accompanied the eight high-severity citations: multi-use utensils were not properly cleaned.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting violation is the one that most directly puts customers at risk before they ever sit down. When food workers fail to report symptoms, they can transmit norovirus and other pathogens directly to food through handling. A sushi kitchen, where much of the food is served raw and never reaches a temperature that would kill bacteria or viruses, has no safety net once a sick employee touches the product.
The shellfish traceability failure compounds that risk. Oysters, clams, and mussels served raw must be tracked to their harvest source so that if customers become sick, investigators can identify the contaminated batch and pull it from circulation. Without those records at Sushi Q, that chain of accountability breaks. If someone got sick after eating there on May 20, there would be no paper trail to follow.
The inadequate handwashing facilities and improper technique violations are not redundant. One means the infrastructure to wash hands correctly does not exist. The other means that even when employees tried, they did not do it correctly. Both were cited at the same inspection.
Improperly stored toxic chemicals near food areas create a risk of acute poisoning through direct contamination or mislabeling. That violation, alongside the failure to follow specialized process procedures, suggests the kitchen was operating without the controls that sushi preparation specifically requires.
The Pattern
The May 20 inspection did not represent a new low for Sushi Q. It represented a continuation.
State records show the restaurant has accumulated 217 violations across 26 inspections on file. The March 11, 2026 inspection produced nine high-severity violations and one intermediate. The November 3, 2025 inspection produced nine high-severity violations and two intermediate. The July 29, 2025 inspection produced seven high-severity violations and four intermediate.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The Longer Record
The pattern in the inspection history is not one of a facility struggling with isolated problems. It is one of recurring high-severity violations separated by brief clean inspections, then another spike.
After the July 29, 2025 inspection with seven high-severity violations, the restaurant passed clean on June 24, 2025, and again on July 31, then drew two high-severity violations on July 30. After the November 2025 inspection with nine high-severity violations, it passed clean again. After the March 2026 inspection with nine high-severity violations, it passed clean on May 22 and drew one high violation on May 21, two days after the eight-violation inspection that prompted this report.
That sequence, a serious inspection followed by a clean callback, followed months later by another serious inspection, has repeated at least four times in the record.
The May 22 follow-up inspection showed zero high-severity violations and zero intermediate violations. The restaurant remained open throughout.