DAVIE, FL. Inspectors walked into Sushi Sake at 15641 Sheridan Street on September 9 and found that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness, a violation that state records flag as the number one cause of multi-victim outbreaks. The restaurant, which serves raw fish, was not closed.
By the time inspectors finished, they had documented six high-severity violations and two intermediate violations at the Davie location. The facility remained open to customers throughout.
What Inspectors Found
The illness-reporting violation sits at the center of the September 9 inspection. At a restaurant that serves raw and undercooked fish, an employee who comes to work with norovirus or another gastrointestinal illness and handles food without disclosing symptoms can transmit that illness directly to customers through the food itself.
Inspectors also cited the restaurant for having no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods. That advisory is the mechanism by which customers, including pregnant women, elderly diners, and people with compromised immune systems, are warned that consuming raw fish carries elevated risk. Without it, no one ordering a sashimi plate had any formal notice.
The time-as-public-health-control violation adds another layer. At sushi restaurants, raw fish is sometimes held at room temperature rather than refrigerated, with time tracked as the safety mechanism. When that tracking is not properly maintained, food can sit in the bacterial growth zone, between 41 and 135 degrees, without any record of how long it has been there.
Inspectors also found that food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and that employees were using improper handwashing technique. Those two violations together create a direct pathway for pathogens to move from surfaces to hands to food. The sewage and waste water disposal violation and the improperly cleaned multi-use utensils rounded out a list that inspectors documented across eight separate citations.
No person in charge was present or performing supervisory duties during the inspection.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-reporting failure is the violation that most directly put customers at risk on September 9. State health data identifies symptomatic food workers as the leading cause of multi-victim outbreaks, not contaminated ingredients, not equipment failures. When an employee with gastrointestinal symptoms continues working and handling raw fish without reporting, every plate that leaves the kitchen carries that exposure.
The missing consumer advisory compounds the problem at a sushi restaurant specifically. Customers who are immunocompromised, pregnant, or elderly face materially higher risk from raw fish consumption than the general population. The advisory is not a formality. It is the only point in the transaction where those customers receive the information they need to make a safe choice. At Sushi Sake on September 9, that information was not available.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces develop bacterial biofilms, layers of bacteria that bond to surfaces and resist standard cleaning. At a sushi prep station, those surfaces come into direct contact with fish that will not be cooked before it reaches a customer. The combination of biofilm-contaminated surfaces, improper handwashing technique, and food held without proper time controls creates compounding risk, not isolated incidents.
The sewage and waste water disposal violation is the one that most readers will not immediately connect to food safety. Raw sewage carries fecal pathogens. When disposal is improper, those pathogens can reach surfaces, hands, and ultimately food in the same facility where sushi is being prepared.
The Longer Record
The September 9 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Sushi Sake has accumulated 185 violations across 33 inspections on record, a history that stretches back well before this year.
The pattern is consistent. On November 3, 2025, inspectors documented six high-severity and two intermediate violations, an identical high-severity count to the September 9 inspection. A follow-up the next day, November 4, still found three high-severity violations. In February 2025, inspectors returned twice in a single day and found a combined five high-severity violations across both visits.
The March 2026 inspection briefly showed zero high-severity violations, a clean visit that preceded a return to five high-severity citations just one day later on March 9. The September 9 inspection came six months after that, with the same six-high-severity count that appeared in November 2025.
Sushi Sake has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history on record.
Still Open
A follow-up inspection on September 17, eight days after the September 9 visit, found one remaining high-severity violation. The restaurant had not been closed at any point between the two inspections.
Six high-severity violations, including employees not reporting illness symptoms and no advisory warning customers about raw fish, and Sushi Sake served customers through all of it.
