PEMBROKE PINES, FL. Back in December 2025, a state inspector walked into a Pembroke Pines seafood market and found packages of freshly made sushi sitting in a self-service open-air cooler at temperatures between 48 and 51 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly three and a half hours after they had been prepared and put on display.
The sushi, including California rolls, salmon rolls, and spring shrimp rolls, had been made at 8 a.m. and placed in the retail case. When the inspector checked internal temperatures with a probe thermometer at 11:15 a.m., not one package was holding at a safe temperature. All of it was pulled and moved to a freezer during the inspection.
What Inspectors Found
The December 16 inspection of Sushi With Gusto, a seafood market retail operation on the state's FDACS licensing rolls, turned up eight violations in total, four of them priority-level, meaning inspectors considered them the most direct threats to public health.
Cross-contamination was documented in two separate areas of the store. In the food processing area, a container of raw tuna was stored directly over sweet potatoes inside a reach-in cooler. In the retail area, containers of raw salmon sushi were stacked directly over ready-to-eat spring shrimp sushi and California rolls. Both situations were corrected during the inspection.
The hand-hygiene finding was pointed. The inspector noted that employees were donning gloves before washing their hands, not after, meaning they were handling food with contaminated hands underneath clean gloves. The violation was discussed with employees during the visit, and workers washed their hands and put on new gloves before continuing.
The fourth priority violation involved the store's HACCP plan, a written food safety protocol that sushi operations producing raw or acidified fish products are required to follow. The person in charge was measuring rice pH, a critical step in sushi rice preparation, using water drawn from the hand-wash sink. The HACCP plan required distilled water for that calibration. The inspector discussed the correct procedure with the person in charge during the visit.
The hand-wash sink itself was also cited. An employee had used it to fill a small cup for the pH test, which is not a permitted use. The sink is required to be accessible and reserved exclusively for hand washing at all times.
The Non-Priority Violations
Three additional violations rounded out the inspection, none of them priority-level but each reflecting basic sanitation gaps. Unlabeled bottles of sauce were stored on the preparation reach-in cooler, a wet wiping cloth was left on a prep table rather than stored in sanitizer solution between uses, and a personal water bottle was stored above single-use items. All three were corrected during the visit.
The inspection report also noted separately that the establishment did not have written procedures for employees to follow in the event of a vomiting or diarrheal incident on the premises. That citation carried a priority foundation designation, meaning it relates to a foundational food safety management practice.
What These Violations Mean
The temperature finding is the one that shoppers at any self-service sushi counter should understand clearly. Sushi-grade fish and rice-based rolls must be held at 41 degrees Fahrenheit or below to slow the growth of bacteria including Listeria, Salmonella, and Staphylococcus aureus. At 48 to 51 degrees, those products had already been in the bacterial growth danger zone long enough that the inspector ordered all of them removed. A shopper who picked up a package from that case before the inspector arrived had no way of knowing the temperature inside it.
The cross-contamination violations at Sushi With Gusto compound that concern. Raw tuna stored above sweet potatoes, and raw salmon sushi above ready-to-eat rolls, creates a direct path for pathogens from uncooked fish to reach food that will be eaten without any further cooking. The ready-to-eat products in the retail case require no preparation from the customer. Whatever is on them when they are packaged is what gets consumed.
The HACCP violation matters for a different reason. Sushi operations that use a HACCP plan, particularly those producing acidified rice, are operating under a special process approval from the state. That approval is granted on the condition that the plan is followed precisely. Using hand-sink water instead of distilled water for pH meter calibration means the pH reading may be inaccurate, and an inaccurate pH reading on sushi rice means the acidity level that inhibits bacterial growth in raw fish preparations cannot be verified.
The hand-hygiene finding cuts across all of it. Gloves do not replace hand washing. They seal in whatever contamination is already on a worker's hands. An employee who handles raw fish, touches a surface, and then puts on gloves without washing first carries that contamination into every product they touch next.
The Longer Record
The December inspection was the third FDACS inspection on record for this location. The two prior visits, a focused inspection in January 2025 and another in June 2023, each resulted in zero violations. That clean prior record makes the December findings more notable rather than less: inspectors had seen no problems in two prior visits, then found four priority violations in a single routine inspection.
None of the eight December violations were marked as repeats, meaning the specific citation categories had not been flagged in the prior inspections. The facility met sanitation requirements at the conclusion of the December 16 visit, meaning corrections made during the inspection were sufficient to satisfy the inspector at that time.
The written vomit and diarrheal event procedure, however, is a documentation requirement that exists independently of on-site corrections. Whether that written plan was in place when the inspector left the building is not specified in the inspection record.
