BOCA RATON, FL. Back in February 2026, a state inspector walked into Sushi With Gusto, a seafood market on the retail side of Boca Raton's food scene, and found sushi rolls sitting in a self-serve reach case at temperatures between 44 and 53 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly two and a half hours after they had been put out for customers to grab.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services documented nine violations during the February 23 inspection, including one priority violation and five priority foundation violations. The facility met sanitation requirements overall, but the inspection record is specific about what inspectors found before corrections were made.
What Inspectors Found
The temperature finding was the most direct concern for shoppers. According to the inspection record, various sushi rolls and sushi combination packages placed in the customer self-serve reach area between 10 and 11 a.m. were found at 12:30 p.m. to have internal temperatures of 44 to 53 degrees when checked with a probe thermometer. The state standard for ready-to-eat refrigerated food is 41 degrees or below.
The inspector also documented that knives, cutting boards, and the device used to wrap sushi rolls had been in use since 9 a.m. and had not been cleaned or sanitized after four hours of contact with food. State food code requires that food-contact surfaces used with time and temperature control foods be cleaned and sanitized at least every four hours during continuous use.
A package of cream cheese in a reach-in cooler under the prep table had been open for two days with no date mark. A container of store-made brown rice prepared at 10 a.m. the previous day also had no date mark when the inspector found it at 1 p.m.
The hand sink next to the three-compartment sink had no soap at the start of the inspection. Two bottles of sauce on the prep table counter were not labeled with their common names.
The inspector also noted that daily logs had not been checked off by a supervisor for the entire month of January.
The Pattern the Inspector Cited
The inspection record includes a formal finding that a pattern of non-compliance was demonstrated specifically in the areas of cooling and sanitation. That citation is distinct from the individual violations, and it signals that the inspector considered the problems together, not as isolated lapses.
The person in charge was also cited for being unable to answer questions about preventing the spread of foodborne illness and for being unable to locate documentation on foodborne illness symptoms. Under state food code, a person in charge is expected to be able to demonstrate that knowledge or produce documentation of it on request.
That combination, a temperature failure in the self-serve case, unsanitized prep equipment, no supervisor sign-off on logs for a full month, and a person in charge without accessible illness protocols, is what the inspector recorded as a pattern.
What These Violations Mean
Sushi is among the higher-risk retail food products a grocery or seafood market can sell. Raw fish used in sushi must be sourced from suppliers who have frozen it to kill parasites, and once it is prepared, it must be kept at or below 41 degrees to slow bacterial growth. When sushi rolls sit at 44 to 53 degrees for two and a half hours in a self-serve case, the window for bacterial multiplication, particularly from pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus or Listeria, widens considerably.
The knives, cutting boards, and wrap device used continuously since 9 a.m. without cleaning represent a cross-contamination risk. Fish residue accumulating on food-contact surfaces over several hours can transfer bacteria to each subsequent roll or package those surfaces touch.
Date marking matters for a different reason. When cream cheese or store-made rice lacks a date mark, staff cannot determine how long the product has been in the temperature-controlled environment or whether it has exceeded safe holding times. At Sushi With Gusto, both items were corrected during the visit, but neither had been marked before the inspector arrived.
The supervisor log gap is a process failure. If daily temperature and sanitation logs for January were never signed off, there is no documented evidence that those checks were performed during that month at all.
The Longer Record
The February 2026 inspection was the fourth FDACS inspection on record at this location. The most significant prior visit came on August 3, 2022, when inspectors documented 17 violations during a routine inspection that still resulted in the facility meeting requirements. A second inspection on the same date that day found four violations.
A focused inspection in May 2023 found zero violations, suggesting the facility had addressed issues from the 2022 visits. But the February 2026 inspection, with nine violations and a formal pattern-of-non-compliance citation, indicates the improvement did not hold across all areas.
None of the nine violations from February were marked as repeats from a prior inspection cycle. All violations documented were corrected on site during the visit, according to the inspector's record. The one finding that was not resolved during the inspection was the January supervisor log gap: those logs were not checked off, and that month's documentation record cannot be reconstructed after the fact.