LAKE WALES, FL. State inspectors walked into Tasty Wings & Ramen on Highway 60 on July 1 and found food sourced from an unapproved or unknown supplier, a violation that means no federal safety inspection ever touched what customers were being served.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented that day. The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The food sourcing violation is among the most serious an inspector can document. When food arrives from an unapproved supplier, it has bypassed USDA and FDA inspection checkpoints entirely, meaning there is no paper trail linking it to a certified processor. If a customer got sick, investigators would have no starting point.
Alongside that, inspectors found food not cooked to the required minimum internal temperature. For a restaurant whose name begins with the word "wings," that matters. Poultry must reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit to kill Salmonella. The inspection record does not state how far short the temperature fell.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and multi-use utensils were also cited for improper cleaning. Those two violations together describe a kitchen where surfaces that touch food are transferring whatever contamination they carry from one preparation to the next.
Employees were also documented using improper handwashing technique. That is distinct from not washing hands at all. It means a handwashing attempt was made and still left pathogens on the hands.
The restaurant had no written employee health policy, meaning there was no formal mechanism in place to keep sick workers out of the kitchen. And there was no consumer advisory posted for raw or undercooked foods, leaving customers with no way to make an informed choice about their risk.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of undercooked food and food from an unapproved source is particularly dangerous at a poultry-focused restaurant. Salmonella survives in chicken that does not reach the required temperature, and it is one of the most common causes of serious foodborne illness in the United States. When that chicken also comes from a supplier outside the regulated supply chain, there is no way to know what pathogens it may have carried before it arrived in the kitchen.
The absence of an employee health policy compounds that risk directly. Without a written policy, a worker with Norovirus, Hepatitis A, or Salmonella has no formal instruction to stay home. Norovirus alone accounts for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and it spreads easily through food handled by an infected worker, particularly one using improper handwashing technique.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces and utensils are not minor housekeeping failures. Bacterial biofilms form on unclean surfaces within 24 hours and are significantly harder to remove than surface contamination. Once a biofilm establishes itself on a cutting board or prep surface, routine wiping does not eliminate it.
The missing consumer advisory matters most for specific populations: elderly customers, pregnant women, people with compromised immune systems, and young children. These groups face the highest risk from undercooked proteins. Without a posted advisory, they have no information to act on.
The Longer Record
Tasty Wings & Ramen: Inspection History
July 1 was not a bad day at an otherwise clean restaurant. State records show Tasty Wings & Ramen has accumulated 53 total violations across 11 inspections on file, and every single inspection in that record includes at least two high-severity citations.
The most recent inspection before July 1, conducted on March 18, 2026, produced four high-severity violations and one intermediate. The inspection before that, in January 2026, produced two high and two intermediate. Going back through 2023, the pattern does not break. There is no inspection in this facility's history that returned zero high-severity violations.
The July 1 inspection represents the worst single visit on record, six high-severity violations against a prior high of four. It is the third inspection in the past four months to find four or more high-priority problems.
The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
