TAMPA, FL. A state inspector visiting Temak House Sushi Fusion on West Linebaugh Avenue in May found toxic chemicals improperly stored or labeled inside the restaurant, one of eight high-severity violations cited that day. The restaurant was not closed.
The inspection, conducted on May 21, 2026, produced zero intermediate violations and zero basic violations. Every single citation was high-severity.
What Inspectors Found
The chemical violations were cited twice, under two separate categories: improperly stored or labeled toxic chemicals, and toxic substances improperly identified, stored, or used. Both are high-severity citations.
The inspector also found that no person in charge was present or performing duties at the time of the visit. That finding sits at the top of the list for a reason.
Three of the remaining violations traced directly to disease transmission. The restaurant had no written employee health policy, or an inadequate one. Employees were not reporting symptoms of illness. And handwashing technique observed on site was cited as improper.
The final two violations involved the raw food menu. Temak House is a sushi fusion restaurant, meaning raw and lightly cooked seafood is central to what it serves. Inspectors cited the restaurant for failing to post a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods, and for inadequate shell stock identification records, meaning there was no documentation to trace where shellfish on the menu came from.
What These Violations Mean
The chemical violations are the most immediately alarming. Improperly stored or unlabeled chemicals near food preparation areas create the conditions for acute poisoning, not the slow-building risk of spoiled food, but sudden contamination of a dish with a cleaning agent or pesticide. Two separate citations in this category suggest the problem was not isolated to a single container left in the wrong place.
The illness reporting failures carry a different kind of danger. When a restaurant has no written health policy and employees are not required to report symptoms, a worker sick with Norovirus or Salmonella can move through a full shift, touching food and surfaces, without anyone stopping them. Norovirus accounts for an estimated 20 million infections in the United States each year, and food workers are a primary transmission route. At a sushi restaurant, where food is often handled directly and served raw, that exposure is more direct than at a kitchen where everything is cooked.
The shell stock traceability violation means that if a customer became ill after eating oysters or clams at Temak House, investigators would have no paperwork trail to identify the source. Shellfish harvested from contaminated waters can carry Vibrio bacteria or hepatitis A. The identification records exist precisely to enable a rapid response when someone gets sick. Without them, that response is impossible.
The consumer advisory violation compounds the shellfish problem. Customers who are pregnant, elderly, or immunocompromised are at elevated risk from raw seafood and are specifically the population those advisories are designed to warn. At Temak House on May 21, those customers had no notice.
The Longer Record
The May 2026 inspection was not the first time Temak House Sushi Fusion has drawn serious citations. State records show 25 total inspections on file and 168 total violations accumulated over the restaurant's history. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
The most recent inspections before this month told two different stories. In April 2025 and again in September 2023, the restaurant passed with zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. But in September 2023, just two days before one of those clean inspections, inspectors cited five high-severity and three intermediate violations. That pair of inspections, five days apart, with dramatically different outcomes, is a pattern that appears more than once in the record.
Going back further, the restaurant logged five high-severity violations in September 2022, four in May 2022, another four in a separate May 2022 visit two days earlier, and six high-severity violations in October 2021. The categories have shifted across visits, but the severity level has not. High-severity citations have appeared in seven of the last nine inspections with any violations at all.
The May 2026 inspection, with eight high-severity violations and none at any lower tier, is the highest single-visit high-severity count in the recent record.
Open for Business
State inspectors have the authority to order an emergency closure when violations pose an immediate threat to public health. That order was not issued on May 21.
Temak House Sushi Fusion remained open after the inspection. Customers who walked in that evening had no way of knowing what had been found inside earlier that day.