TAMPA, FL. Food workers at Thinh An Kitchen & Tofu on West Waters Avenue had no written policy requiring them to report illness symptoms, according to a state inspection on August 24, 2026 — and the restaurant stayed open.
State inspectors logged six high-severity violations and two intermediate violations at the 8104 W Waters Ave. location that day. Despite that tally, the facility was not emergency-closed. A separate closure order was issued the same day for a different reason: no potable water.
What Inspectors Found
The illness-reporting violation compounds the policy violation. Inspectors found both that no written employee health policy existed and that employees were not reporting symptoms of illness, a combination that state health officials identify as the leading cause of multi-victim outbreaks.
Inspectors also cited improper hand and arm washing technique. A handwashing attempt that uses the wrong technique still leaves pathogens on hands and provides no meaningful protection to customers.
The shellfish violations added a separate layer of risk. Inspectors found inadequate shell stock identification records and no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. Thinh An Kitchen and Tofu serves tofu and Vietnamese dishes, and the presence of shellfish traceability violations indicates the facility handles oysters, clams, or mussels, which are consumed raw or lightly cooked. Without proper records, there is no way to trace the source of those shellfish if a customer falls ill.
Inspectors also cited the facility for not following required procedures for specialized processes. Techniques like smoking, fermenting, curing, or reduced-oxygen packaging require precise controls; when those controls are not followed, pathogens that would otherwise be killed can survive.
The two intermediate violations were improper sewage or wastewater disposal and multi-use utensils not properly cleaned. Sewage exposure creates fecal contamination risk throughout a facility. Improperly cleaned utensils develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours, biofilms that resist standard cleaning.
What These Violations Mean
The employee illness violations are the ones that should concern anyone who ate at Thinh An Kitchen and Tofu in the days around this inspection. Norovirus, the most common foodborne illness in the United States, spreads primarily through infected food workers who handle food without restrictions. A written health policy is the mechanism that tells workers when to stay home and gives management the authority to enforce it. Without one, a worker with active symptoms has no formal obligation to report to a supervisor.
The shellfish records violation matters in a specific and traceable way. If a customer develops hepatitis A or Vibrio illness after eating raw shellfish, public health investigators need shell stock tags to identify the harvest location and pull product from other restaurants that received the same batch. Without those records, an outbreak investigation stops before it starts.
The specialized process violation is harder to see but equally serious. Fermented or reduced-oxygen-packaged foods that are not prepared under precise, documented controls can harbor Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that produces botulinum toxin. The absence of required procedures means those controls were not verified.
The sewage disposal violation ties to all of the above. Fecal contamination from improperly handled wastewater can reach food-contact surfaces, utensils, and food directly.
The Longer Record
The August 24 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Thinh An Kitchen and Tofu has been inspected 48 times and has accumulated 515 total violations across that history.
The two weeks surrounding this inspection show a facility under sustained scrutiny. Inspectors visited on August 21 twice, finding three high-severity and two intermediate violations in one visit and three high-severity violations in the other. They returned on August 24, the day of this report, and again on August 25, finding three high-severity violations on each of those dates. The July 15 inspection before that found seven high-severity and one intermediate violation. The March 4 inspection found six high-severity and five intermediate violations.
The facility has been emergency-closed twice. On August 24, 2026, the same day as this inspection, inspectors shut it down for having no potable water. It reopened the following day. The first closure came in August 2021, when inspectors found roach and fly activity; that closure also lasted a single day.
The 2025 record shows the same pattern. An inspection on July 30, 2025, found eight high-severity and three intermediate violations. A June 2025 visit found no high-severity violations, suggesting short-term corrections that did not hold.
Open for Business
The potable water closure on August 24 was resolved within 24 hours, and the restaurant reopened August 25. The six high-severity violations from that same inspection, including no employee illness policy and no consumer advisory for raw foods, were not the basis for the closure order.
As of the inspection record, Thinh An Kitchen and Tofu remained open with those violations on file.
