DUNEDIN, FL. In May 2026, state inspectors walked into Tom Yum Thai & Sushi Restaurant on Patricia Avenue and found that no one was enforcing a written policy requiring sick employees to report their symptoms before handling food. The restaurant was serving sushi. It was not closed.
The May 1 inspection produced 7 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate violation. The facility remained open after the visit.
What Inspectors Found
Three of the seven high-severity violations were directly tied to how employees handled food. Inspectors cited improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning workers were attempting to wash their hands but not doing so in a way that removes pathogens. They also cited a failure to properly clean and sanitize food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep counters and utensils that food touches before it reaches a plate.
The illness reporting failures compounded both of those. The restaurant had no adequate written employee health policy and employees were not reporting symptoms of illness. In a restaurant serving raw fish, those two violations together describe a direct pathway from a sick worker to a customer's plate.
Inspectors also cited inadequate shell stock identification records. The restaurant offers sushi and Thai dishes, and without proper shellfish traceability records, there is no way to trace where shellfish served raw or lightly cooked came from if a customer becomes ill.
The menu itself carried no consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. And the person in charge was either not present or not performing supervisory duties.
What These Violations Mean
The illness-related violations are the ones that carry the most immediate risk for customers who ate at Tom Yum Thai & Sushi in early May. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness outbreaks in restaurant settings, spreads primarily through infected food workers who continue handling food while symptomatic. A written health policy is the first mechanism that stops that chain. Without one, and without employees trained to report symptoms, the restaurant had no systematic barrier between a sick worker and a customer's meal.
Improper handwashing technique is a separate failure from simply not washing hands. A worker who goes through the motions of handwashing but does not use the correct technique, duration, or method leaves pathogens on their hands. Combined with food contact surfaces that were not properly cleaned and sanitized, the May 1 inspection described a kitchen where contamination had multiple unblocked routes to food.
The shellfish traceability violation matters in a different way. Oysters, clams, and mussels are high-risk foods when eaten raw or lightly cooked. Shellfish can carry Vibrio bacteria and other pathogens that are not destroyed by light heat. The tag and identification system that restaurants are required to maintain exists specifically so that, if customers become ill, investigators can trace the shellfish back to its source and identify the harvest location. Without those records, that chain of accountability is broken.
The absence of a consumer advisory for raw and undercooked foods is a disclosure failure. Elderly customers, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems face significantly elevated risk from raw fish and undercooked shellfish. The advisory exists so those customers can make an informed choice. At Tom Yum Thai & Sushi on May 1, they were not given one.
The Longer Record
The May 2026 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Tom Yum Thai & Sushi has been inspected 24 times and has accumulated 246 total violations across its inspection history. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern of high-severity violations is consistent across multiple years. In February 2026, just ten weeks before the May inspection, inspectors cited 6 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate. In January 2025, a visit produced 6 high-severity violations and 1 intermediate. In November 2023, 7 high-severity violations and 2 intermediate violations were documented in a single inspection.
The May 1, 2026 visit tied the November 2023 inspection for the highest single-visit high-severity count in the facility's recorded history. Both produced 7 high-severity violations.
The two inspections that preceded the worst ones tell a similar story. A low-violation visit in mid-2025 followed a high-severity cluster in January 2025. A clean inspection in November 2023 came the day after the 7-high-severity visit. The record suggests brief corrections followed by return to the same patterns, not sustained improvement.
Three of the violations cited in May, no employee health policy, failure to report illness symptoms, and no consumer advisory for raw foods, were also present in the February 2026 inspection cluster. They were not new findings on May 1.
Still Open
State law gives inspectors discretion over whether to order an emergency closure. On May 1, 2026, after documenting 7 high-severity violations at a restaurant serving raw fish with no illness reporting policy, no consumer advisory, and improperly sanitized food contact surfaces, inspectors exercised that discretion and left the restaurant open.
Tom Yum Thai & Sushi on Patricia Avenue was operating and serving customers when the inspector left.