A West Palm Beach restaurant was cited for food from unapproved sources — and it's happened before

WEST PALM BEACH, FL. State inspectors cited Singing Bamboo on North Military Trail for sourcing food from an unapproved or unknown supplier during the week of June 17, one of five high-severity violations logged at the restaurant in a single inspection visit.

Food from unapproved sources is among the most serious citations inspectors can issue. It means there is no verified USDA or FDA inspection trail for whatever product came through the door, and if customers get sick, there may be no way to trace it back to the source.

That was not the only problem at Singing Bamboo. Inspectors also documented that an employee was not reporting symptoms of illness, that hand and arm washing technique was improper, that food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and that the restaurant lacked a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked foods. Five high-severity violations. Zero intermediate ones.

What Inspectors Found

Cobia Restaurant on Belvedere Road drew three high-severity violations, including a citation for no person in charge present or performing supervisory duties during the inspection. Inspectors also found no written employee health policy and documented that an employee was not reporting illness symptoms.

The absence of a person in charge is not a paperwork problem. CDC data cited in inspection records indicates that establishments without active managerial control have three times the rate of critical violations. At Cobia, the management failure coincided with both a missing health policy and an unreported illness symptom, a combination that compounds the risk at each step.

Kouun Asian Eatery on Belvedere Road, less than a mile from Cobia, was cited for two high-severity violations and two intermediate violations. The high-severity findings mirrored what inspectors found at Singing Bamboo and the Firehouse Subs location: employees not reporting illness symptoms and improper handwashing technique.

The intermediate violations at Kouun added a different dimension. Inspectors cited improper sewage or wastewater disposal and multi-use utensils that were not properly cleaned. Improper sewage disposal creates the risk of fecal contamination spreading through the facility. Unclean utensils develop bacterial biofilms within 24 hours, according to inspection health risk records, and those biofilms resist standard cleaning once established.

FHS West Palm Beach on Okeechobee Boulevard, a Firehouse Subs franchise location, was cited for two high-severity violations: an employee not reporting illness symptoms and improper hand and arm washing technique. No intermediate violations were noted.

What These Violations Mean

The single violation that appears most often across this week's inspections is an employee failing to report symptoms of illness. It showed up at all four facilities. That citation does not necessarily mean a sick worker was actively handling food at the moment of inspection. It means the system designed to catch that situation before it happens was not in place or not being followed.

Norovirus, the pathogen most commonly transmitted by sick food workers, causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year. A single infected employee who does not report symptoms and continues working a full shift can expose dozens of customers before anyone knows something is wrong. The illness reporting requirement exists precisely because the window between exposure and outbreak is short and the damage is difficult to undo.

Improper handwashing technique, cited at Singing Bamboo, Kouun Asian Eatery, and the Firehouse Subs location, is a separate problem from not washing hands at all. It means an employee made an attempt but did so incorrectly, leaving pathogens on the skin. Hands that appear clean but are not are arguably more dangerous in a kitchen setting because neither the employee nor a supervisor is likely to flag the problem.

The unapproved food source citation at Singing Bamboo carries a different kind of risk. When a restaurant buys food outside regulated supply chains, that product has not been inspected for Listeria, Salmonella, or other contaminants. If a customer becomes ill, investigators trying to trace the source may find no purchase records, no lot numbers, and no supplier to contact. The traceability chain breaks entirely.

The Longer Record

Singing Bamboo has 37 prior inspections on record, the longest history of any facility cited this week. That is a significant number. It means state inspectors have visited this address dozens of times over the life of the restaurant, and the violations documented in June 2026 include some of the most fundamental food safety failures, illness reporting, handwashing, food sourcing, and surface sanitation. None of those are new categories of concern in the industry, and none require specialized equipment or training to address.

The Firehouse Subs location on Okeechobee has 21 prior inspections on record, the second-longest history in this group. The two violations cited this week, illness reporting and handwashing technique, are the same pair that appeared at Kouun Asian Eatery. For a franchise operation with established corporate food safety protocols, those citations raise questions about how those protocols are being implemented at the location level.

Cobia Restaurant and Kouun Asian Eatery are both relatively new to the inspection record. Cobia has three prior inspections on file. Kouun has two. Neither has had time to build a pattern, but both accumulated high-severity violations early. Cobia's combination of no person in charge, no employee health policy, and an unreported illness symptom in its first few inspections is a notable starting point.

Kouun Asian Eatery, with only two prior inspections and already drawing citations for sewage disposal and unclean utensils alongside the illness and handwashing violations, presents a different concern. The sewage citation in particular is not a common finding, and its presence alongside four other violations in the facility's early inspection history is a detail inspectors will likely revisit.

The Pattern on Belvedere Road

Two of the four facilities cited this week sit on Belvedere Road within blocks of each other. Cobia Restaurant at 928 Belvedere and Kouun Asian Eatery at 807 Belvedere were both inspected during the same week and both drew overlapping violations, specifically the employee illness reporting failure that appeared at all four locations citywide.

Whether inspectors visited both addresses on the same route or on separate days, the records do not specify. What the records do show is that the illness reporting violation, the one most directly linked to multi-victim outbreaks, was not confined to a single neighborhood or a single type of operation this week. It appeared at a Chinese restaurant on Military Trail, a seafood restaurant on Belvedere, an Asian eatery also on Belvedere, and a national sandwich franchise on Okeechobee Boulevard.

Singing Bamboo's unapproved food source citation, the most serious single violation documented this week, had not been resolved in the inspection record as of the data provided.