FORT PIERCE, FL. A state inspector walked into Wu Hibachiexpress on South US Highway 1 on June 24 and found food sourced from an unapproved or unknown supplier, meaning no one could trace where it came from or whether it had ever passed a federal safety inspection.
That was one of seven 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 or unknown supplier, it has bypassed USDA and FDA inspection checkpoints entirely. If a customer becomes sick, investigators have no supply chain to trace.
Alongside that finding, the inspector cited an employee for not reporting symptoms of illness. The restaurant also had no written employee health policy, meaning there was no formal protocol requiring sick workers to stay home or notify a manager before handling food.
The handwashing violation adds another layer. The inspector found that employees were not using proper hand and arm washing technique, meaning even when a wash attempt was made, pathogens were not reliably removed.
Food contact surfaces were not properly cleaned or sanitized, and multi-use utensils had not been adequately cleaned, a combination that creates direct transfer routes for bacteria between prep cycles. The inspector also cited the restaurant for using time as a public health control without following proper procedures, meaning food was allowed to sit in the bacterial growth temperature range without adequate tracking or documentation.
The seventh high-severity violation: food found in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no health policy and an employee not reporting illness symptoms is what state and federal food safety officials describe as an outbreak enabler. Norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness in the United States, spreads almost entirely through infected food workers who continue handling food while sick. A written health policy is the first line of defense. Without one, there is no standard for workers to follow and no documentation that management ever communicated the requirement.
The food from unapproved sources violation carries a different but equally serious risk. Meat, seafood, and produce that enter a kitchen outside licensed distribution channels may never have been inspected for Listeria, Salmonella, or E. coli. If a customer falls ill after eating at Wu Hibachiexpress, health investigators would have no supplier records to examine.
Improperly sanitized food contact surfaces and unclean multi-use utensils compound the risk. Bacterial biofilms can establish on cutting boards and prep surfaces within 24 hours of inadequate cleaning. Once a biofilm forms, standard wiping does not remove it, and every food item that touches that surface carries the contamination forward.
The time-as-public-health-control violation is a technical but consequential failure. When a facility opts to use time rather than temperature to keep food safe, state rules require precise documentation of when food entered the danger zone and when it must be discarded. Without that tracking, there is no way to know how long food has been at a temperature where bacteria double roughly every 20 minutes.
The Longer Record
The June 24 inspection was not the first time Wu Hibachiexpress accumulated serious violations in a single visit. State records show 10 inspections on file and 58 total violations across that history.
The pattern closest to this week's findings came on February 26, 2026, just four months earlier. That inspection produced seven high-severity violations and four intermediate violations, a nearly identical severity profile to what inspectors documented in June. The restaurant passed a follow-up inspection on March 3 with zero high or intermediate violations, suggesting rapid correction. But the June 24 inspection shows the same categories of serious violations resurfacing within months.
The December 2021 inspections are also notable. On December 20, 2021, inspectors found four high-severity and three intermediate violations. A follow-up the next day, December 21, still produced one high and two intermediate violations, meaning not all concerns were resolved in 24 hours.
The facility has never been emergency-closed in its inspection history. That includes the February 2026 visit with 11 combined high and intermediate violations, and now the June 2026 visit with eight.
Open for Business
A follow-up inspection on June 25, the day after the seven-violation visit, found one remaining high-severity violation and no intermediate violations, a significant reduction. State records show the restaurant was not ordered to close at any point.
The customers who ate at Wu Hibachiexpress on June 24 did so while the restaurant was operating with food from an unverifiable source, an employee who had not reported illness symptoms, no written health policy governing sick workers, and food contact surfaces that had not been properly sanitized.
The restaurant remained open throughout.
