I don’t usually get really uppity about eating out. I spent most of my teen years working in a professional kitchen or as a waitress, and it does give you some sympathy for the hard-working people in the food service industry. That said, I have some pretty inflexible expectations of restaurants.

Let’s talk about the Wasabi House.

Last week, my friend Kathleen, her boyfriend Kevin, and I went to a Japanese restaurant near where I live called Wasabi House. I don’t think I’ve ever had an experience at the restaurant quite like this.

We had to wait a while to be seated, but it was past nine on a Saturday night, so no worries there. I ordered two rolls, while Kathleen and Kevin ordered three rolls and some yakitori to share.

Service was running slowly, and from their Yelp page that I began reading after our visit, I see that is a normal occurrence. I was creeping on the people at the table next to us (who were on a date) and noticed that they were complaining about their food, and even sent it back to the kitchen at one point. Not a good sign.

Our food arrives. The yakitori comes out about ten minutes late. The sushi wasn't anything to be excited about. It wasn't special or particularly delicious. One of my rolls was wrong. I had ordered spicy tuna, and this was regular, but that was fine. It was just a matter of what sauce goes on it, so I wasn’t concerned. Kathleen, however, had gotten a vegetarian roll instead of the tuna roll that she had ordered. That’s quite a difference. As well, the kitchen comp'ed us a sweet potato roll. I think that they knew that they were screwing a lot of things up, because a lot of other tables were also getting free things.

So everything is going fine. Kathleen’s favourite thing at sushi restaurants is the pickled ginger. I don’t really care for the stuff much myself, so I began to pick my little pile of ginger apart to give her about half of it. That would be when I found the surprise. At first I thought it was a packing peanut, given its crumpled, tan, slightly spongy appearance. I called the waitress over, and (after consulting the kitchen) she assured me that it was a piece of salmon that must have just fallen into the ginger God knows how long ago. Her solution was to give me a piece of fresh salmon “so I would know what it looked like”. I know what salmon is supposed to look like, and whatever was stuck in my ginger was just not acceptable.

I really love sushi, and I have since I was a little kid. At the same time, we put a lot of trust in people who are feeding us raw food. You know, it’s not terribly difficult to get incredibly ill from badly made sushi, and that’s not a risk that I take lightly. Make some mix-ups and that’s fine, but get flippant about food safety and that’s not fine.

I won’t be going back.

Have you ever been to a restaurant, and it just was bad? Share your experiences so we can all complain together!