Friday, April 10, 2009

There's a bug in my gomae !?

So that Karma malarkey that Earl Hickey is always talkin' about must be true, as just a few days after having dared my son to eat something that he found to be rather disgusting i.e., a prawn. I got a carry out from my local Japanese restaurant found this in my green hill of gomae!!!!


Let's get a little closer in on that little fella there....



I think it's a cricket!?

Nice...

Now for the most part I know that crickets do not carry any diseases and they are quite harmless( well even less harmless if they are dead; buried beneath a pile of spinach!) But I have to say finding one in my food doesn't really make me want to jump up and down for joy because I got a bit of extra free meat! No it does in fact make me want to vomit and not vomit in a good way like when you just want to make a bit of extra room for those last few jagermeister shots.

No sir!

It just makes me want to puke. Full stop!

So on returning to the restaurant I was informed quite flippantly by the guy behind the counter that:

It has happened quite a few times before...not a big deal! Sometimes the back door is left open and 'stuff' gets in!

He then continued to tell me that he could give me a refund on the 'gomae' but not the rest of the meal; however I would need to hand over the receipt before he could do so (Of course I refused to hand over the receipt or the gomae and the bug in question until I had the chance to speak to the manager)

I was then told that the manager was not available and that if I just handed over the carton, he would give me the $3.50 for the gomae out of his own pocket! I explained that it wasn't really about the money, I mean he was offering me $3.50...which was actually a bit of a joke! I had found a rather large 'BUG' in my food and would really like to make a formal complaint to his manager!

Then after trying to grab the food carton in question he said 'The manager is unavailable'.

Well I explained, the only reason I came back to your restaurant was to voice my complaint and I hadn't actually intended to take it any further. However as you have now told me that this seems to be quite a regular occurrence within the restaurant, maybe I should just take my complaint to 'Health Canada' as you do not seem to be taking the matter very seriously!

Then as his eyes widened and his body tensed...

'We could just give you some money under the table, but what's to say that you wouldn't just take the box and go to Health Canada anyway?'

...

At that point I wrote down my tel number and told him to get the manager to phone me as soon as she was available and then I left swinging my little bagged funeral carton behind me as I went!

What had me completely dumbfounded was the fact that he just didn't lie! Something to the effect of 'Apologies! This has never happened before, we actually run a very clean establishment.' I mean telling a customer that 'this has happened quite a few times before' and then attempting to bribe said customer doesn't really make for good customer relations does it?

This is a restaurant I had visited quite frequently in the past year and had held it in the highest regard; Great food, great service and very reasonably priced! But after this experience I don't think I'll be returning anytime soon...

The restaurants name? I'll wait and see if the manager does actually call me before I hand over that piece of information...

7 comments:

Josh Reynolds said...

I wish my local restaurateurs would attempt to bribe me sometime...I could really use the cash.

Colin Lorimer said...

Yeah Josh, I have the feeling that from speaking to this guy the bribe would have been somewhere between three to four dollars...

lu said...

Now, now, Colin, I bet that critter is chock full o' vitamins and iron...

Scaramanga said...

Thats what happens when you live in vancouver!

Oh I joke of course...thats effin gross.

As for the staff, I have only encountered such rudeness in Scotland...

Never been brived though.

Charles

Anonymous said...

What a complete twat.....the man works in a Japanese restaurant. If that's not a license to pass cockroach shaped protein off as a garnish, I don't know what is.

Anyway....you should count yourself lucky, when I was a chef...we used spit.

Anonymous said...
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thebonebreaker said...

While gross, this was still a pretty funny post! ;-)