It was in the middle of summer on a weekday around 3
o’clock when my boyfriend, Christian, and I decided that we wanted some cheap
sushi. As usual, we decided on Ichiban. Ichiban is the kind of place that students go
to because their meal plans suck; it’s an inexpensive alternative to eating
Lakeside. The restaurant caters to these
students, but during the summer their business is extremely slow. So when we arrived, we walked into a
completely empty restaurant. The muffled
sounds of the flat screen above the sushi bar permeated the air. The waitress greeted us with a nod as she
gathered the menus. As soon as she had
sat us down in a corner of the room, she ran off to the kitchen. When the waitress came back to our table, we
ordered two different sushi rolls: a soft-shell crab roll and a super crunch
roll. She took our menus and left, leaving
Christian and I to talk about our plans for that evening. After about ten minutes, we moved on to
playing games on our cell phones, looking up occasionally to see if our food
was on its way.
Our food
arrived after a rather drawn out game of Words
with Friends. As she placed the sushi in front of us, Christian and I
looked at each other and then back to our food.
My super crunch roll was piled high with tempura crunch, as if trying to
hide the sushi itself, and was completely missing the usual eel sauce. The soft-shelled crab didn’t look appealing
either. Grainy, mushy pieces of crab
poked out of the roll, emitting a fishy, ammonia-like
stench. My super crunch was surrounded by the same
off-putting smell. I never thought that
I would be served something that was so obviously bad, at least not at a place
like Ichiban. The fact that I was served
this so confidently made me doubt myself.
After going through these thoughts, I ate the sushi
and proceeded to wash it down with a huge gulp of water. In mid-sip I gagged on the sushi. The
super crunch roll tasted sour which may have been due to the bad cream cheese,
but it also just tasted rancid. The fish
inside formed a pungent paste that mixed with the soured cream cheese would
nauseate even the strongest of stomachs.
I stupidly thought that it might have been due to a lack of the eel sauce
that normally came on it, but after further deliberation, I realized that the
food was actually bad. Across the table,
Christian was experiencing the same sort of culinary despair. The soft-shell crab was a soggy mash with a
chewy center that had about the same suppleness as paper. We both looked at each other, completely disgusted
and determined to not finish the meal. We
pushed our plates away as if we were full.
The waitress promptly came by and gave us to-go boxes after which we
quickly packed up the sushi, paid, and left the restaurant.
Once we got back to the dorm, we shared our
experience with whoever would listen.
“Smell this!”
I handed the box to Emily. She
took it, and quickly opened the lid.
“Oh God! That
is disgusting! Where did you get that
from?” Emily was covering her nose and holding the box out towards me.
“Ichiban just served us that,” I informed her.
“You need to call and tell them that their fish is
bad. It’s real bad.” Emily began scrolling through her phone.
“Here’s their number.”
Christian walked up and looked at the number as he
dialed it on his phone. I could hear the
phone ringing.
“Hello, this is Ichiban.” It was our waitress’s voice.
“Um, hi. My
girlfriend and I were just there. We
were kinda afraid to say something while we were there, but we think you might
have served us some bad sushi. I think
your freezers might have gone out or something.
Our sushi smelled rotten.”
Christian looked at me as there was a pause on the phone.
“Oh, okay.” Click. She hung up.
No apology, just a dial tone.
After having
the bad sushi, I realized that the instances of Ichiban’s slow service, subpar
dinner combinations, and relatively disengaged waiters were all warning
signs. I had ignored them because I had
been so worried about being able to get cheap Japanese food. I trusted Ichiban to serve me quality food
when there was no reason for that trust.
The experience itself taught me that quality was not something that was
important to Ichiban. I wanted to have
cheap food, but I did not want to have to continually worry about whether or
not I would get food poisoning.
What I still find funny is that the reviews of the
restaurant are all extremely positive, saying that the sushi is the best ever
or that the service is impeccable. For
the money, I guess that can be considered a true statement, but I never thought
that it was okay for a restaurant to provide food that is actually rotting. Since this incident, I have heard of other
people having the same problem, but there is no account of it on the
internet. There is not a single review
(for now) that mentions the crowdedness on weekends, the bad service that I
know many have experienced, or the lack of concern about the quality of
ingredients. Maybe I’m being nitpicky
and I’ve experienced an anomaly, but I feel that such things should be
recorded. It shouldn’t matter whether or
not a restaurant is one of the only havens in a city of over-priced tourist
traps. People should be able to buy cheap
food without having to worry about a ridiculous wait or being served food that
is not up to health standards. I’ve
never been back to Ichiban, and I may need to give it another chance, but after
that experience, it’s hard to trust Ichiban again.
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