Hell is not bad food.

It’s other people. Specifically, hostile servers. After an atrocious experience at Brookline’s Genki Ya, I’m trying to pick apart the mess.

When I was 16, I was a cashier at my local A & P. Old ladies with tubes in their noses would squawk if a box of crackers rang up 20 cents higher, demanding that I follow them into the aisles to see the price sign. (They usually had misread it.) Soccer moms would mutter mild abuses about my incompetence as if I was wasn’t human. I was there once too. I sympathize.

But some servers have made me cry with frustration. There was pimply-faced one who worked for Western dining chain Wagas in Shanghai (Wagas Citic Square branch, August 8th 2009) who outright lied to escape his screwup, capping off a troubled relationship with China’s service culture. I wrote an incensed email to the chain but never received a reply. Some servers are merely incompetent – forgetting, dropping, blundering – and I tend to just feel sorry for them.

But sometimes there are spectacular front-of-house failures that deserve a writeup all their own. These require repeated, concerted level of incompetence that is really just embarrassing for everyone involved.

There’s a “normal accident” theory that arises in trying to explain tragedies. In these cases, there are many small mistakes. Each of these mistakes alone are normally not a big deal, but it’s the coincidental alignment of them that spells a lost customer.

So let’s explain my disastrous meal at Genki Ya, a small sushi restaurant that bills itself as all-organic. I’d eaten there before and enjoyed the food, so returned with boyfriend in tow.

We wandered in on a Friday night. It was busy, but not so busy since we were seated within two minutes at the sushi bar. I was faint with hunger; he was inured to the world after a week of hell and insomnia. We planned on ordering omakase – sit at the sushi bar, give the chef a budget, and let him/her pick whatever was fresh.

I swear I’m not making ordering omakase up.

We ask for omakase at $50 for the two of us. Blank stare from the waitress. We explain in plain English what it means. Outright refusal. “They’re too busy,” she says.

“Too busy? All they have to do is choose something,” I say.

“They’re too busy,” she repeats, as if we’ve asked for something particularly distasteful.

Desperate with hunger, and somewhat stubborn, I have an inkling she is not Japanese.

I speak to her in Chinese, explaining the concept of omakase in our secret-Asian-people-language-club tongue. I’m right, but am met again with cold refusal.

My dining partner and I look beseechingly at the men making maki behind the counter. They seem friendly. We try to undermine the servers. It’s beginning to feel like a CIA mission. No luck.

Meanwhile, I’m lightheaded with hunger. Our waitress has abandoned us. We finally get another waitress, who we repeat the same request to. Refusal again.

We’re floundering. Finally, after more hand wringing, the manager comes over, who nods several times, and says he’ll send over miso soup. We rejoice since we’re finally going to get the meal we asked for – or so we thought.

I drink my bowl of miso soup dry. Then comes a plate piled high with seaweed salad, delicious. Our entrees arrive – there’s a full size roll of eel and tempura maki, as well as “volcano roll” which involves a pyramid of rolls doused in tempura, crab, and mayo. Great. Enough food to get us full. Or so we thought.

A few minutes later, a waitress arrives with two more full size rolls. They’re highly Americanized rainbowed concoctions, and tasty. We have enough food for 4 people now. Our paces slows.

This must be it, right?

No. Another roll, topped with spicy tuna and filled with shrimp tempura arrives. We laugh. This is gluttony, this is madness. That must be it, right? We laugh a little, too tired and beaten down to care. The couple next to us starts to joke about it too.

We’re now clocking in at 5 oversized rolls, each of which takes up a platter.

It’s not enough, clearly.

Roll 6 and 7′s arrival feel like mockery, a cruel fulfillment of getting what you ask for. By this point, eat bite feels like tasting the thick slap of an insult.

The man behind the sushi bar awkwardly hands us another plate, compliments of the chef, whoever he might be. It as a few tender pieces of fish. We pick at it, aghast.

Surveying the damage

Then dessert, a bowl with a scoop of matcha ice cream, a tapioca pearl pudding, and azuki beans.

The bill comes. It is exorbitant, nearly three times our requested budget.

We are beat down by the tide from the kitchen. It’s been a long week, and all we can really do at this point is to laugh. So we do. And go for a walk, doggy bag in tow.

How could this have been avoided? The waitress could have turned us down politely, then firmly directed us towards a few recommendations. Or she could have at least immediately asked a manager to confirm her refusal. Either way, her tactic of dropping the table and adding an additional layer of confusion – and losing our budget in translation – was unacceptable.

Lessons for restaurants:
1) Know your product
2) If you can’t fulfill a customer’s demands, have a strategy for ushering them to an option you can do
3) If you attempt to fulfill an unusual request, communicate expectations
4) Do not use omakase as an excuse to write your own check

I eat sushi for breakfast and lunch the next day. After a quick run in the microwave, I admit that it tastes good. It tastes better, in fact, curled up on the couch, remote in hand. And there wasn’t a waitress in sight.

Related posts:

1. Masa’s in Porter Square Exchange Mall serves some really awful sushi
2. Joys of Japanese Food – Cream & Azuki Buns, Unagi Nigiri, Salmon Terayaki, Spicy Eel Roll
3. Why You Should Skip Boston Restaurant Week 2010

I’m a sucker for poached eggs.  Piercing the yolks with your knife. Sliding down the plate like the ooze of a lazy, ruptured sun. Top it with even more yolk in the form of Hollandaise, slide a velvety slice of smoked salmon underneath. Cut, and at the bottom is a fried potato pancake. A bit of green from spinach leaves, a side of good hash browns, prettified by a round of pale orange cantaloupe. The menu calls its Empire Eggs.

It’s even better if you split the chocolate french toast with your friend, so you have something sweet at the same time. The raspberry sauce clings to the skin in fuchsia strips. Drown it in syrup. It’s good.

Since I visited Coolidge Corner staple Zaftig’s right after a snowstorm, there wasn’t the usual 1 hour wait. My friend and I only had to chat about Hollywood talent agencies for ten minutes before being seated and being fed a complimentary nibble of bagel chips. Thanks, Yelp, for the empire eggs rec – fan-bloody-tastic. Zaftig’s is a nice bit of local flavor, and a delicious, casual, diet-unfriendly brunch.

Find it!

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Zaftig’s Delicatessen

335 Harvard St
Brookline, MA 02446
(617) 975-0075

Related posts:

1. How To Make Trailer Trash Eggs Benedict (Recipe!)
2. A love affair with coffee shops – The Biscuit in Somerville
3. A thousand words: What I love about fine dining