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:
- Masa’s in Porter Square Exchange Mall serves some really awful sushi
- Joys of Japanese Food – Cream & Azuki Buns, Unagi Nigiri, Salmon Terayaki, Spicy Eel Roll
- Why You Should Skip Boston Restaurant Week 2010
- Review of Umami in Brookline, MA
- How to pick a date restaurant: advice from food writer MC Slim JB
Aw, cut Gengki-Ya some slack. They’re good at what they do–Americanized sushi at a reasonable price. Let’s be real, out of all the sushi places in Boston, less than a handful are owned by Japanese trained sushi chefs, or even just Japanese people for that matter. If you have to speak in Chinese to explain to the waitstaff what omakase is, then chances are, the omakase won’t be good. And the waitstaff did refuse you multiple times, but you kept persisting. I think they probably just gave you what they thought you wanted by way of your description.
I have never heard of people ordering omakase at a place like Genki Ya before– I usually only order omakase at a place that resembles an authentic Japanese sushi bar or is reputed to have great omakase, like Oishii. I hope you have better luck next time!
Posted by Amy | May 27, 2010, 10:15 pmYou’re right that Genki Ya isn’t exactly the ideal place to aim for omakase, but at the same time, the way it ended up being handled (what with waitress ditching the table, hostility, and ridiculous bill without asking how much we wanted to spend) left much to be desired. The boyfriend has also done omakase at a neighboring sushi restaurant without event. At any rate, I won’t attempt the same thing if a restaurant turns the request down in the future.
Posted by Lingbo Li | May 27, 2010, 10:33 pmI guess it’s tough to do if you’re starving, but at the point at which the server flat outright refused your omakase order, I would have gotten up and walked out. Having stayed, I would have complained to management about the over-ordering on your behalf. But this does save me a visit to Genki-Ya; I don’t really like that kind of food. I imagine you know about some of the local places with actual Japanese chef/owners. Been to Toraya in Arlington yet? Worth a trip.
Posted by MC Slim JB | May 28, 2010, 6:45 amNo, will add it to my list, although I still have to do Chestnut Hill Oishii! Saw you raving about it on Chowhound. If you did have a hankering for American-style sushi rolls and no desire to attempt omakase, Genki Ya is a fine place to go…
Posted by Lingbo Li | May 28, 2010, 8:44 amYes, Toraya and Oishii Chestnut Hill are my two favorites, though only Toraya’s itamae is Japanese.
Posted by MC Slim JB | May 28, 2010, 11:44 amOh no! And you were just around the corner from Shiki, a superlative Japanese restaurant. Shiki is terrific, although not to the place to go when you are faint with hunger. The waitstaff there is very nice, but extraordinarily slow. While I totally agree with your “Lessons for Restaurants”, I think when they say they don’t want to do omakase, that’s a good sign not to do omakase. =P
Posted by Sam Lipoff | May 28, 2010, 1:58 pmYeah, I think part of it was being aghast at how it was being handled/stubborn that they could at least use the brain power to pick two things. (I guess it’s like being told that your waiter is too busy to give you a recommendation.) But I’ll keep Shiki in mind! Thanks for the tip.
Posted by Lingbo Li | May 28, 2010, 2:16 pmGenki Ya does delivery. Its menu has those symbol things that represent “House Recommendations” or “Customer Favorites” or whatever. I’m not even sure if they have an executive chef. All these things suggest to me that Genki Ya would not be particularly receptive to an omakase request.
Not saying you got your just deserts, but this does seem like a useful lesson in what might happen when a restaurant has to provide a service that is unusual for them. Did you tell the manager the budget limit?
Posted by Lhydium | May 30, 2010, 11:15 amWe did tell the first waitress, but it got lost in translation between her and the manager coming… I do agree (and my bf and I are gently bickering about this as I type this) that we are partly at fault, but the same time, our basic request was not necessarily even omakas – we were asking for them to pick a few dishes that we might enjoy, which is literally how I phrased it. The stretch from “a few recommendations” to “10 dishes” is the issue I have with the entire episode.
Posted by Lingbo Li | May 30, 2010, 8:56 pmSo close to Gari too! Should’ve checked them out. They’re on the other side of Harvard Street. Near the Stop & Shop. They have omakase. We did it once. Be prepared to spend about $50 per person, though. It’s well worth it. Plus a bonus, although small, the place looks really nice for a date, but doesn’t cost that much if you just have the simple rolls. And every Sunday they have this SUPER deal $4.50 sushi rolls.
Posted by Liz | June 5, 2010, 2:58 pmOoh, thanks for the tip! I’ll definitely keep it in my – bf and I both love sushi.
Posted by Lingbo | June 5, 2010, 7:02 pm