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bad sushi days

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Occasionally, some respectable places will serve rotten/not so fresh sushi. What do you do in those cases? Chalk it up to occasional error, or complain? If you complained, did they correct your error? Or just not go to that place again?

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  1. where are these places?? rotten?? really? if someone served me rotten sushi I'd certainly complain, and I'd never go back. as for not so fresh... well, the same. complain, never go back. if you went to any other kind of restaurant, and were served rotten or not so fresh food, wouldn't you complain? why would you go back? was it a mistake? did they not know it was rotten or not so fresh? if they didn't know, what does that say about them?

    sorry, not trying to jump down your throat, but i guess i live near too many good sushi places (well, good all-kindsa-places) to put up with that... but no one should have to, in my opinion.

    1. Rotten raw fish (or even rotten cooked fish) can kill you. No place that serves that is respectable. Sushi chefs are trained and should be able to easily tell rotten fish from fresh fish (most people can tell also without training). I would complain, send it back, walk out, not come back and possibly call the health department on them. I would need more specifics for the "not so fresh".

      1. My go-to sushi place, which has been good dozens of times, once served me a fresh crab California roll that wasn't good. I wanted to be able to go back without feeling awkward, so we left it on the plate and paid the bill.

        4 Replies
        1. re: jvanderh

          That's the classy way to handle it, even if you weren't coming back.

          1. re: jvanderh

            to me, don't you think telling the restaurant (i.e., "complaining") allows them the opportunity to fix the error, if not for you, maybe for the next customer, and possibly avoid someone else getting sick?

            1. re: mariacarmen

              I agree with MariaCarmen here. Silence is the enemy of quality assurance efforts. I am sure that any sushi establishment would certainly want to know when the customer feels that the quality is so seriously jeapordized by bad ingredients.

              1. re: Tripeler

                If they wanted the truth, they would have asked why 5.5 pieces went back uneaten.

          2. A "respectable" sushi place will never serve anything which can be described as "rotten." Some things will be fresher than others, but everything should be acceptable. I would never go back to a sushi bar which served something I wouldn't eat for reasons of freshness. I used to be a big sushi eater, over many years, and the fact is that's never happened to me.