getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

so 7pm rolls around and stinkypete and dan bright decide it's time for breakfast and we hit up a place called sushi sei near there hermosa pier. the place is a pretty standard sushi bar, which is what we're looking for.

we order a bunch of stuff, some rolls, some sashimi, whatever, and the sushi chef asks us if we've been there before and rainbow tells him no and whatever blah blah we get like half our order and its good.

then the chef asks us if we'd like to try "something special" and of course we assume he's going to comp us some small dish like they often do at sushi places and dan says sure. so we get our somethign special which is some dish with some cooked fish (i think it's supposed to be seared but its overcooked) and some avocado and whatnot. so i try it and it's not very good and the chef asks us if it's good and i say "it's okay" because i tend not to lie and dan finishes the dish.

nothing happens for a while and the chef asks us if we want anything else and i'm like "uuhhhhh yeah can we get the stuff we ordered" but like more politely because we're canadian. at this point i'm thinking the chef thought our order was too boring or something and that's why he offered to make "something special" as a substitute for what we ordered. i'm pretty sure he had no intention of giving us the rest of the stuff we already ordered. and i'm pretty damn confused.

eventually we get the check and i'm pretty much expecting to see the chef's "somethign special" on it even though it first seemed like it would be comped.

instead the check has two items:

pot stickers $5.50
sushi $43.50

now, i've been to a lot of sushi bars but i've never been to one where all the sushi is just lumped together in one price. they obviously had to add it all up - why isn't the stuff separate on the check?

it's obvious from the price that we were charged for the "something special" (around 10 bucks or so). and i'm pretty sure that the reason the "sushi" we ordered isn't itemized on the check is because they don't want us to bitch about the extra charge that we didn't really agree to.

so at this point i feel like we're totally being scammed. the money's not a big deal, but i don't particularly like to get scammed. what's our play?


cliff notes: sushi chef asked us if we wanted "somethign special". we thought we were getting comped. we got charged for it, but they tried to hide it on the check by lumping it with all the other sushi. wtf????

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

ive never been to a sushi bar so i don't know exactly how the ordering goes, but could you ask for separate checks for you and your friend?

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

you have no real recourse. never go back

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

i doubt you were the victim of a premeditated scam.

you made your own bed when you agreed to try what he made without clarifying your position on free sushi. i work in a (booze) bar, and if i offer a customer an off-menu concoction of my own and they say "sure" and don't say anything further, it goes on their tab.

however, if they ask "is it on the house?" or something, i will almost always give it to them gratis. once. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

edit: i would suggest one more trip to said sushi bar, where you only order things you know and love, and then see if they lump it all together again. if you get an itemized list, consider yourself off-ripped.

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

[ QUOTE ]
i doubt you were the victim of a premeditated scam.

you made your own bed when you agreed to try what he made without clarifying your position on free sushi. i work in a (booze) bar, and if i offer a customer an off-menu concoction of my own and they say "sure" and don't say anything further, it goes on their tab.

[/ QUOTE ]

honestly, i wouldn't have cared if it was on the tab. but the fact that they just lumped it all together made it seem as if they didn't want us to know we were charged for it. and that annoyed me. that could just be how they bill their customers there, but it just seems like too much of a coincidence to me.

i think there's a decent chance that there were no shady intentions, which is why we just paid the tab with a good tip and left. it just bugs me that they got away with it if they were deliberately scamming.


[ QUOTE ]
however, if they ask "is it on the house?" or something, i will almost always give it to them gratis. once. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

we should have done that, but i just assumed it would be comped because i've had similar offers at sushi bars before and that's how its always been.

[ QUOTE ]
edit: i would suggest one more trip to said sushi bar, where you only order things you know and love, and then see if they lump it all together again. if you get an itemized list, consider yourself off-ripped.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is probably what we'll do. dan said he's gonna go back. i'm not sure that i will.

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

Did you get the rest of your order?

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Did you get the rest of your order?

[/ QUOTE ]

after we asked for it a second time, yes. the guy acted like he didn't know we wanted it. it was like it was assumed that the "special" substituted the second half of our order, even though nothing to that effect was ever verbalized by any of us.

after we (dan) finished the "special" dish, we sat with nothing in front of us for maybe about 5 minutes. i assumed they were busy making stuff for other customers or wahtever. but the chef seemed to have no idea that we still wanted the stuff we ordered in the first place.

a lot of it probably had to do with the fact that the guy didn't really speak english. it's possible that he wanted to create some sort of authentic japanese experience utilizing his finest fishcutting skills with no backhanded intentions, but he wasn't good at communicating with us.

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

no wonder people hustle
this guy treats you like crap, may have scammed you and you leave a big tip

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

The fact that he thought that the "special dish" was to replace the second part of your order tells me that he was not intending to scam you.

Re: getting scammed by the sushi place - whats your play?
 

My guess is he made a mistake and thought your order was done. Then upsold you on the "something special". Btw my experience ordering the "chef's special" in a sushi bar has usually been pretty bad--like squis/snails/octopi/etc. - or a big piece of salmon covered in mayonaise.

The exception is Sushi Nozawa in the valley, where the special is pretty much all the sushi-nazi chef will let you order. Supposedly he will kick you out if you try to order a california roll. But luckily his special is round after round of lots of tuna and some other stuff, and absolutely rocks. Best sushi I've ever had.