Basically a Type 2 Diabetic man is suing a Sushi establishment because he only ate the "raw fish" and not the rice. Just raw fish is called sashimi. The patron told the management that he was diabetic and had to watch carbs so he could not eat the rice.
The funny part about this article is the reporter is a Type 1 diabetic and is on the side of the owner of the restaurant! He makes a point that as a Type 1 diabetic he has to inject insulin. Well, there are Type 2 such as myself that have inject insulin and a weight loss drug several times a day with needles. There were comments made on the plight of the reporter's diabetic management in comparison to the patron's Type 2 management.
There is no mention in any of the various articles that I have read of the rules and regulations on the "All you can eat sushi bar" at the restaurant. The owner still doesn't understand why he is being sued. The case sounds like something that should be in a comedy show but sadly is a real event.
Here is the link
I am sorry but to just pick the expensive fish is not a fair deal. It is called sushi. The word sushi refers to RICE (the Japanese word su means vinegar, and shi is from meshi, the Japanese word for rice, hence sushi is ‘vinegared rice’). So he visited a restaurant that is serving mainly rice with some fish. He eats only the fish and orders one after the other. After a while the patron denies his orders and now he is suing the restaurant for discriminating him. That is just ridiculous.
I’m wondering if he’ll win the suit because there wasn’t a sign posted stating in order to qualify for this you have to eat the rice. Personally, I think he should be ordered to pay all court costs, including the restaurant owner’s costs, and additionally he should receive a hefty fine for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
Come on! Here in Los Angeles (actually studio city) there are hundreds of sushi places.
This was a All you can eat sushi bar. Since when you go to a place and have the owner tell you how to eat your food. Please realize the customer is paying a hirer price for the buffet than for the sashimi. Honestly the real question here is why does the restaurant owner care how his fish is eaten? Does he get made when people bring a pile of sushi their their table and leave with it not being touched?
The owner is at fault here. The owner could have discreetly told the patron to eat his food and not come back to his business, or at least advice him that in the future what the “rules” are.
Normally if there are regulations with food service and all you can eat buffets they are posted at the door and on the menu. Some places don’t allow sharing of plates of food, some places a person must be properly dressed or drinking water in special cups. This owner didn’t have any of these regulations at his establishment. So if he wants to impose “rules” during the course of a meal is unfair.
I have to agree w/ Holger on this. Admittedly, I’m in Illinois but my in-laws live in Califfornia and are Korean and if it says “all you can eat sushi”, picking the fish off is tacky and obnoxious. The guy was not “damaged” in any way and I don’t think that he would be able to prove the owner to have been “negligent” either, which are the two standards he would have to meet to prove liabiility. He might as well get a sign that says “people with diabetes are helpless clowns who deserve special treatment”. I don’t think that’s the case but I hope that he loses and that the restaurant doesn’t settle his claim. If you don’t want the sushi, order sashimi and pay for it? If you are too inept at managing your BG while eating the <<special deal>> that is offered, go somewhere else. Throwing food out like that is wasteful and disgusting. I can’t see a jury finding the plaintiff in this case very sympathetic either.
So when I was in college I used to go to a pizza placed called Mr Gattis. They have an all you can eat buffett. It was march madness time so we were there for 3 hours. We stared eating the pizza and leaving the ends behind. We got thrown out by the owner because he said that we were not eating the pizza right. Should I have sued? Do I have the right to eat pizza but not the pizza crust ends. Today I dont eat pizza but I am with the owner on this one also.
I think the whole premise of “all you can eat” sushi is not a good business model.
I mean, what if a person left a few grains of rice? A tablespoon? Two tablespoons? At what point has the customer consumed “enough” rice? Do they have to lick the plate? ;0)
The whole business model is fraught with the danger of a patron “not eating right” and being micromanaged by the oppressively hovering staff.
That said, if someone wants to eat at an “all you can eat” place and be hovered over and micromanaged by the staff (“eat the crusts”, “eat the rice”, “eat everything on your plate before going to the dessert bar”, etc.) then that’s what they’ve signed up for and the house rules should apply.
Don’t like it? Don’t go back.
Pre-diagnosis, I used to go to a Thai all-you-can-eat place and no one ever fussed at me for taking “too many” spring rolls and “not enough” of the several too-spicy-hot salads. If they had, I would never have returned, not sued. Suing in the name of diabetes discrimination just seems silly and makes diabetics look bad – kinda like shooting a fly with a blunderbuss.
Christalyn, I hesitated first for to take a firm position here. I know the situation is difficult for low carbing T2 diabetics. But after some thinking I came to the conclusion that this situation is not in our interest. In restaurants we need to have the patrons on our side. We are good customers not the ones that will pick just the expensive stuff. This relationship is important because we want something from these restaurants: detailed carbohydrate information and a cook that is aware that this information in only reliable with comparable serving sizes. The story evens shows that the patron had sympathies with the person being diabetic. He offered a different dish - not all you can eat but a solution. Just look at it from the patrons perspective: The patron calculates his sushi all you can eat price with a mix of sushi and fish food. Sushi itself will make you full so you can estimate how much sushi a single customer needs to be full and satisfied. You can eat a lot of raw fish to be equally full - is that fair? In my view it was the wrong restaurant and the wrong type of order for the eating style prefered by this person. Maybe my view is different by having T1 not T2 and I am curious how the other T2 diabetics will see this case.
This is an ALL YOU CAN EAT buffet. The establishment can set guidelines that are posted as to how they want to perform this service. In this case it is not mentioned that the Sushi owner established any rules. Legally the patron has a fighting chase at this because his lawyer was on a talk radio show stating his case and how legally the sushi owner was biased.
You actually like Mr. Gatti’s pizza? Is that place still in business?
We are talking about trendy southern California. Sushi places are a plentiful as nail shops and hair salons. For us it is trendy and quicky food. Other parts of the country it may be considered top of the line but not to most folks here. Please note there are few All you can eat Sushi places.
I think we are missing the point here…When a person goes to an establishment there are rules that must be followed that are normally created by management. It is common for restaurants to refuse service to people who don’t have shoes on,it is common for certain menu items will not be apart of the to go menu or combined with other promotions. They are notified well in advance on the menu or at a sign on the door.
If the owner sees something he doesn’t like then he has the right to change the rules at a later time. He did not have any of these regulations outlined to his customers so they can make the choice to eat there. This is why I say he legally has a case.
I am very happy you acknowledged there is a difference in how T1 and T2 may view situations differently. I don’t think this is a diabetic issue but a notification issue. The owner should notify all customers of the rules and regulations in order to participate in his All you can eat sushi buffet.
I wonder how this would have been different if the guy had a fish/seafood allergy and only ate the rice, leaving the fish/seafood behind.
Would the restaurant owner have objected? Rice fills you up pretty fast, so from a pure costing point of view, this patron would not have eaten any more than the average diner.
It sounds to me like this diner is trying to have his cake AND eat it too. He was trying to get all-you-can-eat sashimi for the price of all-you-can-eat-sushi, knowing full well that sashimi is a LOT more expensive than sushi. I think it is totally obnoxious for him to use his diabetes as a smokescreen for being a cheapskate!
And him being a carb-counting Type 2 just reinforces the fact that he’s trying to get something for nothing (or something more expensive for the price of the cheaper thing). If you’re carb-counting and know rice is really carby and you can’t eat it, then order the sashimi in the first place!
Finally a non sequitur - 28 bucks for all you can eat sushi? I’ve had all you can eat sushi in Spain and Germany for 9.80 euros! They are all run by people from mainland China but hey, you can’t argue with the price. I allow myself two pieces of real sushi and pick the fish off the rest. The rice gets eaten by my non-pancreatically-challenged other half.
Thank you! I don’t understand why management made such a big deal of him not eating rice. Type 2 diabetic always complain about the Diabetic Police watching their food intake. So know diabetics can’t go to a restaurant w/o management policing us too?
I stated earlier that I don’t think this is a diabetic issue. Like how you stated I think there should have been a sign or some notification of what was expected at this buffet.
I don’t think this will make diabetics look bad. If anything it will bring attention to diabetes awareness since this patron was trying to manage his condition. There are many times when we go to eateries and ask for substitutes or choose not to eat everything on the plate.
The restaurant ownder needs to put up a sign immediately about food wastage to stop this happening again. I have seen this in some all you can eat outfits, that you are charged a certain sum for unreasonable wastage of food.
Unreasonable wastage (like picking off the fish) is usually pretty obvious.
It is Austin texas. I dont eat it much but its here
When I lived in the southern parts of the USA therre were buffets all over the place. Being in Cali caliente (los angeles) you would be hard pressed to find a buffet unless it was for veggies.
So there are unreasonable waste charge for food? I think it is a good idea because I have seen people put a ton of food on their plate and eat only to bites. This is why I am wondering why is this guy making such a big deal? I am sure there are lots of people that put bunches of sushi on a plate and never eat it and it goes into the garbage. Does the owner say anything to these people?
I wonder if a person sat there for 4 hours reading a book and eating hoards of sushi would he still get mad?
What is the exchange rate of 9.80 euros to dollars?
I agree with both sides on this. I think the PWD is trying to take advantage of the situation and was irresponsible to have been trying to rook the system and get sashami at sushi prices.
However being able to pick and chose is part of the advantage of buffets or all you can eat type of meals. People are not going to eat 100% of what they take or are served. I don’t do those sorts of meals but if I did I would want to have the option of being able to have more of one dish than another. Say fish and chips I would probably only eat a few french fries but would have seconds on the fish and salad. I would want to have the option of saying I really don’t like this dish after tasting it or in the case of sushi I’m highly allergic to salmon so couldn’t have anything with salmon it. I would expect all of those to be accommodated and I wouldn’t think it was unreasonable.
Or take a mom and pop restaurant that allows substitutions with their menu items. I think it would be perfectly acceptable to order a denver omlette and ask them to leave off the onions. But if I order a denver omlette and sub sausage for the ham, mushrooms for the onions, swiss cheese instead of cheddar, and can I also have pancakes instead of hashbrowns–well that’s in poor taste and I should have ordered the build your own omette instead. So where do you draw the line? What makes one situation perfectly reasonable and the other I’m being a scumbucket? It’s not all that cut and dried.
So in a nutshell I don’t believe that the person with diabetes was asking for a reasonable accommodation in these circumstances. I’m also sure he’s not the first nor will he be the last person to try to turn sushi into sashami and not pay for it. The business owner not only should have taken normal waste into account for his business plan he also should have anticipated and planned for those trying to take advantage. If he didn’t that was his bad.
9.80 euro is 13.45 us dollars.
I have been to all you can eat sushi places where people ate so much sushi you could hardly see the diners, they were surrounded by such huge towers of empty plates. Unless the restaurant has imposed a time limit, I have never seen this be a problem. I have also sometimes left food on my plate because I took one bite and realized I didn’t like the taste - but again this is never a problem because as a reasonable person, you would only take a tasting portion to begin with. The issue with this lawsuit guy is that he deliberately set out to be unreasonable.
In general I really like all you can eat buffets because I find it is the easiest way to assemble a plate of food which I can eat. Obviously this does not work for sushi buffets!
The big deal is because he is trying to fill up on the expensive stuff (sashimi - raw fish without the rice) and pay for the cheaper stuff (sushi - fish on top of rice which fills you up quickly). It has nothing to do with diabetes! In fact according to the newspaper article, the restaurant owner offered him the a la carte sashimi option.
I am pretty sure that if the diner had ordered a plate of a la carte sushi and only ate the fish, the restaurant would have had no issue with that.
It’s like going to an all you can eat hamburger place and expecting to eat 10 burgers and throw away the buns.
Well, an all-you-can-eat sushi place is NOT a buffet. You are usually allowed to order the sushi you want, and as much of it as you want, and of course, people get full and leave some over, but the rice is an integral part of the sushi – it wouldn’t be sushi without it.
In your case, just don’t order the salmon; problem solved. Sushi menus are very detailed about what’s in each kind of sushi – you should have no problem avoiding what you don’t like or can’t eat.
Nobody has mentioned whether the owner had a sign saying you must eat all the rice, but most all-you-can-eat sushi places do. And it tends to be common knowledge by this time. So, no, I don’t think the owner did anything wrong at all.
After looking over this case I think it really just hurts the view of type 2, I mean being type 1 when i say im type 1 some people react as if they are thinking “oh, thats why he’s not fat”. After 2 years of being i’ve heard that statement “thought diabetics where overweight” more than anything else. so when you see a story about someone with type 2 complaining about food service it really doesnt help BECAUSE of the general public view. Even if the jury finds this person sympathetic, i think others who read about it will just see the “pathetic” part.
Sueing is the wrong move here, Petitions could have been brought up, a facebook group, something more awareness driven would have been much better, but to sue when this person had a night of mild inconvenience? that just seems whiny and opportunistic.