I know, I know—never, ever go to a restaurant on opening night. However, I was so excited that Columbia City was finally getting a sushi restaurant that I decided to throw caution to the wind and make a reservation at Wabi-Sabi Sushi Bar and Restaurant (4909 Rainier Ave. S.) during its grand opening last night. After all, Wabi-Sabi’s owner, Thoa Nguyen, is a seasoned restaurateur, with two successful restaurants (Thoa’s and the Chinoise mini-chain) under her belt. She’s handled opening nights before. And I figured a few bumps would be worth enduring to support an awesome, hotly anticipated local business.
First warning sign: The guy who answered the phone didn’t know if they took reservations, then took a reservation without getting my number. Honestly, I don’t even know if he wrote my name down. Because… second warning sign, when we got there, there was no list, and no table. Fortunately, a table quickly in the front of the room (which is charming, with exposed brick and clever fish-silhouette hanging lamps), so we took a seat.
And waited… and waited. At least three or four servers were milling around, but only one was hustling, and sadly, she didn’t have our table. It took a good 15 minutes to get water, and another 15 to flag down the owner for menus. Our appetizer (fried soft-shelled crab, $12, wrapped in lettuce and served with a “spicy chili lime dipping sauce” that tasted more like thinned vinegar than chile or lime) was decent, I think, but who would know? By this point, we were so hungry that the crab disappeared before we had time to taste it.
The rest of the meal went from bad to worse to laughable. It took nearly two hours for our sushi to arrive, during which our waiter assured us repeatedly that the sushi chef was “working on it.” I should’ve known that wasn’t true when I saw the pile of abandoned order tickets on the floor (and the half-dozen folks around us who simply gave up and left), but I tried to hold out hope.
That was the first hour. By that point, we were giddy with hunger (“We’ve been sitting here so long, the fish they serve don’t exist anymore except in the fossil record,” my dining partner said) and willing to eat just about anything. Finally, we flagged over the waitress, who took pity on us and sent over some tempura on the house. They were greasy and undercooked, but at least they were food. It would be another hour before we saw another bite of food or a glimpse of our waiter.
Did I mention that by this time (around 10:00) the owner had vanished?
And that the waiter didn’t, through this whole ordeal, bother to clear our dirty plates and serving dishes or replace our napkins?
It seemed like the comedy of errors couldn’t get any more ridiculous, but it did: When I accidentally spilled a bowl of miso soup across our by-now-overloaded table, the waiter took several minutes to appear with a mop rag, which he left with us, apparently deciding it was our job to clean up the mess. He did manage to box our stuff up promptly, at least—although he didn’t offer to replace the spilled miso. Nor did he bother to pick up the chopsticks and bowl that were now scattered across the floor.
The kicker? After all of this—more than two hours of waiting, comically bad service, and food we didn’t even get a chance to eat—Wabi Sabi charged us full price for everything. The total, with no drinks (and barely any water), was more than $80. (If it matters, we got the niku udon, sushi bento, samurai roll, and unagi roll).
I understand that opening nights are often bumpy, and that even the most practiced restaurant owners and waiters have an occasional off night. (That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if our waiter had never waited tables—or dealt with the public—in his life). And it’s not like I would have been thrilled with the experience if it had cost $50 instead of $80. But the way the staff at Wabi Sabi dealt with the chaos, with the exception of the harried waitress, was beyond inexcusable. All it would have taken for me to give the place another chance would have been an apology and an offer to comp some items. As it is, I won’t even consider giving it another chance for at least six months—and I’ll recommend that my friends in the neighborhood stay away as well. Wabi Sabi may have made a few extra bucks off me last night, but they’ve lost hundreds in the long run. That’s just bad business.
