Good chefs are notoriously exacting about how a customer ought to experience a dish that may have taken months, years – or even the arc of an entire career – to perfect.
Gordon Ramsay will not serve ketchup. Marco Pierre White, as the apocryphal tale goes, ejected dozens of diners who asked for more salt or pepper. Alice Waters never accepted requests for items that were out of season.
And Philip Kim, a purveyor of sushi in northern British Columbia, has his own steadfast rule: no extra soy sauce.
“We never serve extra soy sauce, rude people, intoxicated people,” says a sign outside his Kitimat shop – with the first rule highlighted in bold red text.
In a social media post earlier this month meant to be the “last time we debate this”, Kim wrote that his edict was firm: “We never serve extra soy sauce – even if [a customer] offered to pay $1,000 for it.”
For Kim, whose Sushi J restaurant has operated for seven years, the decision is not one of cost. Instead, he said it reflected a theory about customer palates, suggesting that “not a single person” who asked for extra soy sauce in the early years of his business ever became a regular.
“Why? Because they remembered the taste of my sushi as the taste of soy sauce, not the sushi itself,” he wrote. “Their personal food preferences deserve respect, but my responsibility is to serve my food the way it is meant to taste.”
Sushi has long been a culinary discipline defined by the search for perfectionism. That identity was buoyed up by the Oscar-winning documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, in which Sukiyabashi Jiro maintains fastidious control over his omakase meals – including exactly how much wasabi or soy sauce is used with each plate.
Kim told the Guardian that he had trained for years on rice alone, a key element of sushi that defines much of the texture and flavour.
“I love working with it. And I worked hard to get where I am. So much thought goes into the end result. And so to see someone take that work, and drown it in soy sauce – it just hurts,” he said.
Kim said he does in fact give extra soy sauce when he serves dishes, but the amount is subtle enough that patrons don’t notice.
Online, some commentators responded to Kim’s post saying they “couldn’t imagine being arrogant enough to tell my PAYING customers how they can and cannot eat the food that THEY paid for”.
Another wrote “this doesn’t encourage me to try your restaurant. A smile would get more customers.”
“A lot of people have opinions about this but for the most part, they just speak negatively on social media,” said Kim.
Others used the post as a chance to air their own culinary grievances, including a complaint about a sandwich chain whose owner “refuses to buy Parmesan cheese which I love on the Meatball subs”.
Danny Nunes, a writer for Northern BC Buzz, penned a satirical article about Kim’s decision, warning the move could push “desperate locals may resort to underground ‘soy sauce speakeasies’ where patrons can slip into dimly lit back rooms, whisper a password, and finally drown their spicy tuna rolls in forbidden salt water like their grandparents did”.
Nunes included an image with the words “No Soy Sauce For You’ alongside the stern ‘soup Nazi’ from Seinfeld.
Kim said that he was not the only chef who was frustrated by the scourge of over-sauced sushi.
“Everyone talks about it but the reality is, no one is willing to speak up because they know there will be consequences from customers. And so these chefs keep making sushi and seeing people ruining the flavour someone worked so hard on.”
Kim admitted he may lose customers who want more, but maintained that they were unlikely to become loyal patrons in the future.
“People say the customer is always right. And they are. But the people I think about and want to serve are my customers – the ones who come to me because they like my sushi.”
