Posts — Page 143

TLDR : Ramen Danbo served me a dish containing pork, and multiple servers told me it was vegan. I’m still fuming. I hope posting about my experience will 1) help me process/move on, and 2) hopefully have some servers or restaurants implement changes to better take care of their vegetarian customers (especially if they offer a separate vege/vegan menu) Here’s what happened: This is my 6th time dining in Danbo Ramen this year at the Capitol Hill location. I’m vegetarian and always order from the vegan menu. My partner eats everything, and always orders from the regular menu. Since it was a weekday, there were combo upgrade options where one of the combos includes a mini donburi as a side dish. The vegan menu includes a vegan version of the donburi which has soy meat, while the regular version has pork. Both my partner and i opted to order this option. The side options arrive first, and I’m very excited to try it. I’ve never had the donburi here before. The food dunner that delivered this side was a DIFFERENT server than the one who took our orders (via pre-filled out menus that you do while waiting in line, which again, my partner had a regular menu placed in front of them, and I had the regular menu with my order placed in front of me). This server drops off one donburi in front of my partner. One in front of me. And walks away. Without confirming which one of us is expecting the vegan dish. The donburis are visually different. The difference is subtle, but noticeable (sorry the photos I shared might not be the clearest. I added photos in comments.) Two things in particular that are different about this dish is that 1) the eggs have slightly different color, and 2) the meats - one meat has more of a minced cut, while the other meat is cut into more of cube cut (slightly larger, and more of a square shape). Again, the dishes look similar, but there are visual differences between some of the ingredients. Both are served in the same black bowl container (no difference in the bowl color, shape, or size). I take a bite and something feels off. My partner is already eating their dish too. I ask them to please try my dish, and please tell me if they think this is the vegan version. Specifically, I asked them try the meat and let me know if it’s meat or not. Before trying the meat, my partner look at the meat in my dish and says “that looks like pork to me”. Then they try my dish, and say that it tastes like meat. I ask them to try just the “meat” in their dish their time and see what they think. They try the minced “meat” in their dish and say that they think it tastes like soy (vegan version), but are not sure. I panic… I already took a bite of mine. And my partner thinks that I have the regular meat version, and that they have the vegan version. But I’m too uncomfortable to switch dishes with my partner right now because I want to be sure which one is vegan. So we stop eating the donburi and wait for a server to come over. The server they returns is the same one that took our order. I tell them that the food runner that dropped off our dish didn’t specify which donburi is the vegan version, and I ask him to confirm. He looks at the dishes and says “I don’t know”. ……. What do you mean? He doesn’t offer any help or further details, so I ask “can you please find out?” He asks if he can take the two dishes to go check and we say yes. He comes back and confirms that we each receive the correct dish, and gives me back the dish I previously had. He says the “eggs are lighter and fluffier in the meat version” so the server claims that my partner received the correct (meat) version of the dish and that I have the vegan one in front of me. He walks away after saying this. But the eggs look pale in my parents dish look pale. Like “fake-slightly-sad-vegan-egg-shade-of-pale”. Our main course (ramen) gets dropped off in the meantime by another server, and correctly placed in front of us (partner’s dish had pork chasu, mine had tofu slices). Something still felt off in my gut, so I asked my partner if we could ask the server to call over who he checked with to verify. My partner said they’re fine with that and that we can just eat our ramen in the meantime. Not a single server stopped by for 15 minutes while we ate our ramen. I stopped eating when I was full and spent another 10 minutes looking for any server to flag down for to go boxes, and to once again confirm which side dish is vegan. I eventually flag down the server that took our order and ask for to go boxes, the bill, and to check with whoever he verified which side dish was vegan, which I assumed would be one of the chefs, before we take them home since I wasn’t confident in the answer he gave me and was too nervous to eat it without checking one more time. Now, I’ll preface this with I’m totally open to being wrong but I really thought my dish was the pork version. The person that confirmed which dish is which comes over, and it’s another server that I was taking care of other tables. Not one of the chefs. So I ask them to confirm one more time that the dish in front of me was the vegan version. I point out that I see two visual differences (the egg color, and the cut of the meat). They say “it’s really hard to tell but there are differences”. They offer to remake the dish for us to go since we already ate the ramen and packed half of it to go. So we say sure, but also ask if they can label which is which so we know when we get home. They say they’ll absolutely do that. The sever comes back with the dishes in to-go boxes. Says “red sticker is meat, green sticker is vegan”. Before we pack up, I open up both containers to see which is which. I had the pork dish. My partner had the vegan dish all along. Three servers dropped the ball on this one. Two flat out misinformed me. And from the last server, no apology or accountability, even when they could look at the remade dishes they labeled to know they messed up. Please do better…. 😞 Here’s some ideas on how: 1) Ask which customer is vegan/vegetarian when delivering the food 2) Train staff to identify the difference between the dishes. There’s only 2 donburi on your menu - the pork version and the vegan version. I understand that the visual differences are small, but they are there. Post a visual reference guide in a kitchen wall calling out to look at the difference in the egg topping (vegan eggs are more pale, the real eggs are more golden colored and it looks like it has some seasoning (dashi or bonito?) mixed into it. Also look at the cut of the meat - the pork and soy meat have visual differences) 3) Change the color of the serving plates for vegan dishes. This would remove the guess work of trying to identify the subtle differences between the plated food. 4) Add a small unique garnish on top of the vegan dish that’s noticeable. I’ve seen some dim sum places include a dough cut out that’s different colors and shapes to indicate what’s inside the dim sum. Not sure what a donburi-friendly version of a garnish could be… a little edamame or cucumber leaf? Nori cut out in a “V” shape Sincerely, a disappointed vegetarian in Seattle

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