Hot Cucumber and Rubbery Eel

Note: thanks to my husband for the title ;)
Let me preface this by saying my husband and I are non-confrontational peaceful people. We live by the "live and let live" motto. We're not Gordon Ramsey. We don't go to every restaurant and tell people their food is gross or bad. If we have a plate with otherwise good food and one thing is wrong with it, we eat it and live with it. I think I've complained about a meal  to a waitress maybe five times in my 30 something years on this planet. I've never felt so enraged that I needed to go straight to a manager, until Thursday night. Another thing about us, we're not trained chefs. Quite frankly I hate to cook. We're also not fussy. We'll eat just about anything you put in front of us. We've eaten anything from beef tongue all the way to escargot and frog's legs.We've both worked in food service and understand restaurants have bad nights. I've worked with the public on many occasions and understand mistakes are made! We eat out a lot. We know food can vary from one chef to another.  However, Thursday night there were so many things wrong at one time we just found it unacceptable.
We loved Sushi X. We'd been regulars there since they opened this summer. We used to go just about every other week. We celebrated three birthdays there and Christmas. I even brought my mother there when she came down to visit us from Plattsburgh and I met a friend there for lunch. I had envisioned my Granddaughter having her first sushi there. We would rave about Sushi X to everyone we knew. Now we will be yelling from the roof tops about this visit for a very long time.
Now, we know our sushi. We're not experts on terms, etiquette, etc., but we know good sushi when we eat it. This place was the best. We've eaten sushi at some of the best sushi places in the Capital Region: Capital Thai, Hana, and Sushi Na, just to name a few. We eat sushi about once every other week. I have said on more than one occasion that we are "sushioholics"
So, this is how it all went down. When we walked in to the restaurant and were seated we noticed a fishy smell coming from the sushi bar. We should have recognized that red flag. Nonetheless, we went ahead and ordered. We love eel, it's our favorite sushi ingredient. Now, the last time we were there the eel was rubbery.  However, we didn't complain. We figured it was a bad night. We've had some sushi there that wasn't uniform from the previous times. Like I said before, food can vary by chef.  There was a time when we had one of our favorite rolls, the butterfly roll, and it tasted kinda fishy, the next time we went it was fine.However, this is about Thursday night, so let's go back.
Hubby left me in charge or the ordering, which is something we usually do together, and I ordered our usual: spicy salmon sushi, butterfly roll, yummy roll, and two eel avocado hand rolls. I also ordered some California roll because we hadn't ordered some in a while.Well, the food came and it was suspect. The yummy roll, which has: eel, avocado, mango and is topped with spicy tuna and crunchies, would have been unrecognizable if it wasn't for the dark pink tuna that tops it. The inside of the yummy roll looked almost pickled. The eel inside was....you guessed it rubbery. I'll tell you about the mango they served that night later. The yummy roll was nowhere near yummy. When I ate my hand roll the eel was rubbery and it smelled. I've never smelled eel before and if I did, it certainly did not smell like that. My husband picked all of the eel out of his hand roll and yummy. I had to talk him into eating any of the yummy roll. Much of the sushi was falling apart too. Not just the nori (seaweed sheets used to wrap sushi rolls) coming unattached, the sushi was crumbling, contents were falling out. Sushi is supposed to be like a little bite sized package delivered to your mouth. The flavors are supposed to be eaten all at once. Anyway, when the waitress took the plate away she mentioned how much eel that was left. We said the eel was bad. It was actually the only thing left on the plate.
So, on to the second plate. We strategically were careful in ordering the second round. We stayed away from the eel. We got stuff we thought you would be able to eat, including lots of avocado, which is another favorite of ours. We also ordered some salmon. Well, it came and the sushi rice was warm! Sushi  rice shouldn't be warm. It was then I realized that that the mango wasn't fresh. We had ordered a cucumber and avocado roll and a avocado and mango roll. We couldn't tell one from the other. For the record, mango is usually bright yellow.  My favorite, along with eel, is salmon. I went to pick up some salmon sushi. Well, the rice underneath the salmon was warm. I had had enough.
My husband could not finish eating the rest of the sushi and he's an eater. When he eats, he eats more than I did at my heaviest, so he can really put it away. We normally do order two plates and we finish it off. I usually eat 50 point dinners there. That night I ate a 31  point dinner. We actually left food on the plate. Now their policy is to charge you for anything you have left behind. I told the waitress no. Her English wasn't very good. So she deferred to another waitress, one who has waited on us many times.  I told her no also and they didn't charge us for the extra left behind. When the bill came it was full price.
My husband gave me the money and I went straight to the manager to pay for it. My husband trailed behind a bit because he was putting his coat on. I found the manager in the bar again, he was speaking to someone sitting at the bar. At first he had his head turned and ignored me. He had seen me enter the bar.  Then, I got his attention. I tried to get a discount for our horrible experience my exact words were "We should be compensated because of our horrible experience". As it is, they have a mandatory 18% tip in the bill. He spoke to the waitress who had waited on us many times in whatever language they speak. Her head was downcast and her eyes were looking up at him as though she was afraid of him. He turned to me and said angrily "one minute please".
He returned from our table. He was pretty well ticked off at this point. He  said "You left so much behind!" I told him "It was horrible, we couldn't eat it" there was a bit of an exchange between us and the manager which was loud because of the loud music they play there. We were polite and we defended ourselves. He said "I told you I'll tell the chef!" and he also said "You come here so many times and leave happy" and "Now just because of this one time?" My husband asked me if I had paid. I said "not yet". The confrontation continued. I felt it was useless, I wanted to go home and just have it over with. I said to my husband "Let's just give them a chance" and I handed the money over. My husband said "I will never come back". Then we walked out, never to return again.
Now, in hindsight I feel we did nothing wrong. There have been a few times when we've dined out and there were things we've complained about. Most of the time you get an apology and sometimes you even get a discount. None of that was offered. My husband still says them not charging us for the extra left behind was our discount. We always eat two plates worth of food and finish it off! So why would it make any difference?
If this had been any restaurant where you can decide to leave your own tip I wouldn't have left any. Keep in mind, we are 20% tippers and you really have to do something egregiously bad to not get at least a 15% tip from us. There has only been one other time in my life where I have eaten a meal and not left a tip. For that we (not my husband and I) contacted the manager through the web, it was a small chain, and got a completely free meal on our next visit.
I was not expecting a free meal. I was just looking for a acknowledgement more than "I'll tell the chef" and maybe a "I'm sorry" or "We know you come here all of the time and appreciate you as customers" or at least a manager that was more even tempered and empathetic. We might have been able to forgive our horrible experience if the manager had handled our concerns better. I've read some reviews online and it seems like  a least one person had a run in with him, for no reason at all, and one was even denied access to him when they wanted to complain. Interesting.
So, I'm sad over the whole thing. The former restaurant in that building was Kobe. Kobe was "our place" and then they went down hill and closed. In Kobe's prime we had our wedding reception there. When we discovered Sushi X we had a new "our place". Needless to say we will be going elsewhere for sushi. We used to go to Sushi Na in Clifton Park about once a month from April till November. We haven't been to Sushi Na in Clifton Park since Sushi X opened in June. We had Capital Thai sushi last night. It was fantastic. Some of it fell apart but ya know, it didn't crumble, and that was one problem. Like I said before, we can overlook one problem. with a meal.
Thanks for reading my very long detailed rant. Now go forth and share! I have some restaurant review sites to visit where I am going to share;-)