Sukiya beef bowl chain apologizes after rat found in customer's miso soup

A lot of those places look like they could do with a good clean out. The tables and floor of the dining area get wiped, but I wonder about how thorough the kitchen is cleaned, especially when it is often staffed by high school kids on the absolute lowest of the low wages.

Something lost in translation? A rat would not even fit into a miso soup bowl. A dead mouse, (same word 'nezumi' in Japanese) might be possible though. Either way, yucky story.

I'll some of you immediately thought of that Monty Python sketch...

Man: What's for afters?

Woman: Well there's rat cake ... rat sorbet ... rat pudding ... or strawberry tart.

Man: Strawberry tart?!

Woman: Well, it's got some rat in it.

Man: How much?

Woman: Three (rather a lot really).

Man: Well, I'll have a slice without so much rat in it.

OK, just found a photo of it on the net! Definitely a mouse, like a field mouse or a dormouse, floating to one side of the miso soup bowl. (Unless it was a very young rat!)

Miso mouse?

Lucky to get the extra protein,surprised he wasn't charged extra.

So the "rat" fell/jumped into the bowl while they were preparing other ingredients and just died? No struggles or attempts to get out of the bowl which might have alerted the staff presumably working in the same room.

I'd say the whole thing sounds very fishy.

Not surprised. Sukiya and Yoshinoya are garbage.

OoooKaay…won’t be going there any more.

Surprised it wasn’t in Asakusa though.

Do they have cameras in the shops?

Possibly put in by the customer for obvious reason

I think you mean “Ratty”, Ron

A man who was dining at Crewe,

Found quite a large mouse in his stew,

Said the waiter, "Don't shout!

And wave it about,

Or the rest will be wanting one too."

Manuel.."Is not rat ezz hamster "

That's not a rat. It's a mouse. The hair is wet and dark grey, black from the miso soup. Matsuya dispenses its miso soup from a dispenser; a drowned mouse would never end up like the dead mouse in Sukiya's miso soup.

Picture on X:

https://x.com/Waracha/status/1903398393608896783

The customer ordered miso soup but was served ratatouille.

This has to be JT article of the day.

Really, ok a tad repulsive, however laugh out loud.

"Waiter there's a fly in my soup"

"How do you know"

"The rodent surfaced and warned me"

Sorry to jest, but how, Sukiya beef bowl chain servers failed to notice the pointed snout, long tail, incisors, is truly remarkable.

In Japan this sort of thing is rather tragic for 'reputation' and trust. Expect some big changes soon, maybe even M&A and a name change etc.

Not just Covid, restaurant biz's RISKY, especially in Japan

Lack of available quality labor and tough business conditions probably played a role as well, like so many businesses in Japan where margins getting crushed.

Oh my god that is the worst kind of hygiene failure imaginable.

HopeSpringsEternalToday  06:50 pm JST

In Japan this sort of thing is rather tragic for 'reputation' and trust. Expect some big changes soon, maybe even M&A and a name change etc.

Ah, yeah, ya think a rat in food is not going to affect trust and repuration in other countries?

> nandakandamandaToday  05:04 pm JST

OK, just found a photo of it on the net! Definitely a mouse, like a field mouse or a dormouse, floating to one side of the miso soup bowl. (Unless it was a very young rat!)

There's no difference between rat and mouse in Japan; they are both 'nezumi'.

No more sukiya for me...oh my God.

HopeSpringsEternalToday  06:50 pm JST

In Japan this sort of thing is rather tragic for 'reputation' and trust. Expect some big changes soon, maybe even M&A and a name change etc.

Ah, yeah, ya think a rat in food is not going to affect trust and repuration in other countries?

Sure, but not nearly to same degree on average, word travels VERY fast inside Japan, everyone follows the same news etc. Conformity and group think is real here.

I worked in a Big Boy restaurant when I was a teenager and I can tell you this happens way more than you want to know.

We had a lunatic cook who trapped a RAT (not a mouse) and deep fried it.

I quit after three weeks and as a rule never eat at chain restaurants that hide their cooking areas.

Unbelievable, so this means that the Rat actually jumped into the bowel then died and stayed there unnoticed while customers were served the soup from that large bowl until that one lucky customer received the actual Rat in his bowl while others had the Rat Flavored soup without knowing.

Sick if that is the case!!???

Underreporting here as usual has led to all kinds of wild inaccurate speculation.

The nezumi somehow made its way into a vat of miso soup that was being made at one of Sukiya's big operation centers in Gumna.

A crafty customer could have found a way to get a free bowl of soup, though traditionally this done with a fly, which can be kept in one's pocket.

Or maybe they really served a rat, but, I just can't imagine how someone could have dished out a mouse/rat into a bowl without a splash that would have displaced most of the soup.

Rats (and mice) have been and will be a problem in Tokyo with all of it's old buildings and back alleys. When working in a restaurant in a backstreet of Ginza, right below the highway, we had a sound system of "distressed rat calls" to be turned on when finishing at night to keep the real rats away. And we put in acrylic covers in front of the lights at the resets of the ceiling so that no rats would accidentlly fall down. Another place, old, renovated house, had rats crawling up between the inner and outer walls. Had to get in a professional who added metal grids and layed out lots of those very sticky sheets at night. He told us how many he catched and at one point that he could smell a dead rat behind one of those grids next to the stairs to the cellar...

The company only thought about protecting the brand the company interest, this article didn't mention anything about the customer accept just to say what they did to report what happened. Shame on the company for posting on their website that "THE RAT" was a "foreign object". So in their true words the company is say the customer saw something different. To make matters words they only thought to shut the down for two days, rush to sanitize and report the incident to the public two months later perhaps hoping people would think much of it. The place should not be opened until the Japanese Health Department if they have one inspected it and made sure that the company and all its locations pass inspections, not just that one location.

Although the term "nezumi" can be used for both rats and mice, Dobunezumi is used for brown rats and Kumanezumi refers to black rats both larger than mice.

The nezumi somehow made its way into a vat of miso soup that was being made at one of Sukiya's big operation centers in Gumna.

Good info. If this is true, it means that in late January a lot of Sukiya customers drank a vatful of Nezumijiru.

The only one that didn't was the lucky fellow that found the stock cube.

How big are Sukiya's vats?

We went yesterday. No wonder it was nearly empty! I love regular gyudon, esp. if you pour the raw egg over it. My missus had the bibimba type one which was really good too.

We didnt order miso soup....

In the States the customer would probably end up suing the chain for a hundred mill$ claiming mental distress and inability to eat soup for the rest of their lives. Thankfully it's not at those levels here yet.

Sweet lord, imagine being the customer who found that. I hope he did so before bringing it to his mouth and slurping some down. As for their "hygiene inspection", they do the bare minimum here when it comes to health inspection, and I doubt they changed a thing at Sukiya. Just found a scapegoat and will force minimum wage kids to "be more careful" (meaning don't get caught).

Of Mice and pissed off Men? Good that they got ratted out.

The customer ordered miso soup but was served ratatouille.

Remy dreams of becoming a great chef but he drowned in his endeavor.