A chain of sushi restaurants in Seattle shut down after a TikTok food critic gave them a bad review.
Fans of TikTok personality Keith Lee claim they saw something moving in the raw sushi he ate at the Fob Sushi Bar.
“It’s not the freshest sushi I’ve ever had,” he said, adding that the rice was “overcooked” and “gummy.”
At the 1:50 mark in the video, something wiggled on a piece of sushi before Lee ate it.
@keith_lee125 Fob Sushi taste test ? would you try it ? #foodcritic ? original sound – Keith Lee
Lee’s followers told him about the critter he’d just eaten. They flooded the restaurant’s social media pages with angry comments.
The management at Fob Sushi responded with a post on Instagram, calling the claims “false”.
“[W]e follow strict FDA and HACCP standards to ensure the highest quality and safety in every dish,” the management wrote. They said the movement seen in the video is due to “natural elasticity in the fish — not worms.” The restaurant was last inspected by the local health department in January and no issues were found.
In a response video, Lee said, “It did appear that something moved,” but he didn’t see it before he ate it. He said that he cannot “confirm or deny” what it was, but he suffered no ill effects from eating whatever it was. He claimed that one of his followers went there the next day and that individual ended up in the hospital.
“For the restaurant to post a statement indicating that me holding the sushi or me holding the chopsticks a certain way is why the sushi moved — I personally don’t agree with it,” Lee said.
“Because I’ve had sushi a thousand times, and I’ve held sushi a thousand different ways, and never once have I seen sushi behaving that way.”
On Monday, November 18, Fob Sushi Bar announced that it was closing its locations in Bellevue, where Lee ate, and Seattle “until further notice.” The restaurant said it is conducting a “thorough investigation” into what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.
Now dozens of employees are out of work at the family-owned and operated restaurants.
