| rev:text
| - We wanted to explore something new, and use a coupon from our Charlotte Citipass book. Since we were getting our hair cut right across the street from MAI Japanese restaurant, we decided to give them a try. It was about 5:15pm on a Saturday afternoon and we were the only customers in the place so I thought we'd surely have a good experience. The place looked clean, despite the decor being too busy and distracting.
We looked over the small menu and quickly knew what we wanted. Since we'd never been there before, I wanted to try both the sushi and the hibachi options. We ordered 1 order of California rolls, 2 crab sticks, 1 hibachi chicken combo meal and 1 hibachi shrimp combo meal. The soup, salad and "shrimp" sauce all came out at the same time, which I wasn't thrilled with. Then very shortly after that we got 2 orders of California rolls and 2 crab sticks. I alerted the waitress that we only ordered 1 order of California rolls, and she seemed very confused... so much so that she brought our sushi order forms back to the table and asked my husband if he'd marked the sheet... which he had not. I guess they re-used a previous sushi order form without checking it first? Maybe they were trying to upsell in hopes that we'd just go ahead and pay for it anyway. I dunno, but as he doesn't like California rolls, he certainly wouldn't have ordered them. So she took the unwanted order away and shortly our hibachi entrees arrived. They're served on plain, round, white plates which made the food look awful. The first thing I noticed was that the vegetables looked oily, but not seasoned. My guess was proven correct after the first bit of slippery, tasteless onion. (So- if you like tasty, seasoned Japanese food, I'd highly recommend at least paying the upcharge for teriyaki.) I was thankful that I'd ordered the sushi because I was less than impressed by my hibachi entrée. My fried rice was just plain nasty. It tasted somehow soggy and watered down?? I dunno- but it's the only time I've ever had inedible rice from an Asian establishment. I got 4 sweet carrot slices on my plate, and they we're hard.?. Like they'd been reheated in a microwave or something... wasn't good. The chicken was just plain, hard chicken chunks with very little seasoning on them and the zucchini and onion mixture was oily and tasteless. I tried dipping everything into the "shrimp" sauce, but as it was mostly mayonnaise, it proved to be no help at all. I wondered if they had any ginger sauce like Kabuto and Nakato have, but judging from the pale, watery ginger dressing I had on my salad, I didn't even waste my breath to ask for any.
Ok, so we finish and we're ready for the check. I give the waitress my coupon and she comes back with my bill showing where they'd taken $6.99 off. My coupon said "up to $10.00 off" and with everything we'd bought, I was curious as to why I didn't get the full $10.00 taken off the bill, so I asked. The waitress just said she didn't' know, and stared at me. Being as that in no way answered my question, I asked her to bring the coupon back to we could look at it together. She came back with a woman that appeared to be a manager and she told me that they take off the least expensive entrée (which was my hibachi chicken for $6.99) so that did make sense to me and I was fine with her answer until she said "... that's how marketing works..." That comment pissed me off because all I could think was, "well, actually, MAI paid to have a coupon in the Citipass book to draw business into their store and hopefully create return business and positive word of mouth advertising... but after our experience in MAI; that manager let a $3.00 question seal the deal that 2 fat DINKs (Double Income No Kids) won't be returning for repeat business and we certainly won't be telling our friends or the 200 employees that read my monthly intercompany newsletter where I share local restaurant reviews..."
I wanted very much to say... you never once asked us how our meal was and then you chose to let your greed for $3.00 hold up many, many potential future dollars... "No, THAT's how marketing fails!..."
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)