West Seattle Blog / Discuss

morien2 says:

Just had dinner at JAK's in West Seattle and my wife thought it would be fun to order the Maine Lobster. At $40 a pop we thought it was extravagant but wanted to have a nice dinner at a local West Seattle establishment. The first two bites were fine but the third bite tasted like cleaning solution...

We called the waitress over and before we barely had the words out she said "Did it taste like ammonia?". We said "Exactly!". She took the lobster and went to talk to chef Sean...

After a few minutes she reappeared and said "this happened to me at another restaurant" and "oh sweety, it's no big deal" and the chef is pulling the rest of the lobster to check them.

We talked to the chef on the way out and he said he could not smell it, nobody else in the kitchen could smell it and he had someone taste it and it tasted fine. In addition he was biligerent about the fact that there was no ammonia smell.

Upon returning home we googled "lobster ammonia smell" and of course there were a ton of articles stating when lobsters die in transit they will have an ammonia smell and should not be eaten.

We used to be frequent patrons of JAK's and always had good experiences so this was quite disappointing to say the least. We paid the bill in full (with tip) with the lobster on there (even though they kept the lobster in the kitchen - and our $40) and at that point we told the chef our main concern was for our health and the health of the other patrons.

Extremely disappointing when we are trying to support our local businesses...
Originally posted at 9:01PM, 9 October 2009 PDT (permalink)
morien2 edited this topic 44 months ago.