'Mortifying': Toronto woman says restaurant shamed her for ordering too much food

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A Toronto woman says she was shamed for the size of her order at a sushi restaurant north of the city in a scathing review posted to social media that’s been viewed more than 1.4 million times.

In a TikTok video posted this week about the April 28 incident, Cassandra Mauro said she and a friend were famished after working out at the gym and went to get some sushi late last month.

“No. Too much food. That’s it,” Mauro recalls the server telling the pair as they placed their order.

“Is it? Is it too much food?’ We didn’t order that much. We ordered three apps and two rolls and also we’re starving,” she said.

Mauro said after their order was placed, the server scoffed at them.

Then, according to Mauro, the manager of the a la carte King City restaurant came to their table and said, “Hungry?”

“She goes, ‘Yeah. You ordered too much food. It’s not going to fit on this table. Get up. Move to this table.’”

The pair decided to stay and try and enjoy their meal, but said they could see the chef from their table laughing at them.

“We finished all of [the food]. We paid and we tipped. Now, I’m looking back on this whole interaction and I’m like, ‘That was mortifying,’” Mauro said.

Paper Crane Sushi, which Mauro identified as the business, did not respond to CTV News Toronto’s request for comment.

RESTAURANT APOLOGIZES

In response to the incident, the business owner issued a lengthy apology to Mauro and her friend, and said something during the interaction may have been lost in translation.

“We sincerely apologize for any comments that may have caused a negative experience … Many of our staff speak English as a second language, but we hope you know it was never the intention of staff to make you (or anyone) feel judged at our restaurant,” Paper Crane Sushi wrote in a post to Instagram.

The post went on to say the business owners have discussed the incident with their staff members and have “looked closely” at how they speak to customers.

“We’re also taking time to address language barriers and make sure our words have the appropriate meaning.”

Paper Crane Sushi, which the business said is Korean-owned, said the incident has triggered threats and racially-motivated harassment, and as such the owners have turned comments off on their social media pages.

Negative Google reviews of the establishment referencing the incident have also surfaced -- which Mauro said she does not condone -- but appear to have since been removed as they likely go against the platform’s deceptive content policies.

For her part, Mauro said in a follow up video it was not her intention to generate such a negative response to the business, and that she just wanted to share her experience, albeit to an admittedly much larger audience than she intended.

“I appreciate that they are taking the steps to re-educate their staff,” she told CTV News Toronto.