Man eats $125 worth of sushi from local restaurant then leaves without paying a penny
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POCATELLO — It was a slow afternoon Monday at Sumisu Asian Fusion & Sushi when a man walked in, sat down, picked up a menu and ordered some food.
The popular restaurant on Center St. is known for fresh sushi and when the customer finished his original order, he didn’t stop eating.
“He continued to order in waves. He didn’t order everything all at once but just ordered as he ate,” Daniel Russo, the General Manager of Sumisu, tells EastIdahoNews.com. “It was a little unusual.”
After an hour of continually ordering food, the man asked his server if he could step outside to smoke a cigarette.
“Who’s going to say no to that? That would be super rude,” Russo says. “She told him he could and he asked her to put in an order of dessert while he smoked.”
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The customer went outside while the server ordered the dessert.
Then she waited, and waited, for the man to return.
“About 15 minutes after he had been gone, she came to get me and we waited another 30 minutes for him to come back. He never did,” Russo says.
The thief managed to eat, and steal, $125 worth of food. Russo called the police and then decided to share the experience on the restaurant’s Facebook page.
“This doesn’t happen very happen in Pocatello. We wanted to try and warn our friends and other business owners in the area that someone was coming in and taking advantage of the system,” Russo says.
The Facebook post describes what happened in the restaurant, gives a description of what the customer looks like and an opportunity for him to return to Sumisu and pay for his meal.
“If you are the gentleman in question and this was a simple mistake, we are more than happy to have you return, square up the bill and we can move forward from there no questions asked,” the post reads. “Sadly, we believe this to be a ‘dine & dash’ situation and would hate for any other hard working local businesses to experience a loss as we have today.”
‘Dining and Dashing’ is illegal and customers could face felony charges if found guilty of committing the crime.
In Sept. 2016, a man was arrested on two felony burglary charges in Idaho Falls after he allegedly didn’t pay for food he ordered at the Sandpiper Restaurant.
Russo has filed a police report and hopes this deters other potential food thieves from committing similar crimes.
“We weren’t expecting so much publiity over this. We love our customers and want to do our best to serve Pocatello to the best of our ability,” Russo says. “It’s unfortunate when things like this happen but it’s not going to effect how we treat our customers in any way.”