# MAJOR FOOD POISONING FROM CALIFORNIA ROLL FROM SUSHI OYAMA in Burnaby.



## SeaHorse_Fanatic

As a few members/friends on this board already know, my wife and daughter suffered bad cases of food poisoning a few days ago. Here's what happened & my review of how the restaurant's management dealt with it.

Sushi Oyama has been my family's favourite local sushi place for years. We've brought literally dozens and dozens of new diners there for lunches, dinners, and special events. Unfortunately, the quality has gone downhill in recent months and just recently our family suffered two extremely severe cases of food poisoning after ordering and eating some takeout sushi from Oyama. Last Friday, we had a small fire in our backyard but were very fortunate that our neighbour's four years old son saw it, told his dad, and had his dad call the fire department. The two then came over to knock on our door and let us know. I was able to quickly put out a fire (motor on a fish filter seized and caught fire), even before the fire trucks came. As a reward for our little hero, I asked his proud father what his son's favourite food is. He told me sushi, specifically California roll. So I offered to take them to Oyama for lunch or dinner but then we settled on us just delivering some takeout sushi that night to accommodate their busy schedule. Fine, ordered a big Party tray for them and some extra sushi (Dynamite, California rolls & Tempura Udon for our own dinner). Dropped off the sushi to the neighbours and went home where we had our own sushi & udon for supper. Note: the only food we consumed that night was from Oyama. My daughter had some sushi then went out for a short violin lesson (20 min.). Came home and finished her dinner. I had saved the entire California roll because it's her favourite. She gave a couple pieces to her mom. Long story short, 20 minutes after eating the California roll from Oyama, my seven years old Felicia is throwing up violently in the bathroom. After the third time, I called Oyama to inform them about what's happening and make sure they double check their food prep hygiene and safety protocols. The hostess was sympathetic and offered a free California and Dynamite roll. We all hoped the worst was past. WRONG! Felicia ended up vomiting 13 times and then started having diarrhea. My wife, who had 2 pieces of the tainted sushi, then started feeling deathly ill as well and threw up. Both my wife and daughter were completely incapacitated from Friday evening till Sunday noon. They were finally recovered enough to get out of bed by Sunday. I constantly emailed Oyama throughout the night and throughout the weekend. I spoke a few times to the manager, who's main priority was to deny that it could have been Oyama's fault, claiming that they had not had any reported "health or safety issues in 4, 5, 6 years" (her words). She said she would talk to the staff and owners and get back to me. She never did. Any contact with the manager was initiated by me. She never even replied to my emails or text messages. The sense I got was that she was hoping if she ignored me, I would just go away. Well, a relative suggested looking into the Health Inspection records for Oyama. I was shocked to learn from this link Fraser Health Authority that Sushi Oyama on Kingsway in Burnaby had failed four of their last nine inspections. In 4 of the last nine inspections by the Fraser Health Authority, Sushi Oyama scored a HIGH HAZARD RATING. Click on the link to see for yourself. The manager never offered to apologize to my family (especially my little girl who suffered most) and never offered to at least refund our order or anything. Altogether, my wife and I each lost a day and a half of work over the weekend, and my daughter was still too weak and ill to go to school on Monday.
I have a policy of writing positive reviews when a business provides good/great service and we are happy with their products. I also have a policy of informing businesses that fail to do so and give them an opportunity to make things right. Other businesses whether online (like Amazon or eBay e-tailers) and even local businesses, when informed that their product or service failed, at least apologize and take steps to rectify the issue. They send replacements or offer a full refund for defective items. They take the appropriate actions to make things right for their customers, resulting in a win-win situation as they retain a happy, loyal customer who spends more money at their business in the future.
I do not enjoy blasting a local business, especially in these tough economic times. However, the attitude of the management at Sushi Oyama has indicated clearly to my family that they are not going to accept any responsibility for the food poisoning incident that my seven years old daughter and wife suffered after eating that California roll from Oyama. This update of my previously very positive review of the same sushi house is to warn fellow patrons to be aware that if you eat here and get food poisoning, management will deny that it's their food and will try to ignore your complaints and avoid taking responsibility. Don't expect a refund either or any other compensation for your pain and suffering. I am very sad that it has come down to this because Oyama has been our go-to sushi place for several years and now we have to find a different place for our sushi fix. It has now been 12 days and still NO response from Sushi Oyama's management. Therefore, I feel obligated to warn the public that if you eat at Oyama and get food poisoning, based on my family's experience, management will NOT accept responsibility and will try to ignore your complaints and hope you just go away. I am sad it has come to this because we used to love eating at Oyama, but now my daughter won't even eat any sushi anymore. I have kept my daughter's soiled clothing, have several digital photos of the incident and had three family members who are retired nurses (two of them registered nurses) over to check on my daughter and wife during the incident to confirm they were suffering from food poisoning and offer advice on how to treat it. I told this to the management at Oyama and they still have chosen to pretend this never happened. This is what happened to our family. You be the judge.

BTW, since this happened, another friend from church who was also a regular customer at Oyama on Kingsway told us that when she called them to complain that they had been given sushi that was NOT fresh (i.e. House rolls with hard, dry rice as if it was stored in the fridge and not made fresh), the person she was talking to just hung up on her. This happened twice to her so she's never going back.


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## rwong2k10

Thanks for the info. Hope your little one feels better soon

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## wslam

I went to Sushi Oyama in Coquitlam maybe 3 years ago and the quality was decent. Then around a year ago I went again and the quality went downhill for sure. It was like ordering from an all you can eat place. I definitely haven't gone back since, thanks for the info. Hope your family has recovered!


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## Dietmar

Sorry for your family to have to go through this. 
Glad the worst is over, and bad karma to oyama for failing to rectify some of the pain.
I have not ever eaten there, but will make sure my friends are aware.


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## outsider

It is always risky to eat raw food, but it is mess up if your daughter had food poison from California roll consider it is just rice and cooked crab meat. I haven't visit sushi oyama and not sure if i will ever go there. Generally if I eat sushi, I prefer find Japanese operated one as 90% of sushi restaurantis operated by Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese. If I eat at none Japanese operated resturant I would just eat hot food. Japanese operated sushi restaurant is generally a lot of more expensive as well.

I also similar experience when I had take out from Sushi Garden cross Metrotown last years as well. I had serious diarrhea for about a week and pepto bismol couldn't do anything.


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## Rajan

sushi is one of those things. a sushi restaurants owner once told me to go when it's busy. this way nothing is stored and then brought back out later cause of temperature reasons. I had 3 food poisoning and all 3 were from sushi. last place was in Guildford. forgot the name but it's right by earls and it used to be Anducies. I hope u all are feeling better. Oh also good to know. I drive past that place Monday to Friday for the last 13 years. just recently I was thinking I should go to sushi oyama and try it out. now I know not to


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic

Thankfully, both Irene and Felicia are now fully recovered although my daughter lost a few pounds that weekend and she was slim to begin with. Now she won't eat sushi, but that's understandable.

The only silver lining is that my 4 year old Isabella (who LOVES California rolls) was staying at my parents house and the little 4 years old neighbour boy who saved our place from the fire didn't get the California roll. They would have ended up in the hospital for sure. I tried convincing Felicia to go to the hospital several times but she refused and so I had my mom and two aunts (all retired nurses from St. Vincents & VGH) come over to check on her and we followed their advice for home treatment to the T. My sister and cousin went 3 weeks earlier and told us after this happened that they both thought quality was way down, the sushi tasted a bit off and was not well rolled (i.e. falling apart).


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## April

Sorry to hear! Poor Felicia and Irene. Perhaps they need to step up the inspections and reprimand .
I'll pass. But I pass anyhow. 


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## beN

That's terrible, sorry to hear that.

If you want to make the trip out to Ridge/Meadows, try Akasaka. You will not be disappointed.


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## DunderBear

outsider said:


> It is always risky to eat raw food, but it is mess up if your daughter had food poison from California roll consider it is just rice and cooked crab meat. I haven't visit sushi oyama and not sure if i will ever go there. Generally if I eat sushi, I prefer find Japanese operated one as 90% of sushi restaurantis operated by Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese. If I eat at none Japanese operated resturant I would just eat hot food. Japanese operated sushi restaurant is generally a lot of more expensive as well.
> 
> I also similar experience when I had take out from Sushi Garden cross Metrotown last years as well. I had serious diarrhea for about a week and pepto bismol couldn't do anything.


It's not even cooked crab almost all the time it's just artificial.


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## Rajan

maybe they had raw meat touching it or they didn't store crab meat at right temperature. all I know is I'm not eating there.. I'm gonna eat pizza 24/7. u can eat it hot cold or room temp. pizza pizza pizza . dammit I'm hungry now


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## stratos

Sorry to hear of your troubles Anthony.

You might want to leave reviews here too: https://www.google.ca/search?client...r&lrd=0x5486765a9da99033:0xfc04d6eae372f8c0,1,,

Sushi Oyama - 244 Photos - Japanese - Metrotown - Burnaby, BC - Reviews - Yelp

https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Restaura...ews-Sushi_Oyama-Burnaby_British_Columbia.html


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic

I've posted on TripAdvisor, Zomato/UrbanSpoon and DineHere.ca as well as on Canreef.


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## April

There's also Yelp. Gets a lot of mileage 


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## Dietmar

SeaHorse_Fanatic said:


> I've posted on TripAdvisor, Zomato/UrbanSpoon and DineHere.ca as well as on Canreef.


Good work


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## mikebike

I just copied your first post to Facebook/public


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## davefrombc

Anthony, you should also report the incident to the health inspection people. It should not be let go .


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## guppygeorge

davefrombc said:


> Anthony, you should also report the incident to the health inspection people. It should not be let go .


 Not to worry...Anthony is all over it  You mess with his beautiful little girls and you are in trouble


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## Jousters

Anthony sorry to here about your bad experience.I hope your family gets well.I have always wanted to try it out but never got the chance.I will definetly not go there now.There are many good Sushi places in Burnaby.They are lucky they don't get sued.I work in the food industry and they take it quite seriously with all the food allergies that people have now.I would get your Doctor to confirm it just in case for your protection.Thanks for sharing I probably would have gone there living fairly close to that place.


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic

I had a long talk with the health inspector's office this morning. I gave the manager plenty of time to get back to me but she never did. No text, email or call. It was their response or lack of one that was really disappointing. If they are willing to lie about their health and safety record, then I couldn't trust them when they claimed nobody else got sick or that they were going to improve their own safety measures. 

We must now find another sushi place as our go-to-place since Felicia doesn't trust Oyama anymore. Too bad cause it was always her favourite, and the favourite of our whole family.


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## deepRED

Sorry to hear Anthony. I know several local health inspectors as well the federal inspector which inspects our plant every day. I'll have a chat with her tomorrow to see if there is a better way to follow up. 


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## outsider

SeaHorse_Fanatic said:


> I had a long talk with the health inspector's office this morning. I gave the manager plenty of time to get back to me but she never did. No text, email or call. It was their response or lack of one that was really disappointing. If they are willing to lie about their health and safety record, then I couldn't trust them when they claimed nobody else got sick or that they were going to improve their own safety measures.
> 
> We must now find another sushi place as our go-to-place since Felicia doesn't trust Oyama anymore. Too bad cause it was always her favourite, and the favourite of our whole family.


It is going to be hard for kid start to eat raw food again once them experience it.

I know 2 Japanese operate restaurant.

Isami sushi is next to where I live but their price is at high side, I have eat there over 15 years since I live next to it. They can be really busy during weeknd.

Tairyou Ichiba is operated by my neighbor. I believe their price is on the low side.

Asakusa Sushi on kingsway cross metrotown is ok. I think they are operated by Vietnamese Chinese or something like that. I haven't have problem with it as well.


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic

As a precaution, we have never let our kids eat raw fish in sushi or sashimi form ever. They usually stick to California, Dynamite and Smoked Salmon-type rolls, as well as Cucumber rolls. I like Japanese owned Nao Sushi for their Bento boxes and they're just down the street across from Highgate Mall.


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## mysticalnet

Just saw this. Take good care of you and your family. 

I just remembered! Actually my sister-in-law and mother-in-law and father-in-law, all got really sick after eating at Burnaby Oyama 3 years back, it was really bad and they had were sick with vomitting a few days, they vowed not to go back to Oyama.


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## DunderBear

Also just saw this ... That sucks to hear Seahorse_Fanatic hopefully your family is better now. If you ever come to Richmond for food definitely eat sushi, I've personally never been food poisoned at a sushi restaurant here for the past 10 years and I eat a lot of raw nigiri and maki etc.


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic

mysticalnet said:


> I just remembered! Actually my sister-in-law and mother-in-law and father-in-law, all got really sick after eating at Burnaby Oyama 3 years back, it was really bad and they had were sick with vomitting a few days, they vowed not to go back to Oyama.


Wow, sorry to hear about their food poisoning troubles. Did they complain to management? I know the restaurant would have denied everything anyways, but it's actually quite alarming how many bad stories I'm hearing about Oyama since this happened to our family. This used to be our favourite sushi place and now we find out getting food poisoning or not-fresh-sushi.

On the other hand, I'm learning about a few sushi places around town that other members here and on other boards have recommended.

DunderBear, we like to order takeout sushi from Banzai Sushi in Richmond. Yes, its not going to be the highest quality, most authentically Japanese sushi (owned & operated by Vietnamese I believe), but their sushi is HUGE and tasty, with lots of smoked salmon on their Vancouver & SSSR rolls. We order there when Quantity & Value & decent quality are our primary requirements. 3 of their rolls is literally enough to feed the four of us for lunch and that's like $12 for lunch for 4. Same company as Samurai Sushi across from Oakridge Mall in Vancouver. Never any issues from the food at these two sushi places.

Actually, this is the first time we've ever been sick from eating sushi and we eat a LOT of sushi in our family. It used to be my daughters' favourite.

Anthony


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## rhennessey

yikes, i've been eating sushi in Vancouver for over 40 years and have only been sick once and it was from all you can eat and I haven't tried them more than 1 or 2 times since. For me 1 place that i have been going to for over 20 years is KOKO's on Hastings street near Victoria. We know the japanese owners and they have very high quality food. NOt the cheapest but very very good and theres probably 20 of us that go there regularly and we've never had a problem except once when the power went out...lol lucky it was sushi and they had candles....lol


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## liquid_krystale

Sorry to hear how things went down for your family. I ate there a couple of times a few years ago, but don't remember anything being especially notable, either good or bad, about the food.

One thing I would do (perhaps since I'm especially tenacious when it comes to making sure people get what's coming to them) is to phone and email the manager again, and let her know that you've left reviews on all the internet review sites, and that you've seen the failed health inspection ratings and are actively pursuing a report with the health inspector now. Maybe then it'll light a fire under their asses.


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## Morainy

I just came across this post now and am really sorry to hear it, Anthony. Your daughter, especially, is far too young and tiny to be vomiting that severely. That sounds like a terrible case of food poisoning and I am glad that you are all recovering. 

I know that you always look out for people and it is helpful of you to post this warning. A healthy person might bounce back from something like that, but someone who is already in poor health might not. We are vulnerable if restaurants can fail health inspections and give people food poisoning and still stay open.

Even sushi with cooked rice and cooked crab meat can poison somebody if the rice and crab has been left out after cooking or has been handled by someone with bacteria on their hands or the fridge isn't cold enough. I have seen food handlers wearing gloves cough onto their gloves, so gloves aren't protection, either, if they aren't changed with every order.

Thanks for posting, Anthony.


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## mysticalnet

SeaHorse_Fanatic said:


> Wow, sorry to hear about their food poisoning troubles. Did they complain to management? I know the restaurant would have denied everything anyways, but it's actually quite alarming how many bad stories I'm hearing about Oyama since this happened to our family. This used to be our favourite sushi place and now we find out getting food poisoning or not-fresh-sushi.
> 
> On the other hand, I'm learning about a few sushi places around town that other members here and on other boards have recommended.
> 
> DunderBear, we like to order takeout sushi from Banzai Sushi in Richmond. Yes, its not going to be the highest quality, most authentically Japanese sushi (owned & operated by Vietnamese I believe), but their sushi is HUGE and tasty, with lots of smoked salmon on their Vancouver & SSSR rolls. We order there when Quantity & Value & decent quality are our primary requirements. 3 of their rolls is literally enough to feed the four of us for lunch and that's like $12 for lunch for 4. Same company as Samurai Sushi across from Oakridge Mall in Vancouver. Never any issues from the food at these two sushi places.
> 
> Actually, this is the first time we've ever been sick from eating sushi and we eat a LOT of sushi in our family. It used to be my daughters' favourite.
> 
> Anthony


Nah my in-laws didn't report or complain, they were too busy being sick and trying to get better.

On the other hand, we found a new place - sushi & roll in surrey, service sucks but perfect for take out.

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