Japanese restaurant charges $20 fine for not finishing your meal

Visiting northern Japan? Craving seafood? You’d better bring your appetite.

Hachikyo restaurant in Sapporo serves a mean tsukko meshi, a popular dish consisting of rice topped by a huge heap of salmon roe.

Patrons come for the restaurant’s fresh, high quality fish and they’re prepared to pay the price, that price being a $20 fine if they fail to scrape every last morsel from their plate.

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Gawker notes that the surcharge goes back to the fishermen, who, according to restaurant owners, “risk their lives” to bring customers their delicious meal.

“According to the explanation in the menu, the working conditions for fishermen are harsh and so dangerous that it’s not unknown for lives to be lost. To show our gratitude and appreciation for the food they provide, it is forbidden to leave even one grain of rice in your bowl. Customers who do not finish their tsukko meshi must give a donation,” writes a Japanese blogger by way of explanation.

So far customers appear to be digging the strict regulations: Hachikyo owners plan to open a second branch in Tokyo soon.

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And while their approach is unusual, they’re hardly the first restaurant to enforce strange dining room rules.

A little closer to home, the Spirite Lounge in Montreal only has one dish on the menu per night and customers can order it in small, medium or large portions. You’d better lick that plate clean though, because if you don’t, be prepared to pay a $2 fine that goes toward charity.

Even more serious though – you will forfeit your right to dessert.

And at the Kashiwa Mystery Café in Chiba, the southern part of Japan, patrons receive whatever the person before them ordered, no ifs ands or buts. The person who comes after you gets to enjoy your meal, so be sure to order wisely.

It also brushes upon the age-old “chicken and egg” mystery because what does the first customer of the day receive on his or her plate? Deep thoughts.