Restaurant faces outcry after deputies asked to leave

Sedro-Woolley — On Thursday, Skagit County sheriff’s deputies in Sedro-Woolley say the owner of a local teriyaki restaurant asked them not to come back as they paid for their lunch. In a lengthy Facebook post about the incident, Sheriff Will Reichardt wrote:

“As two deputies went up to pay they were informed by the owner that he requested they not eat there anymore. They were told that other customers didn’t like law enforcement there. My chief deputy spoke to the owner to confirm this because he simply could not believe what he was hearing. The owner not only repeated the request but asked that we spread the word to other law enforcement that they were no longer welcome either.”

The post has over 30,000 shares and the restaurant in question, Lucky Teriyaki, has faced backlash that includes enough one-star reviews on Yelp that the page has been temporarily shut down for “clean-up.” Through an interpreter, the owner of the restaurant told Seattle’s KOMO News they’ve even received death threats.

The owner, identified as “Mr. Li,” began sobbing on camera with Seattle’s KIRO 7 News as he tried to explain that the whole situation was a misunderstanding due to the language barrier between him and the deputies. Li and his family are from China. Through the station’s Natasha Chen, who speaks fluent Mandarin, Li said, “there was a huge language barrier in talking to the deputies” and “the restaurant was NOT trying to ban law enforcement.”

According to KOMO, the misunderstanding began when an employee of Lucky Teriyaki noticed customers at another table had spilled soup and water and was concerned that those customers might be upset by the presence of the deputies nearby. The employee then “asked the deputies if they were about to leave.”

Chen wrote on Facebook that the family was getting many angry calls from people “yelling in English” and that they didn’t understand any of it. “Li’s son just kept saying ‘OK’ to the callers,” she says.

Li told Seattle’s Q13 that law enforcement is welcome at the restaurant “because they are protecting us.” Lucky Teriyaki plans to serve all law enforcement for free on Monday.

The Sheriff Reichardt remains skeptical. “Even if this really was a mistake,” he tells Q13, “no one’s really going to feel comfortable going in there and eating now and that’s unfortunate.”