Maybe one of the fish's nerves was still twitching? Maybe a worm was wriggling around inside?
With nearly 17 million followers on TikTok, Keith Lee is one of the biggest food influencers on the Internet today. His whole shtick, if you're unaware, is that he doesn't really have a shtick. He's just a classic food reviewer whose opinion viewers have grown to trust. He'll travel from one city to another visiting all the eateries his followers recommend.
He wields such tremendous influence that one good review will result in a restaurant being packed for weeks on end, often with lines spilling out into the sidewalk and off into the horizon. So it's no surprise that when he ate at a sushi place in Seattle that served him a piece of fish that appeared to be wriggling, that place was immediately shut down, if only temporarily.
Lee's whole thing is not just going to the most popular restaurants in a given city, but specifically trying to promote small businesses. He visited a small but highly touted sushi restaurant in Seattle called FOB Sushi Bar, which is a bit like a sushi buffet. Lee loaded up his box with nigiri and sashimi and then filmed his reaction as he ate in his car.
The resulting TikTok video is just over three minutes long. Around a minute and fifty seconds into it, Lee holds up what appears to be some salmon sashimi to the camera and for just a small second you can see something attached to the fish start moving.
Like any human, Lee's hand made natural, small movements as he held his chopsticks. This, however, wasn't that. The sushi moved like it was alive. Maybe one of the fish's nerves was still twitching? Maybe a worm was wriggling around inside?
Either way, no one's ever going to be able to conduct an autopsy on it because Lee shoved it in his mouth and ate it. He had no idea. He would've remained blissfully unaware of it for his entire life if his viewers hadn't sounded the alarm.
Lee's video, posted on November 10, quickly garnered over 20 million views, sparking concerns and rumors about food safety. In response, FOB Sushi Bar issued a statement denying the claims, explaining that the movement observed in the fish might have been due to its natural elasticity or pressure from chopsticks.
Lee reassured his followers in a follow-up video that he felt fine and hadn't noticed the movement until his followers pointed it out. That said, he also mentioned that another customer had recently been hospitalized after eating at the restaurant, which raised further concerns about food safety.
In a follow-up video, Lee acknowledged the disturbing wriggling thing he ate and reassured his followers that he was fine, which is more than he could say for someone else who ate at the same restaurant the day after he did and wound up in the hospital. He says he spoke to this person directly and wishes them the best.
FOB Sushi, meanwhile, says they have no history of food safety issues and maintained that the weird wriggling in the sashimi could've been caused by the way Lee was holding it with the chopsticks. Regardless, FOB temporarily shut down its Seattle and Bellevue locations as they investigate.