BUYER BEWARE: RoseHip Bistro in Vilnius has put my health and well-being at risk multiple times over… Ginte Kuraite (the owner) keeps making empty promises, saying “it will never happen again”

Legal notice: The author of this website is not associated with the RoseHip Bistro in Vilnius – we are just disgruntled, and disappointed customers raising awareness to the negligent practices and ignorant attitude of its staff and owners.

Aug 5, 2021, Vilnius

The Rosehip Bistro in Vilnius is a cute little restaurant chain in the capital of Lithuania that opened just a few years ago. The vegan community was very enthusiastic: the other vegan restaurant, Botanique, just closed when RoseHip opened and there was a clear market gap to fill, so me and my friends ended up being regular customers of this restaurant chain really fast.

When you’re a vegan, you typically have 2 types of motivation behind your diet: either you want to eat healthy, or you have food intolerances or allergies and you have to do it regardless of whether you want it or not. I do it for both reasons.

 

“We are not a healthy restaurant, we are a vegan restaurant”

In May 2020, when the COVID crisis just started taking off and I was looking for a chef, Ginte Kuraite, the owner of the restaurant, offered to prepare food for me. When I met her for a discussion about my expectations, I asked about her concept, and made some recommendations about how to prepare healthier food.

The options offered by her restaurant could serve her target market better if they would do some research on healthy ingredients and preparation methods. Among delicious and healthy options, they do have a lot of things that are fried in oil, among other things that, studies say, are just as carcinogenic as animal products are.

So imagine my surprise when I received an answer from her: “we are not a healthy restaurant, we are a vegan restaurant”.

Got it. You are just in this for the marketing value, and you’re looking to capitalize on the vegan community. You are doing the right things for the wrong reasons – but if you have a plant based restaurant in a city that has very few other options, I can still respect you.

We closed the topic – I decided to visit the restaurant with friends, or order some healthier options from it occasionally, but we left it at that.

 

“Apparently there was a miscommunication”

Come September 24, 2020. I’m in the middle of a busy day, walking home, and the RoseHip bistro on Pylimo is on my way. Time for that pink soup!

I don’t go to restaurants very often because of my allergies. When I do go, I make sure to confirm several times that the food in front of me does not have any of my allergens.

So I told the waitress I have an allergy to garlic and onions and she assured me she’ll talk to the chef, and I’ll be served accordingly.

I ordered pink soup, fish & chips and avocado toast. When the second dish was served I noticed pesto on the side. I asked a waitress to confirm that I was served with no garlic.

She came back and took both of my dishes as apparently the pesto, the salad dressing on the fish and chips and the mayonnaise type dip all had fresh garlic in it.

Had I trusted the staff of this restaurant on this day, and didn’t double-confirm the ingredients before eating the food they put in front of me, I could have ended up lying in bed sick for the next 4-5 days. And that’s a lucky outcome, assuming I’m not hospitalized.

When informed about the situation, I have received the following message from her:

Everybody is feeling guilty. It’s a new person. We are very sorry.

Fine. You’ve made some effort. You have a plant based restaurant in Vilnius. You even offered to cook for me.

You put my health and well-being in danger with your negligence and your untrained staff. But you promised it’ll never happen again. I’ll let it go.

 

Your responsibility as a restaurant operator

I don’t know how to illustrate the situation with allergies better, than to let the facts speak for themselves. Here’s the story of one of my acquaintances, Colin.

 

“If a client have severe allergies we suggest not to go to restaurants in general” (sic!)

Come July 22, 2021. It’s time for RoseHip again. I trust Ginte, her staff, her brand and her promise that these issues have been properly tended to.

Me and my friend submitted our orders – a soup and a beyond burger this time.

Learning from the past mistakes of this restaurant, I now spent extra effort explaining to the waitress that I’d like to have it without onions and garlic and watched carefully as she wrote that down.

After that, when finalizing, I told her again: I’d like to have it without onion and garlic. She nodded. She summarized the order.

After that, for the third time, I told her – listen, this is REALLY IMPORTANT, just to make sure you get that right: I am going to need food without onion and garlic. Do you understand?

She assured me she understands. I have my friend who sat there with me as a witness to this interaction – if it comes to that, she will testify for the relevant authorities as well.

After a while, another, more senior waitress came and served me with the food. I asked her to make sure there is no garlic in this pesto sauce. She immediately said she knows there’s garlic in the pesto, and offered to take it.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I responded and told this waitress, maybe she is wrong. Maybe this food was prepared for me fresh because I have repeated several times to your colleague that I need this food without garlic and onions.

She said no, for sure, this wasn’t prepared fresh, took my plate, and brought me back the food with fresh salad.

She said everything was fine now.

That means – if I don’t ask the other waitress to make sure there is no garlic in my meal, I’m already poisoned with garlic.

After all of this, imagine my surprise, when I’m eating the burger, and close to the last bite a piece of vegetable falls out. It was a 3-4 center ring size piece of what seemed to be a piece of onion, with about 1.5cm radius.

I was shocked. I asked the senior waitress again to confirm. She took the dish back to the kitchen, came back out and confirmed: it was a piece of onion.

I asked the waitress to contact Ginte about the situation. Her response:

Substantiate your promises

After this, you can not be surprised that I’m appalled by Ginte’s attempt to sweep this story under the rug with an “apology” and “people make mistakes”. If I have a nut allergy, and people around me don’t know what epinephrine is, then I am dead on the spot, just like Colin’s financée.

On top of that I’m being nice here – we had an exchange about the exact same issue less than a year ago when Ginte promised me, this kind of issue will never happen again.

She has actually used the excuse of “a new waitress” back then as well. I have accepted her apology then, and have trusted and believed her statements, and hoped that she has taken it seriously.

However, this time, I do not intend to trust her and believe her blindly, and I intend to let the public know about her staff’s negligence and her attitude with all the resources that I’ve got.

RoseHip Bistro and Ginte Kuraite

As you can clearly see – the attitude of “we are not a healthy restaurant” are clearly reflected in her messages, trying to sweep the issue of negligently putting my health and well-being under the rug… the second time.

But learning from Colin’s story – and many others out there -, I have decided to do something about it this time.

We can’t let negligent restaurant operators put the public’s health in danger and not take responsibility for it. There is a point where “I’m sorry” is not enough. Responsibility needs to be taken. Apologies need to be substantiated.

Your attitude, Ginte, needs to change. Immediately.

This is not about “the kitchen can’t prepare it without traces”, and about “allergic people shouldn’t go to a restaurant”. It’s about you taking responsibility for your staff, their training, and their actions, and making sure that orders are served with respect to the guest’s allergies, and that issue will actually, really, never ever happen again, not to me, not to anybody else who is served with a meal by your kitchen.

My personal motivation

As a recap, what I’m looking for are two things:

1.) I want you to confirm that the person who did everything to negligently endanger my health does not work for your restaurants anymore,

2.) I want you to make me a serious offer for substantial compensation to make sure that your promises have substance this time.

Until then, I’m going to do the following:

1.) I’m going to allocate a significant budget to raise awareness of your attitude, especially the vegan community in Vilnius, is very well aware of your staff’s negligence and your empty promises,

2.) I’m going to open a case against your restaurant with the State Food and Veterinary Service,

3.) I will have many surprises for you in the future. 

On that note, if you are reading this and you had any bad experiences with RoseHip Bistro in Vilnius or Ginte Kuraite, please contact me at contact@rosehip-negligence.com.

4.) I’m going to have many, many other surprises for you, including a well-funded PR campaign with several articles in national media, posters and flyers around your restaurants bringing awareness to this website, and whatever else I need to do until we manage to fix this in a way that is the best for the public interest.

Important note: I have not created this website in hope of personal gain. The budget that I’m going to spend on this campaign come from donations to the same type of cause of corporate social responsibility. Once you agree to do the right thing and substantiate your promises, the amount we agree on will be used for a good cause – including creating public campaigns for other negligent restaurants, and potentially changing the legislation around allergies in Lithuania.

———–

Update, Aug. 18, 2021:

Ginte responded to my official request to substantiate her promises. Among other empty excuses, I’ll make some notes of the most ridiculous ones that this person is using for putting people’s healths and well-beings in danger:

“There might have been a trace, around 1cm size (as our waitress told us) – that particular one, You’ve been telling us about. But, as I’ve said already before, there could be some traces of onions in our kitchen and, if somebody is allergic to it, he/she should take caution when visiting places like ours.”

Notice how she is saying … “might have been a trace”. A “trace”, Ginte,

Let’s call Wikipedia to help us with this word:

“A trace element, also called minor element, is a chemical element whose concentration (or other measure of amount) is very low (a “trace amount”). … The dietary elements or essential trace elements are those that are required to perform vital metabolic activities in organisms.”

The food your staff has prepared for me did not have a trace of onions, it had a 1.5 cm radius size of actual onions. A trace, in the case of this allergy, is not enough to elicit an allergic reaction. A piece of onion, however, is different.

Also I love your usage of her word “might have been”. Are you trying to lie, and not even acknowledge that there was onion and garlic in my food, Ginte?

“there could be some traces of onions in our kitchen”

Are you kidding me? What else could you have “some traces of in your kitchen”, Ginte? Are there pesticides? Plastic boxes of raw materials? Chemicals to keep your kitchen clean? Are these also expected to end up in your customer’s food just because “there could be some traces of it in the kitchen”?

“You were offered not to pay for Your dinner at all. I believe that this is adequate behaviour from us”

Adequate – yes. It’s a good start.

Enough, for putting my health and well-being at risk multiple times in multiple ways with your untrained staff, your negligence and your ignorant attitude and making me spend money on creating public communication to raise awareness?

Very, very far from it.

With that said, I’m happy to subtract the cost of my dinner from the amount of compensation we agree on, if you regret offering me this “free dinner” that you have put my health and well-being at risk.

My minimum expectations of you as a restaurant operator on top of the obvious and obligatory HACCP standard:

• Change your training processes drastically, conduct periodic mystery shopping audits to make sure allergies are handled properly, and make your serving and kitchen staff take an exam on proper handling of allergies,

• Audit your kitchen and your food preparation processes, and make sure you’re separating your ingredients properly and safely (regardless of sterilizing surfaces for “trace amounts”),

• Adjust your attitude and take your personal responsibility for people’s health and well-being seriously by providing them with the food they ordered exactly the way they ordered it,

• If you wish to keep operating with your reputation relatively intact (for now), then substantiate your promises and compensate for the stress, inconvenience and lost working hours you have caused in my life, and value my efforts to consult you and change your restaurant’s processes for the better. The compensation is not for personal gain and will be used for a good cause – happy to disclose the details of that to you as well, if you wish.

 

Update Aug. 20, 2021:

The last deadline I gave Ginte to start a conversation with me about substantiating her apologies has passed. It is time to go public.

 

Update Sep 12., 2021:

Since Ginte is still ignoring the facts and my communication related to this issue, I’ve tracked down and messaged two more RoseHip founders and investors, Nidas Kiuberis and Andrius Jonuskis and messaged them on facebook and gave them a final chance to handle their issue internally before this website gets promoted via a national media, PR and PPC campaign on top of the SEO campaign we already started.