Plenty of people put soy milk in their coffee, but soy sauce? John Ulaszek, who also goes by the DCist Flickr contributor pseudonym F1.4, was eating breakfast at what he describes as one of his favorite restaurants in Northern Virginia over the weekend, when he had an experience that makes us a little queasy

The ever attentive waiter noticed my empty cup and promptly topped me off – by now I was rockin the caffeine, the birds were chirping, the sun was smiling, so I gulped down another mouthful and……and something is really wrong here – what the hell did I just drink – It looks like coffee, but I don’t think it is, as a matter of fact it tasted like hot Soy Sauce?! Suddenly I wasn’t sure if I just drank coffee, soy sauce, or maybe some cleaning chemical ended up in the coffee. I am almost instantly nauseous, probably not from what I drank, but my mind and body running in overdrive trying to figure out if I should hurl, because whatever I just drank sure as hell wasn’t coffee.

I call the maitre de over and explain they had a serious problem with their coffee. About two minutes later the manager stops by to tell me they had a mix-up, and that I had indeed just enjoyed a steaming mouthful of Soy Sauce. Apparently they keep heated Soy Sauce in a coffee carafe for fish dishes, and somehow the carafe of Soy Sauce was mixed in with the carafes of regular coffee. The manager was mortified, and comped my breakfast and acknowledged that I was probably not pleased at the moment and she hoped I would be enticed to come back with a fifty dollar gift card.

Consumerist also picked up the story.

So which restaurant was it? John tells us that it was the Carlyle in Shirlington. Despite the bad taste in his mouth, John says he feels the bistro’s management handled the mistake exactly as they should have, and he fully intends to go back again.