If you are ever in Los Angeles and are looking for an omakase experience as I mention in LOS, I suggest you visit Sasabune’s in Los Angeles. Just say how much you have in your pocket, and the rest is left up to the Master. Trust me!
Uncategorized, 8/trust 
(8) Mar 9, '08
When sitting down at a restaurant in Minneapolis, I noticed the waiter replaced my white napkin with a black one. Apparently the tradition here is that if you are wearing black trousers or a dark skirt, the reasoning is that a white linen napkin might leave visible lint on your clothing so they immediately swap it for a black one. Such careful attention to detail surely develops trust. I wonder how many of these kind of subtle details are managed at finer eating establishments. I looked for a list on the Web and couldn’t find anything comprehensive. The closest I could find were references to chilled silverware when serving cold appetizers, but I figure there are a few more subconciously discernable practices in the presentation of a meal out there … my hunt begins.
In Chapter 8 on trust of LOS I talk about the concept of omakase sushi whereby you leave the menu up to the sushi Master. While in Japan this week, I experienced ozashiki tempura which translates to “private room tempura” with a tempura Master.
A sushi Master deals with the raw; a tempura Master deals with the fried. Although I admit to having a guilty desire for fried food, every year as I age I find that the way my stomach settles with the grease is often not worth the fling. The tempura Master however left no harm to my stomach in his knowing way.
While he cooked, the Master explained how the shrimp used were exactly 4-months old — the perfect time to eat them. When I tried to take a picture of the shrimp as they left the oil the Master joked, “Shrimp don’t like having their pictures taken. Look! They all turned red! (Of course when heated, shrmp’s bodies change color from black to red)” We all laughed. His humble demeanor made me realize that an important aspect of achieving trust is to have a good sense of humor.
When I saw Google yesterday offering a free 10 dollars for the taking, it reminded me of an experiment on trust by my wacky friend Prof. Dan Ariely. He did an experiment where he set up a table in a public space with a bowl containing cash and a sign that said, “Free Money.” Dan found that with a pile of one-dollar bills, 10% of the passerbys would stop and take the cash; with fifty-dollar bills, only 22% took him up on his offer. His point was that “If someone is offering me something free, there must be a trick to it.”
We can be cynical in life, and assume that there really is no thing as a totally “free lunch.” To complete mis-trust everything around you can probably lead to a lonely state of being. Well, in another browser window there I am about to “Sign up to earn [my] $10 bonus.” Free money is only a click away.
A friend pointed me to the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility. As an advocate of trust as an important property of simplicity, I thought this list to be quite relevant. Then I began to wonder about the distinction between the words trust and credibility. For some reason, I think of the word credibility as less credible than trust. That distinction may not be important.
Going through the “Ten Laws of Credibility,” I find that they all make a great deal of sense and I see ways by which I can improve this site’s credibility, as well as others I am working on. I like how the page itself embodies its own rules to a high degree. As to whether then by design you are more likely to trust me or not that remains to be determined if I am to go ahead and implement the Stanford guidelines. Perhaps I can get to it once I have more time.
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