Your worst restaurant experiences ever

Cafe Society
1

i wanted to start a topic based on one i found on somethingawful.com’s forums.
My first: I went to a quaker Steak And Lube in Valley View, Ohio, just a couple of hours before a Staind concert on July 11, 2008. The slowness pissed me the hell off, as i want my damn food on time. nonetheless, the food tasted excellent.

I have also had slow service at several fast food chains, including mcdonalds. I even got food poisoning once from a mr. hero romanburger on near Warsaw Pool in cleveland.

What r your worst experiences ever?

2

My family and I were once at a Chinese restaurant in either Traverse City or Mackinac City in Michigan. I can’t remember what it was called; I was 11 or so at the time. When the food arrived, it was so disgusting that my dad immediately put down cash on the table to pay for it, and had us all get up and leave. I can’t really remember what the food was like, because I didn’t actually eat any of it, but I think there was a lot of gray, boiled-looking meat.

3

I don’t think I could top the OP’s story about slow service.

4

When I was about eight, my family was travelling in the Smokies and we went to a restaurant. We ordered and waited for our food. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited and waited and waited and waited and WAITED.

When, irritated, we finally flagged down a manager, he looked at us in horror. The waitress had forgotten about us entirely and gone home.

They offered us a free meal, but frightened we might not get to eat at all, we left.

5

This happened to us, too, at Disney World of all places (MGM). We had reservations, and…well, we did get seated at our reservation time. But we were almost made late for the night show almost 2 hours later due to slow service.

6

My worst experience ever…

Well the one that comes to mind happened about 3-4 years ago. My Dad and Step-mom were in town and we went to a restaurant near our place to have supper. I’ve never really had a horrible experience there, except this once.

We ordered our supper, got our drinks… and waited… and waited… for over an hour. They brought my son’s food out (kid’s meal) and refilled our drinks… and that was it. Finally my Dad got up and told us to get our jackets, we were leaving. While we were getting gathered up, Dad went and found the manager who told him that the lounge side was busy, so the kitchen was busy despite the restaurant side being fairly dead. Dad proceeded to yell at him, saying we were just as important as the customers in the next room and the waitress finally came running out with our food just as we were walking out the door (with Dad still yelling loud enough to be heard over the TVs in the lounge I’m sure…)

Dad didn’t pay a cent for our food, and we ended up going to Wendy’s to eat as we were all starved at that point (except my son, who’d had a few french fries). He also complained to the owner later and got a gift certificate for $30. I didn’t show my face in there again for months, though I ended up the recipient of the gift certificate.

Haven’t had that issue with them since, they’ve smartened up a fair bit and the job market has cooled so there are more waiters. I also heard later from someone I know, who knew the owners, about what was happening behind the scenes there which has been fixed. (Family owned franchise… involving a death, dispute over inheritance, the manager and the owner’s widow/new owner and embezzlement).

7

In a town in rural Turkmenistan the only option was a restaurant housed in an auto repair shop. There were 4 concrete slab tables (like picnic tables) and from where we sat there were cars to be worked on about 2 meters behind me. Lots of cans of oil, brake fluid and old car parts were all over the place. There was no menu - only the “soup of the day” which was some sort of chicken vegetable mystery soup. Of course the price was right… about 30 cents for two.

8

Chili’s: Ordered TheKid a kid’s cup of milk. The cup had been used as a crayon holder and not cleaned. Euw. My sister and I received our dinners, but TheKid didn’t. We flagged down a waiter and was told “O well, it happens” and he walked away. I understand, it does happen. The rudeness of his response torked my sister. A discussion with the manager ensued.

Country Kitchen: Kid’s meal again. A beard hair in her grapes. urp

9

Ewww! How’d you know it was a BEARD hair?!

10

I’ve got one from the very same restaurant. Same problem too. This was several years ago, so apparently things haven’t improved. It seems our waiter was overwhelmed and just forgot about us. Eventually my friend wandered back into the kitchen area and asked if it was self-serve that night…

11

Once, a decently large gathering of my family were in Paris. We went to eat at a fairly nice, yet small, restaurant. There’s only like ten tables max, and the place is hardly packed. So we get there, and the waiter doesn’t come for a good hour after seating us. We order, and there’s like another hour wait before our appetizers show up. In total, it was like a four hour dinner.

My other worst experience was at a Mexican restaurant in Spain. The service was fine, but the food was truly horrid. It just tasted -nasty- like everything in the back was rotted or something. We ended up walking out.

12

Once my family ate at a Denny’s downtown. Everything seemed fine, typically un-memorable Denny’s type meal. Until . . . 10 minutes after we left, everyone in the car had a SEVERE need to go to the bathroom, and ended up with the runs. Do I wonder why? No. I do not. I do not WANT to know what caused that. Suffice it to say we never go to that location anymore.

13

Went to a restaurant in Toronto that I had read great things about, and read reviews talking about how every movie star in town ate at it when they were filming in Toronto, etc, etc… People on ChowHound recommended it, saying it made amazing organic pizzas. Since it was only a few blocks from home, decided to try it out with the husband and a couple of friends…

Ordered a couple of “signature” pizzas with special toppings, like mushrooms found on a hillside in Verona, and organic heirloom tomato sauce, etc, and ordered four sodas.

The waitress showed up with the sodas, put glasses of ice on the table, we started drinking the sodas and they were flat. Couldn’t find the waitress, and couldn’t even get the bartender’s attention on the other side of the room until we literally had to go get him. Waitress comes back, apologizes, gets us new drinks and glasses of ice… Flat again.

Waitress looks at us like we must all be crazy, but brings us drinks in cans. We pour the sodas into the glasses filled with ice, and realize the glasses are filled with hundreds of small white flies each. They’re literally covering the glass inside, and floating on top of the soda. Horrified, we again manage to get the waitresses attention, who comes over and says, “Wow, that’s weird” and asks if we want new drinks. Yeah, right… :dubious:

She takes the glasses and goes over and shows them to the restaurant owner (Who according to their website, had owned popular Toronto restaurants for 25 years) and bartender. They looked at the glasses filled with flies, shrugged their shoulders and walked away. No-one ever apologized or said anything to us.

We sat for about 15 minutes, then we decided we didn’t want to find out what the pizza would be like, and left.

I later put a review of what happened on ChowHound, and got an email from ChowHound telling me they had removed the review, because it mentioned bugs… :rolleyes:

14

Swiss Chalet drive thru on New Years Eve several years ago. It took an hour and a half to get our order, I kid you not. We sent the biggest guy in to complain and the manager apologized but said there was nothing he could do. He did say, however, that it would have been faster if we had come in to the restaurant to eat.

One angry email to the company president later, they coughed up $50 in gift certificates.

Still didn’t make me go back.

15

I’ve got two! #1 - we drove out to Bumfuck, Egypt, to a famous buffet restaurant on Mother’s Day some years ago. We had reservations for early in the afternoon and were dismayed to discover they ran out of food! There was a salad bar of sorts, some bread, pickles and such - plus a gigantic bowl of melting ice with couple of waterlogged shrimp floating in it. The roast beef carved to order? No carver, no roast beef, just a heel of grisly brown meat. Southern fried chicken? Gone with the wind. We, and the other customers stood around with plates in hand and waited a good long time until a waitress finallly showed her face and said food would be coming out in a minute. We sat down and waited. And waited. 45 minutes went by, and we left after paying $20 a head up front. I was so furious… . I wrote a letter to the manager and DID receive an apology and offer of some free meals. Apparently the chef had a meltdown that day.

#2 - Mr. Oblivious and I worked downtown and on Friday nights would meet at an elegant and expensive restaurant (semi-paid for by his employer for working overtime). The place, at 6 p.m. was always empty save for a scattering of couples having a romantic dinner. Male couples, that is. I was the only woman besides a waitress in the joint. We were always waited on by a gent who was just tickled pink to see half of us. All smiles, he would describe the entire menu to Mr. O (who sat there thoughtfully thinking it over, when in reality Mr. O wasn’t about to eat anything except a burger and fries). He would recite the whole wine list and every bottle of beer. He would finally tear his attention away from Mr. O and to me, and with a sneer and look of disgust he would spit out “what do you want?” in the rudest manner possible! …Later on that night, Mr. Oblivious said, “Sal, that’s a nice restaurant and all, but next time let’s go somewhere else. Really, I just don’t feel comfortable there. I don’t know why! I can’t put my finger on it!..” :smack:
I had to gently point out the glaringly obvious fact that we were the only hetero customers in there, that the waiter was rude to me, and was flirting with him, Mr. O, doh! :stuck_out_tongue:

16

Slow service? I drank ice tea tainted with enough bleach that I projectile vomited three times in ten minutes. Does it count if I was a dishwasher at the place?

This was a Cracker Barrel back in the 90s. As a sweat-sopped dishwasher, we were allowed one dollar unlimited pop and free iced tea. I was hot, tired, and thirsty - so I slammed a tall glass of tea. I didn’t taste anything weird, but my insides soon sent me sprinting to the restroom. There was nothing in my stomach other than tea. That didn’t last obviously. After it was finally over, I staggered out to find the manager to alert him that something was wrong with the tea. That’s when I was told, “Oh, Shirley forgot to rinse the bleach out the brew pot again.” - and nothing was done. I was in high school then, but now I’d get a sample of that tea and lawyer if I could go back.

17

You waited in a drive-thru for an hour and a half??? :eek: Dude! Ten minutes, fifteen tops, I would have gotten the hint something was amiss! Were there cars behind you??

I have to tell one more story, this is second hand. A family friend told us of the time he was at the Cannes Film Festival and attended a luncheon. He was sitting next to a young woman who apparently had been out all night Partying With The Stars and was suffering with a ghastly hangover. The waiters brought out the food and they put down in front of her a seafood salad. She picked up a fork in her shaking hand, froze, and grabbed FF’s shoulder, pointing at the salad. To their mutual horror, it was moving - there was a tiny LIVE octopus in there, waving its tiny tentacles. The woman stood up and then keeled over in a dead faint, face down in the centerpiece.

18

I don’t know if it was really the WORST, but it was certainly the weirdest and most recent. My friends and I were at a rather nice restaurant in Medellin, Colombia that had been recommended by the desk girl at our hostel. We showed up at 7.15, asked for the menu, got them, looked them over, and decided we would eat there. The waiter seats us, and allows us a few more minutes to peruse the menus.

When he came back to the table and we tried to give him our order, he told us that…the kitchen was closed. What? Why had he given us the menus, then? We were totally baffled and sat there for a few minutes, confused. Finally, in a moment of assertiveness, my friend who spoke the best Spanish called him back over and asked him why he’d given us menus and sat us if the kitchen was closed.

Well, the kitchen wasn’t closed, exactly, it would close at 8. We were like, “Dude, it’s only 7:25. And you gave us menus! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

The waiter immediately became incredibly friendly, took our orders, and brought us everything we’d ordered very quickly - long before 8. In fact, another group showed up while we were waiting for our food and ordered their meal without a problem.

The food was fantastic, too. We never figured out what the hell was going on there. We’ve joked that maybe the kitchen closes forty-five minutes early for gringos. It’s been a running joke with us ever since.

19

You know they pay big bucks for that kind of meal in Japan.

20

Yes, unfortunately, there were. Several.

I can’t believe we actually sat there the whole time. Well, we did have a van full, so I guess we kept ourselves amused with fart jokes the whole time.