Worst: those little Costco frozen quiches.
Best: crackers and a homemade spreadable cheese log, if it’s made with care. Recipes vary.
Yep. Mash your yolks with Duke’s, a little apple cider vinegar and finely crushed potato chips. The potato starch is addictive. I like Tim’s BBQ personally, although there are some who swear by Kettle BBQ. Mix the crumbs in well, add whatever else you heart desires and stuff the whites. Then garnish with slivers of well-cooked bacon.
Get yourself about 3 cups of mixed pitted olives. Green and black make a pretty presentation. Put olives in a bowl. In a small frying pan, toast 2 tsp cumin seeds and 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes. Crush the toasted spices well and sprinkle over olives. Then toss in 2 cloves of garlic, smashed, 1/4 tsp dried thyme, 3/4 tsp dried Greek oregano, 1/3 cup fruity olive oil and 4 tsps red wine vinegar. Mix well. Place in a sealed container in the fridge for at least 24 hrs. They are good immediately but will improve with a couple of days aging. Adjust spicing levels to match your preferences. I usually make a big batch of these every Christmas, put them into pint jars with a chili de arbol and a little of the oil/vinegar mix and give them to all my friends. They disappear quickly.
Bonus recipe I developed this year: Stuffed Peppadew Peppers. Easy-peasy. Get a jar of pickled peppadews, a couple of the appetizer packs of salami-wrapped moz sticks, a tube of sun-dried tomatoes, a little olive oil and some dried thyme. Mix the tomato, oil and thyme into a paste. For each pepper, put a dab of the mix into the cavity, then stuff with a 3/4 inch piece of the wrapped moz. Bite-sized heaven.
A friend of my sister’s made the best crab rangoon. I love it. But one or two pieces is enough. Very rich.
Not a fan of cruditees with drippy dressing.
Stuffed mushrooms are great if they’re done the way I like them, but sadly most times they’re not.
Years ago I OD’d on those ham/cream cheese rollups. No more for me.
Hard to beat a baked GOOD brie, especially with a tart chutney accompaniment and baguette slices… Heart healthy? I’ve been kind of yearning for potato chips and sour cream and onion dip lately. Yes, I have high blood pressure.
Moved to the Cafe (from IMHO).
I get those cravings occasionally. Over the years, it’s taken less and less to satisfy the craving.
Hope you got a 2-seat kayak, 'cause I’m on board with you! I think I could live on escargot, caviar and deviled eggs. And sushi. And a pickle tray. Beer, of course. Smoked oysters and a selection of cheeses. All of it!
Really good shrimp cocktail. which is getting harder and harder to find.
A friend’s engagement party had the most awesome shrimp. I think I ate my weight in shrimp and cocktail sauce.
Oh God, it’s been so long I forgot. I think the last time was in the lobby of a luxury hotel in Chicago decades ago. Shrimp about the size of bananas, ice-cold cocktail sauce, just heaven. Where do you get yours?
There was a place in Oxnard, but they discontinued it in favor a a mexican shrimp cocktail, not the same at all.
But yeah, they used to mix their own cocktail sauce with horseradish.
Is there any cocktail sauce that doesn’t have horseradish?
Bad Cocktail Sauce.
You would be a fool to get between me and a good garlic bread.
I like raw veggies - celery, jicama, etc.
If I went to a party with excellent veggie samosas they would be gone.
OK, that’s it! Saturday’s dinner will be Tequila Lime shrimp and garlic bread. With extra garlic.
There isn’t a cocktail sauce made that I won’t add horseradish to.
They mixed it fresh.
I once thought that oysters on the half-shell were the best appetizer, until they bestowed upon me a norovirus. I’ll stick to shrimp from now on.
Although, I did have a venison carpaccio once that was quite delicious.
Really? Thanks! munch munch munch
Also: smoked salmon and cream cheese rollup pinwheels.
More for you; I can’t stand them! I know they’re an acquired taste, and they’re a taste I have personally never acquired.
I’m not fond of pickle wraps either.
Deep-fried pickles are delicious, but 3 or 4 “coins” are about all I can handle.
Eh, I find a lot of the comments implicitly or explicitly make the point I wanted to make. A “Best” and “Worst” Appetizer is often decided by quality.
I’m one of those who likes most options (although just about any veggie platter with ‘ranch’ dressing is going to be a hard no for the following reasons) but when they’re prepared with low quality ingredients and/or lack of care, they quickly move from sublime to crap.
Good shrimp cocktail a la @DrDeth? Heaven. Frozen shrimp moon/half moon from the local mega mart, defrosted into a watery limp shrimp with cocktail sauce that tastes like sweet ketchup? CRAP.
Fresh sliced veggies (except celery, hate the stuff) served with homemade or quality hummus, dips, and sauces? Excellent. Megamart old, stale or soggy, veggie tray with ranch dressing that tastes of chemicals? Get it GONE.
And so on and so forth.
Again, best is subjective, but the best I can recall in recent memory was a beautiful charcuterie platter from a place in Austin TX that smoked their own meats on site, and included their homemade sausages and house beer mustard, as well as beer cheese. 
Worst is equally subjective, but I’ll go with a common class of appetizer that are almost always in my experience made with the lowest quality ingredients: tortilla pinwheels. Normally stuffed with the lowest quality meats, greens, and cream cheese to add bulk, they manage to be gaggingly dry (the tortilla), limp and soggy (the greens), yet unspeakably greasy (the low quality luncheon meat). If I see those served at a work event, I plan to not eat at all. No matter how hungry I get.