There used to be a Quizno’s near my workplace. I noticed that every time I ate there, I ended up with some sort of digestive problem, so I gave up on Quizno’s entirely. Earlier this summer, I walked by that Quizno’s and found two workers loading the ovens and other cooking equipment onto a truck. Apparently it had gone out of business. My guess is the Del Taco that opened next door killed it.
There’s a Japanese place a couple of doors down from the ex-Quizno’s, but I don’t eat there unless I don’t feel like fast food and have no cash (the bank calling center’s employee cafeteria nearby lets non-employees eat there, but they only take cash.) The food there is OK, but kind of bland, and their sushi is fresh but could be better, for the price. I would rather wait till the weekend and go to an actual sushi place run by Japanese people who shout “Irasshaimase!” when you walk in. Or at least Yoshinoya, if I’d rather have teriyaki beef or chicken.
There’s a teriyaki place not far from me. I avoid it because it’s filthly. Frankly, I can’t understand why the place is still in business.
I avoid another mexican place near me because EVERY time I ate there I became ill. Stupidly, I tried eating there four times.
Finally, I’d rather eat at the Quizno’s near me than the Del Taco that opened this summer. I don’t get all the love for Del Taco. I think they’re awful. We’ve tried it several times, but each time our order is screwed up or takes forever. Additionally, it doesn’t seem clean at all and this place is BRAND NEW.
After a bout of food poisoning at Taco Bell, it was years before I could even walk into one without gagging.
These days, I refuse to eat anything at the Des Moines Renaissance Faire. It all smells like it’s been let go bad then deep-fired in ancient lard. I actually got hungry enough after working all day to eat one small non-deep-fried thing and yup, ended up wretching my guts out for six hours that evening.
I’ve never been to a Hooters. (I eat out alone very often, and I’m fine with it; but eating alone at a Hooters is a level of patheticness that I haven’t reached yet.)
So I share BRBSCS’s curiosity. What sort of experience were you expecting at a Hooters, and what did you get?
I’ve eaten at several Applebee’s when I’ve been down in the states. The food has always been somewhere between mediocre (their burgers) to decently good (mushroom steak).
I will never ever eat at a Denny’s again. I ate there once and it was like eating the worst meal you could possibly ever be served at IHOP, filtered through someone’s asshole.
The Olive Garden - last time I ate there I had the lasagna and I swear they’d just reheated a frozen one in the microwave. College cafeterias have served me better food then that.
Please, please tell me you are only kidding! I’d not only never eat there again but I’m not sure I could ever eat anything again. I might not now just from reading about it. Gack!
Dead Lobster. I ate there once and it was awful, and I love good seafood. Now it is a matter of pride, I don’t claim it is rational.
There used to be a little shopping center a block from us, with a Chinese restaurant and a Mexican restaurant. We decided to try it one day - the Mexican restaurant was jammed, and no one was in the Chinese restaurant, which looked filthy. I don’t know we would have died if we ate there, but we weren’t taking any chances.
When they tore down the shopping center for housing the Mexican restaurant moved and is still doing fine. The Chinese restaurant met its well earned fate.
God, yes. I forgot about this one. I can buy and cook up a 69 cent pack of Prince spagh and store it in my own fridge for a week before reheating it my own damn self, thank you very much. And I’m pretty sure breadsticks were supposed to at one point have had something resembling some sort of grain that might be grown next to another grain that could be used to make bread.
Moving this to Cafe Society because it’s about food.
In my hometown, I avoid an ice cream place I used to work in because it was dirty. The food wasn’t great either.
I avoid Quizno’s because I hate their ads. And I don’t go to Chili’s anymore because of the same complaints everybody here is making about Applebee’s, in addition to a total lack of vegetarian options.
That’s the reason I *do *go there… something about the blinding yellow everywhere (even on some of the ceiling tiles… eww), the greasy, half collapsed ductwork hanging over the food, and the juxtaposition of touch-screen wireless card readers with decades-old fixtures makes me feel like I’m eating in the men’s room at the Mos Eisley cantina.
But Waffle House? It’s pretty bad when the place you’re supposed to be eating from isn’t even fit to take a dump in.
White Castle. When I first moved to Nashville, the only thing besides bars open in my neighborhood when I got off work at 1:00 am was the WC. I stopped one night.
After throwing up half my innards the next day and shitting the other half, I made a decision never to eat there again.
We asked to be seated in the non-smoking section (no hostess, all waitress here) and were very clear that it was a huge deal for my friend, and she put us literally next to the smoking section. Anyway, figuring we could deal with it, we just took the table to avoid a hassle. It took an hour to get our drinks (by this point, we were just curious how bad it could truly get) with no word from our waitress about how “the drink machine was dispensing blood but is now fixed” or anything like that.
An hour into our stay, given drinks, she takes our orders. We’re just in it for shits and giggle now, because we’re having a good time people watching and curious how bad this can get. It takes another fifty minutes to get our cold, shitty, over cooked food. This is now the second time we have met our waitress.
So a half hour after that, she comes by and asks if we’ll be having desert. So having been at Hooters for over two hours and gotten a couple of sandwiches and a beer, she thinks we might stay longer. Ten minutes later, we had our check and were walking out.
And she had gross hairy grizzly-man arms. Not that I should use that against her, but I did, and here we are.
I avoid noFood Good or Bad, places happy or sad. Bring it on. Every try is a stab at escoffier’, the mice is remiss, the gammon is game, sometimes a place and style deems the taste, redeems the chef. Everyone’s got their greasy spoon.
Domino’s and Taco Bell are on the “do not eat” list, and I actively avoid these places. Papa John’s, Olive Garden, and Jack-in-the-Box (which we thankfully don’t encounter much around here) are also high up there. I don’t think I’ve eaten at any of these places in at least 15 years.
Papa John’s. I tried it once, and wound up throwing it out.
Applebee’s. Tried that once as well. When I asked for some kind of bread or rolls with my meal, the waitress said all they had was plain white bread, and she’d have to charge me extra for it. I walked out.
There isn’t anyplace I truely avoid because it was so bad, there are, however, places I don’t go to because I can get better elsewhere. Subway, Quizno’s, and Domino’s top that list.
Pizza Hut for me. I used to like the pizza, but that was when I was younger and didn’t know there was any other kind. Last time I went (at the suggestion of a friend who wanted to get the lunch buffet), the service coupled with the shitty pizza made me vow never to return.