RainTree Cafe in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco. We went there for breakfast, the waitress took our order and then disappeared. 20 minutes later we asked the other waitress if she could check on our food, and found out the other waitress went home and didn’t place our order. My eggs benedict had no sauce, a cold egg, served on a bagel. When I complained she told us no charge but we had to leave right away. Never went back. Too bad, b/c I lived a few blocks away from them for another 10 years - they lost some serious business.
Denny’s used to be an OK all-night diner. Decent food all around the clock. But people got into the habit of sitting there for hours, nursing a single bottomless cup of coffee, and not ordering anything BUT coffee. Now, a diner can make money on coffee, if they charge for each cup. But if someone sits there for four or five hours, drinking coffee and talking to several friends who are also nursing that coffee, then the server isn’t going to make money, and neither is the restaurant.
So Denny’s started to advertise that its meals compared favorably to fast food. To cut the costs, they lowered the quality, and lowered the variety of items available. They also quit garnishing the plates (though that seems to be a thing of the past with middle of the road restaurants anyway). Most particularly, they introduced a very limited late night menu, and that’s when they really started to go downhill. Since my husband works odd hours, and he doesn’t like to eat alone, occasionally he’d come home and want to go eat something. No, he didn’t want to eat at home, he wanted to go out to eat. So we’d go to Denny’s. However, we’ve quit going. You have to realize, both at our old house and our new one, we had a Denny’s within a tenth of a mile from where we lived, but we’d go to IHOP or a local all night diner, rather than go to Denny’s.
Unless they changed their ways since I worked there (admittedly 20 years ago), they bake all their pies in an oven. You stick the pie in one end, and 7 minutes later it comes out the other side, done.
And it’s not butter, the pan pizzas have a layer of oil on the bottom. Pumped in, like you would pump fake butter on popcorn. All the other pies have oil sprayed on the thin/hand-tossed pan (same pan). And the dough is made fresh every morning.
I only eat it as a last resort if I am craving pizza. They used to be a lot better.
Worked the night shift at a theme park and on the weekend we’d head to Dennys or Bennigans after close (not many places open at 1:30AM). Order a bunch of food and drinks.
On our last trip to Denny’s we got in, seated in our usual section and placed our order. They had some decent milkshakes and one of the guys in our party wanted strawberry. After our server goes away the host seats another party next to us. They order. Our server comes back out - sorry, all out of strawberry ice cream; do you want a different shake? Sure, no problem; that kind of thing happens.
Food for the other table comes out and they’ve got strawberry milkshakes. Wait a minute here… Mention it to our server when she comes back. She wanders off, then comes back holding an empty ice cream tub. Proceeds to shove it in strawberry shake guys face and say: “See, we’re all out of strawberry ice cream”. She goes back to the kitchen, we all get up and leave.
Personal boycott of Dennys is now going on 18 years.
I haven’t been at a certain food court Great Steak & Potato since witnessing a roach crawling over their lettuce. Or was it the tomatoes? No matter, that location has since been replaced by a Chipotle.
Haven’t been there yet, either.
Hurk! Disgusting! They served tomatoes to you?
I’ve never been wowed by Applebee’s a whole lot, but I’ve never had a bad experience. Same with Chili’s and Tchotckes. The one time I remember really good service (by the standards of my age at the time) was when I was 12 or something and just got back from my first solo flight. I was thirst and they brought me free lemonade after free lemonade with no complaint.
Service?
A chain called Bucca di Beppa which claims to be Italian ‘folk fare’ (as opposed to the big city stuff, I guess). I went in with my wife and her eleven-year-old daughter on a slow Thursday night a couple days before Independence Day. The place was big enough to have three dining sections, two downstairs and one upstairs. Clearly the populace was saving up its out-on-the-town energy for the parades and fireworks planned for the weekend because there was only a woman and her son dining there when we arrived.
A kid who couldn’t have been more than a couple weeks out of high school led us to a booth across the room from the mom and her son. The guy who seated us tossed menus to each of us, as if they were oversized playing cards at a poker table, and then told us the waiter would come by to take orders in a moment. He then disappeared behind the kitchen doors and came back with a pen and a pad of paper.
“Dude!” he greeted us as if we were his classmates. I can’t tell you how much I really hate being called ‘dude’ by absolutely anyone. However, before the irritation over the greeting could set in, the guy climbed into the seat across the table from me and my wife, putting his feet on the seat and sitting on the top of the seat-back. Then he slid farther into the booth, pinning my wife’s daughter against the wall and leaning close to her. I didn’t know if he was trying to flirt with her, trying to bully her, or trying to peer down her shirt. She must have thought the same thing, because she crossed her arms and looked to her mother and me, clearly suppressing both outrage and embarassment while her blush verged on tears. Oblivious to the discomfort he was causing, he continued trying to act casual, friendly, or funny (or some combination thereof) by asking, “What can I do ya for?”
“Why don’t we start with water, diet cola, and a clear soft drink – I don’t care what the brand names are.” I told him as I pointed to my wife, her kid, and myself in turn.
“Sure thing!” the kid responded and bounded off the booth seat, using its air-cushion to give himself extra propulsion.
While the host/waiter was gone, we started discussing the menu. Meanwhile, we discovered the mom and son across the room were not really alone. Dad came in carrying another young boy who was wearing a padded leather helmet. He placed the helmeted boy on the booth seat and took a chair at the end of their table. Apparently the helmeted boy was not actually asleep as I had thought. As soon as Dad put his kid down, the kid made a low grunt of dissatisfaction.
Then he made another, only a bit louder.
After three minutes, by which time my family had decided on the quick pizza instead of special separate orders, the kid across the room was screaming and thrashing and pounding the table. His family was obviously accustomed to the behavior, because they continued with their dinner as if nothing unusual was happening.
When our waiter brought the drinks we had ordered, I quietly asked him if we could be moved to a scream-free room. After all, I didn’t think the kid or his family had less right to enjoy a restaurant – but I didn’t think my family had to suffer through the misbehavior at the same time. The waiter broke his attention from our eleven-year-old’s presence and told us, “Well, we don’t really have any other rooms.”
So we sat and tried to talk for a few minutes longer until, finally, Dad picked up his screaming kid and went out of the restaurant. Meanwhile, his wife and other son continued eating and it was pretty clear they were accustomed to the routine. That also told me why we didn’t notice the screaming kid when we first entered the restaurant. A few minutes later, Dad and his placated kid returned to their table and the cycle began again with another dissatisfied grunt from the leather-helmeted boy.
By the time the screamer was at full pitch and volume, our sleazy server arrived with our meal: A jelly-roll pan with a thin-crust pizza on it, on which three plates had been piled. He dropped the plates on the table, then pulled a gallon-sized tin can of tomato paste off another table and used it as a stand for the pizza. [Okay, that part was a matter of presentation style, I get it.]
“Voilla!” he said as he waved at the food and the plates. I thought it was very nice of him to speak such beautiful French in a down-home Italian restaurant. On the other hand, he didn’t bother to put any slices of pizza on the plates, much less hand plates (empty or loaded) to any of us. Before dining, I felt it would be best to wash my hands, so I asked where the restrooms were located. He pointed off in the distance and said, “Through there and off on your left.”
So I walked past the stairs, through “there” into another dining area full of set-but-vacant tables, and off to the left. When I returned, I let curiosity get to me and took a few steps up the stairs. That led me to another dining area, as big as the two areas I had already seen and full of more set-but-vacant tables. I figured it was time to get back to my family so I didn’t explore further.
I returned to sit next to my wife and we endured a scream-filled conversationless meal of greasy pizza – one slice each – and then we left as quickly as possible. The only reason we stayed that long was that the drinks had already been served and sipped before I had a chance to suggest skipping the meal and finding another place to eat.
So I understand a restaurant’s regular policy of minimizing wait-staff and keeping the mess as small as possible by limiting how spread-out the customers are seated. I understood that. On a slow night, why make the wait-staff dash all over the place? Pare it down to one room and send the others home. But it shouldn’t overtax a normal high-school graduate’s brain to serve two different tables out of the only two occupied tables in the whole building, even if they’re in two different sections. And it wasn’t so much the unprofessional behavior of the waiter that bothered me so much as the unwillingness to accommodate us (on a night that was especially slow) – to the point that he had to lie about the lack of room. The fact that he was leering at my wife’s daughter was simply one more straw (okay, a cinder block) on the camel’s back.
That was six years ago. We’ve never even considered going to any of their locations since then.
–G!
Across the street
A neon sign
“All you can eat for a
Dollar ninety nine”
“Our soul food
Is the baddest in the land.”
But-a one dollar’s worth
Was all that I could stand
Sometimes! (Sometimes)
Some times bad is bad
. --Huey Lewis and the News
. Bad is Bad
. Sports
The Greene Turtle in Fell’s Point, Baltimore. Moi had been once before and had a good experience. We went back together and ordered a salad and sandwich, both with grilled salmon. It was so dry and overcooked as to be inedible. We both kind of picked at it for a while, then called the waitress over to complain, something we never do. We were told that we had already “eaten” most of it, and there was nothing they could do. Paid and left, with I believe a minimal tip. These days, I’d walk. About a year later we agreed to meet friends for drinks in Fell’s Point, only to find out they were at the Greene Turtle already, and refused to go to another bar, since they had paid a cover. We went home. It’s been 7 years, haven’t been back.
ETA: I also recently had a sub from a bodega that gave me the trots, won’t do that again, but I knew I was gambling.
I swore off Togo’s after witnessing lack of food safety training in action. This girl had on some plastic gloves for food service use … usually a good sign. However, she clearly thought she was wearing them to protect her precious hands from the grime of her job, and not to protect my food from that grime. With the same gloves on, she went from moving boxes in the storeroom, to handling a rag to wipe down counters, to opening and closing a filth-smeared fridge door, and then proceeded to open a bag of lettuce and refill the work station, pushing it in handful by handful. All with her manager standing right there making sandwiches, not giving a damn. I walked out of the place, and haven’t been back to any of their stores again.
One time at Outback they did not have any of the steaks I ordered and the waiter left (without permission and without passing off our table to another server) before putting in my backup order and by the time anyone realized it the kitchen was shut down so I got no food. They were very generous (and had that tone that they were really doing me a favor) and told me that because of that, I wouldn’t have to pay for my order. I should have had some salmon. When the receipt arrived, the original server had put in 47 salmon orders for Mrs Cad. After an investigation it was determined that we were in fact only delivered 1 salmon and so the other 46 were taken off the bill.
I went to a local IHOP on July 4. I was the only customer in the restaurant for a good long while. It being IHOP, I ordered pancakes. When the waitress brought them out, she curtly informed me that they were out of butter. I then asked for maple syrup (being used to getting hot maple syrup with my pancakes) and was brusquely referred to the cold syrup decanters on the table. In pouring said room temperature syrup, I noticed that the pancakes themselves had been served on a plate almost exactly the same diameter as the pancakes themselves, giving my syrup nowhere to run but onto the table.
I won’t be going back there.
There was a burrito place called “Si Senor” right near my office, I found a big curly hunk of metal shaving in my burrito once. I brought it up to the manager, he looked at me and said “I guess you’d like your money back, huh?”
Yah think?
There’s a Japanese restaurant that my wife and I have gone to twice. The last time the service was abysmal, they got orders wrong, it took something like an hour for me to get my sushi, etc. Zero tip and we’re never going back.
Chinese place in Robbinsdale MN. When I lived nearby I would eat there about once a week. Then I got the sickest I have ever been. I ended up sleeping on the cold hardwood dining room floor because I couldn’t get any further from the bathroom, waking up about once every hour to vomit 4-5 times, clean it up and then collapse into fitful sleep again.
Never went there again.
A large chinese buffet near me in Eagan MN. Used to be very busy. Then I went there again after I hadn’t been there in over a year. At 6:30pm on a week night, I was one of three customers in the place. Given the amount of food they had out, and the fact that it looked like it had been sitting there all day, I should have just left. Fuckers charged me $13 too. When I went to leave, I got about 2 doors down the mini-mall when I started to feel sick. Haven’t been there since either.
When I lived in North Minneapolis, there was a neighborhood bar and pizza joint called Pepperoni’s. I used to order food from them all the time on game days. They were really good. Then they sold the place to new owners. I ordered food. An hour later it hadn’t arrived yet. I lived 4 blocks from the place. I called. They said it should be there any minute. 45 minutes later they showed up. Burgers were literally carbon pucks on buns. Totally inedible. Pizza was burnt and inedible. Never ordered from them again. They went out of business about 3 months later.
Chinese takeout restaurant at the end of my street. When we first moved here, 6 years ago, we gave them 3 opportunities to cook an edible meal. Haven’t been back since.
Local, highly rated, pizza joint. We ordered a few pizzas from there years back, but weren’t impressed with the taste, too much crust, and the crust was kind of bland, so we moved on to other places. Then decided to give them another try. Got a pizza with the wrong toppings, overcooked, dry and simply awful. Looked like a pizza left out to cut slices, then tossed back in whole for my order, then left under a heat lamp for a half hour. I would have given it right back to them if I thought to look in the box when I picked it up, but I took it home and decided I was done with them.
We’ve also given up on Friendly’s, not that we ate there often, but the last 2-3 times the food was just miserable. Flavorless and oversalted. No thanks, we can find other places to eat.
If you were only 4 blocks away, I assume you went there with the burnt food and demanded a full refund, right?
(Sounds like it was at least a $20 order, something worth taking the time to get your money back, unlike a ruined $2.99 order at a Taco Bell located 30 minutes away across town.)
Not in the middle of a game session with 6-7 other people over at my house.
My wife and I got food poisoning from Papa John’s. By some fluke, our toddler hadn’t eaten any. We were puking and shitting water for 24 hours.
Years later, I’ll still turn down their pizza even if it’s free.
Food-borne illness is not a deal-breaker for me, necessarily. Mrs. J. and I contracted norovirus after a meal at the local McCormick and Schmick (I’m pretty sure it was the paella) but that could have happened anywhere. We’ve eaten there a few times since with no problems (burp).
Another incident I think I mentioned here once was another story. We used to eat fairly regularly on Sundays at a pretty good deli place that was notable for hostility between the boss and his employees. Things apparently came to a head during one of our visits, when I found that someone had taken a dump in the sink in the men’s room. Somehow we never found the stomach to return.
IHOP for me, too.
One evening about 12 years ago, I was enjoying a meal with some friends. I had a bite of some hash browns when I felt an unusually hard crunch.
“Funny,” I thought, “potatoes don’t have bones.” I proceeded to push out the offending matter when I literally saw red.
“Funny,” I thought, “I didn’t put any ketchup on these potatoes.” It was about that point I spit the whole thing out and figured out I had crunched down on some glass.
To be fair, the manager was horrified and proceeded immediately to the kitchen to figure out which soon-to-be-fired staffer had broken glassware over a food area without shutting down the works. The restaurant made absolutely sure I got the proper medical attention, which ended up being some sort of paste to stop my tongue from bleeding. Our group’s meal was comped, too, of course.
But I’m still gunshy about going back.
Another vote for Outback. I’ve been there twice, and although the food was not bad, everything was seasoned with pepper. Lots of pepper. I have some intestinal issues, and try to avoid spicy food. But Caesar salad should not be covered in pepper. Even my husband, who likes spicy food, was taken aback by the amount of pepper in his food. Their “lightly seasoned” ribeye was practically inedible. No more.