Yesterday I bought a grilled chicken panini for lunch (2:00) from a local restaurant and only finished half and brought the other half home. Unfortunately I left it setting on the table all night and just discovered it (8:19). It was at room temp all night - safe to eat?
I wouldn’t risk it.
Yeah, I wouldn’t take the chance either. I did that once and it made me sick as a dog with food poisoning. Not good.
Yeah, I figured. Money is so tight I hated to waste but not worth the risk I suppose. Thanks.
I don’t think you’ll get a good GQ answer, so I’ll just offer my opinion:
Have you eaten food that’s been sitting out before without problem? I find that people like my father, who were used to not having refrigeration for everything, don’t get sick from it. I, on the other hand, do.
Another factor is whether you have stomach problems often. Again, I do. Eating at the wrong restaurant can cause me problems, without having anything to do with getting food poisoning. But I doubt you are like me in this regard, or you wouldn’t even be asking.
Is there mayo, or is it just cheese and chicken? I’m generally willing to take a few risks with foods, but I look at the ingredients before making a decision. The more bacteria-friendly the food is, the less likely I am to take a risk. Since mayo is such a perfect growth medium, I’d pass on it in that case, but I’d probably eat it otherwise.
(And if anyone asks, I’ve only had food poisoning once, I think. I say I think because it was not as severe as many people describe, but unpleasant enough to make me think it counts.)
This probably isn’t very good advice, but when I’ve done that in the past, I smelled the food, and if it still smelled good, I’d eat it with no problems. And yes, I know that bacterial toxins can’t be smelled. I’ve never had a case of food poisoning, though, and I have a pretty good sniffer.
The rule you should probably use is, “When in doubt, throw it out.”
Actually, from Wikipedia:
So I wouldn’t worry too much about the mayo, but the chicken… I wouldn’t risk it. Unless you have a couple days to spend on the toilet, and you really need to lose 5 lbs or so. 
There are many different degrees of food poisoning, not all of which involve a trip to the emergency room. What most people call “24 hour flu” is generally food poisoning, and even “I think that something I ate is disagreeing with me” is often a sign of mild food poisoning. You may never have had a serious case of food poisoning, but I’d have a hard time believing anyone who said they’d never had food poisoning at all.
I’m generally not too scary about eating stuff that’s been left out but it was the chicken part that had me concerned. I was also concerned about the mayo… but now I know better. I love this place.
Put it this way, the food in the OP is well beyond any safety recommendations and I would never advise anyone to eat it. That said, I personally would have eaten it without a second thought, as I’ve done this all my life (my parents would never put anything hot into the fridge, so that meant soups and stews staying out for hours–usually overnight–before they got put in the fridge.) I wonder if people do indeed build up tolerances over time or if I and my family have just been lucky all this time.
I routinely eat cooked food that sat out overnight. I would have tossed it in the microwave to heat it up.
My thoughts exactly. The mayo would give me pause (but I can’t stand the stuff so it wouldn’t be on my left-out sandwich anyway) but that was cleared up a few posts back.
I wouldn’t worry about the chicken as long as it was cooked (and really who would have a raw chicken sandwich? ;)) And the cheese…well cheese doesn’t need to be refrigerated anyway a lot of the time (depending on the type of cheese, and refrigeration does make it keep longer). The vegetables might be wilted at this point (if it has lettuce, tomato, etc.) and the bread might be soggy, but that would be a matter of taste, and nothing that a zap in the microwave wouldn’t cover up.
My husband on the other hand, spent years doing public health inspections of as part of his medical job in the military, and he is anal about proper temps and safe handling. He would not eat the sandwich if it has been out for more than an hour (shhhh, don’t tell him about how most stores handle prepackaged sandwiches). He takes it seriously enough that he will throw out my left-overs if I don’t get them into the refrigerator within a few minutes of cooking, and will refuse to eat leftovers that he knows I allowed to sit on the stove until after dinner. (Yet he has no problem chowing down at the all-you-can-eat buffet. The man is a walking contradiction!)
I have had food poisoning once or twice, but never from eating properly prepared food that was left out for a few hours (or overnight even) the bouts of food poisioning I have suffered could be traced back to the specific product that was improperly prepared the first time.