Poll: how often do you send food back? also, barfing.

In My Humble Opinion
81

I can’t recall ever sending food back unless my order was completely wrong. I usually just deal with or eat around stuff I don’t like.

I can and have thrown up after putting something unpleasant in my mouth. Certain smells also make me vomit. Often, when I’m loading the dishwasher after the dishes have sat in the sink a few days, the act of rinsing the plates off and loading them into the dishwasher will have me coughing up chunks. Usually it’s stuff with strong flavors or residues that make me do this: mustard, mayonnaise, raw onions, relish, vinegary or creamy foods. Fortunately, I can often see or smell my triggers before I eat them, so it’s not really a problem.

82

I very, very rarely send something back. I have preferences, but can deal with it if it’s not quite right. I think the last time I had to send something back, it was a salad that I’d asked to have served with dressing on the side and it came drenched in ranch. I wasn’t pissed, but I did send it back. I order dressing on the side because I don’t want a huge amount, and it’s not exactly easy to just scrape it off.

I’ve only puked a few times in my life, and those were all from either a viral or bacterial infection. Noro virus makes the rounds during the holidays in Japan. Makes a lovely gift. The year before last, I spent three days puking and shitting and cramping and feeling like I wanted to die. Then another couple of days of being shaky and exhausted.

Never puked from food, though I have encountered a couple that can make me gag. Shiokara will sometimes do it. I can eat the stuff, and even halfway enjoy it, but other times…not. For some reason, though I don’t dislike the taste, uni will make me gag. I’ve tried eating it more than once. Something about the texture activates my gag reflex even though the smell and taste aren’t really objectionable.

83

I think something about Fetta cheese makes me woozy. I like it but I did throw up from it once a long time ago, and didn’t feel very good the other time I ate it.

84

You can’t tolerate pepper? Jeez, Lynn, you must have died a thousand deaths after that time you had dinner at my house.

:frowning:

85

I rarely return food. In fact, I’ve struggled through some pretty bad meals just to avoid the fuss of returning my plate, and then kicked myself for it afterwards.

Case in point: Last night, I went to a fancy restaurant for dinner and they screwed up my drink order. It was the strangest thing - my martini was supposed to be scotch, cherry liqueur and sweet vermouth (all of which I could taste), and garnished with orange and maraschino (which I could see)… but there was a strange initial salty beefy flavour in each sip.

It was only on the way home that I realised what happened. My WAG is that while fixing my drink, the bartender must have gotten mixed up and thrown in a dash of tomato consomme used in their Bloody Mary martini into my glass by mistake.

In retrospect, I probably should have returned it, considering it was a $17 drink… but I’d already drunk half of it before I realised that the off taste might have been a mistake rather than an avant-guarde touch (always a risk at high-end swank restaurants these days), and I was halfway home before I finally put the pieces together. Live and learn, I suppose.

Never thrown up immediately after a meal, even though I have a notoriously temperamental digestive system. I did get food poisoning once from undercooked chicken, but it was a good four hours before I started feeling ill (it was also my prom night and my first date with a guy I really, really liked… but that’s another story)

86

I almost never send anything back. My wife does it several times a year. (I also will usually eat failed dinner “experiments” at home.)

We once went to a restaurant that prides itself on being “organic”, and my wife got a full-grown live snail in her salad.

We had a recent incident when we should have sent the food back, but didn’t. I brought my family to my current favorite Mexican restaurant, and we ordered carne asada tacos for my daughter. Halfway through the meal, I noticed that she had been chewing up the pieces of meat, then spitting them out onto her plate. She’s halfway vegetarian, so I thought she just wasn’t into meat that day. Then I tried one of the chunks, and discovered that it was totally inedible. It literally had the texture of rubber. Every piece was the same. I tried valiantly, but couldn’t choke any down.
I didn’t go back for a month or more, until this week. This time, they had run out of cochinita pibil, so the owner offered to make a special combo for me. It turned out to be chorizo and hot dog?!

Another order that I should have sent back… There’s a pub that I used to go to quite a bit in my days of being single. They served a drink called a “chainsaw”, which was like a bloody mary condensed into a shot glass–it went well with chips.
Last year, I went back to that pub for a concert, and asked the bartender if they still made chainsaws. She said she could. When it arrived, it was totally different, and awful. After googling for recipes just now, I see that it probably was vodka, Jagermeister, Wild Turkey, and cheap beer.

The times when I threw up in restaurants were mostly before I had my GERD under control. For example, I was eating a Thai curry and got the familiar discomfort at the base of my esophagus. I took a drink of water to try to wash it down, and had to quickly walk to the bathroom in a panic because it didn’t work; the water had completely filled my throat instead.

87

This is an interesting opinion. Totally wrong, but interesting.

In case you are interested, BSE is caused by prions. Prions are primarily located in dura matter, such as the brain or spinal cord. Heating doesn’t kill prions because they are not alive. A flame thrower would not distroy a prion.

There is no additional risk of contracting BSE from eating a rare steak than there is a well done steak. None, whatsoever.

However, if you’d like to keep spouting nonsense, be my guest. This board is supposed to be about fighting ignorance, and you’ve just displayed an astounding level of ignorance which could have been fought with a simple google search, but I try not to get too worked up about these things.

88

I’m an uppity bitch – a POLITE uppity bitch, but still – but I no longer send food back. I do mention to the server that the food was bad in whatever specific way but sending it back has all too often resulted in bad turning into horrific.

Upon occasion, way back in the mists of time, I have been served a “rare” steak with visible ice crystals, a “rare” steak that had no pink at all, burned black on the outside raw in the middle pork sausage, lasagna with a large shard of glass along the edge, and an unlovely bottle of wine.

Steak #1 came back very well done, steak #2 resulted in a comped dessert when the waiter admitted he thought I, and I quote, “didn’t mean it, since” I am “a woman.”, the sausage came back solid charcoal, the lasagna was explained (a broken wine bottle) but not replaced or apologized for, and the wine was replaced, free (!!!) and came back with massive apologies.

The wine really surprised me, since I thought “good” wine was mostly a matter of preference. I have to assume that it was the not what the Official Restaurant Wine Guy picked for us – I don’t know much about wine, but there was nothing wrong with it, except it just wasn’t yummy.

Now, I tell the server that a dish has a specific issue, and eat the sides. I suspect the crappy cook isn’t particularly fond of me, but providing the evidence of the inedible dish to the manager seems to result in me not having to pay for inedible shit. I also tip well, except in the “didn’t mean it” case, since the server isn’t responsible for cooking anything. I do not Eat The Whole Thing (nor have I ever purchased Alka-seltzer;)), I emphasize “no really, RARE, red-is-good, A little more than a good Vet could save but not much, Bloody but not frozen, RARE!” and I no longer consider Applebee’s, Outback or Olive Garden “safe” eateries when I’m travelling. That two-bit sleazy dive just down the road a piece is more likely to fill my tummy.

Bad oysters come back up immediately. Everything else takes a while, and usually comes out the other end at the same time.

89

I just had to send something back a couple of days ago. That’s unusual for me. Unless it’s green and stinky or full of carbs I’ll generally eat anything.

Anyhow I’d ordered a big-ass steak medium rare but when I got it, it was raw and cold inside. I was really hungry just at that moment or I wouldn’t have sent it back, I would have just taken it home and zapped it on my kitchen grill.

But I hadn’t eaten all day and I was really stressed out and I really, really wanted a big juicy steak. But done medium rare.

My friend was with me, and he will send stuff back on a regular basis if he doesn’t like it. So of course he’s all like send it back, so this time I did.

It came back in a couple of minutes and it was perfect.

Now, as far as puking, I haven’t yet eaten anything that has made me barf right away. I can’t imagine what would except maybe something with an emetic in it.

90

I can tell. Guess it’s not enough to fight ignorance about your pet topic, you’ve got to load the thing up with snark too.

I’ve found that cutting back on red meat and snark is great for hypertension. You should try it.

Hostile Dialect,
Hostile Dialect, Narcissist