Old Country Buffet.
gag
I haven’t tried very many chains as far as food goes, but I know I’ll never go back to an Applebee’s. They managed to make a bacon cheeseburger inedible. That’s the work of Satan right there.
MY picks for worst:
-CRACKER BARREL: absolutely tasteless food…even the potato salad tastes like cardboard! Yet, the old folks love it! Why?
-DOMINO’s: how they get away with calling this stuff “pizza” is beyond me! It is terrible-more like cardboard with melted polystyrene on top. Again, LOTS ofkids seem to love it!
McDonalds: grease, grease, and more grease! Yet, their pancakes are really good!
The OLIVE GARDEN: actually, I’ve had some very good meals there. One time, my wife and I had veal-and it was as good as you would get in a "real"Italian restaurant. The pasta is just OK-(I usually don’t like fresh/soft pasta-I like my pasat “al dente”).
The "99"Chain is also not too bad-their fish and chips is surprisingly good.
It probably shouldn’t even be considered a restaurant, but Chuck E. Cheese’s has The-Worst-Pizza-Known-To-Mankind. Papa John’s, Pizza Slut, Domino’s et al are all gourmet compared to the cardboard, ketchup, and plastic cheese discs served at your local rat-infested Chuck E. Cheese. The fact that they use their rodent problem as a selling point & mascot should be a dead giveaway, but does it do anything to repel the hoardes of anklebiters and keep them from worshipping their pixelated deities? No.
I don’t know how wide-spread these are but “Checker’s” drive-thru is really bad news. Worst hamburgers I’ve ever had (including ones at my University cafeteria).
Worst ever: Wetson’s. They’re long out of business, but they served the usual burgers and fries – if you consider oil-soaked potatoes fries. Not only the worst food ever, but the worst french fries in the history of the world.
Currently: Probably Hardee’s.
I gotta second (or third?) Applebee’s. McDonald’s is horrible but it is cheap and it is what it is. Applebee’s has delusions of grandeur. It’s expensive. I don’t recall every eating anything there that was even the least bit tasty (McD’s french fries taste good even if they’re evil). And they seem to have screwed up my order every single time in the the 3-4 times I’ve been there over the years.
I nominate O’Charley’s for the bland factor. The menu sounds like a real taste treat, a veritable wonderland of all flavors bright and shiney! Then the food comes and it is bland and safe. Old people’s food. Ecchhh.
You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Except there are places in this country where they don’t know what actual pizza is. Your location is blank, but I have a feeling you don’t live in the South. If pizza is important to you, don’t ever move here, trust me. 
They have also produced more food poisoning cases than the Borgias, when it comes to that. :mad:
Baker’s Square.
Not a bad pie though.
But the food is microwaved frozen entrees. They don’t even try to disguise it. And Lean Cuisine makes a better frozen entree.
Not a bad pie though. The butter pecan french silk supreme gives me a sugar buzz headache for 3 days, yet I eat it everytime I see it.
I am going to assume that by restaurant, we are talking about a place where you sit down and someone takes your order, thereby letting the utter crap that is McDonald’s off the hook.
My answer is Friendly’s. They aren’t; and the food is any more amicable.
psst. Bosda, without making a big deal about it, that advert in your sig is a bit much.
It’s not located in The Colony is it? Panchos is really bad but it’s not limited to Texas any longer. There’s one somewhere around Arkansas but I’ve not visited it.
Marc
Better?
Up till about five years ago, Denny’s. I finally gave up and haven’t set foot in one since. It helped that I found a couple of good breakfast places.
Most chain restaurants are not so much bad as bland. Denny’s was just bad.
Ryan’s, a chain buffet restuarant located in the eastern part of the US. They’re fairly common near interstates and major highways.
In another thread, I mentioned that they serve the finest in white trash cuisine, and that’s not far from the truth. The food is either greasy, covered in some form of sauce, dried out, browning, looks like it was last weeks entree, or it just looks off.
Here’s a daily Menu (popup) from their website, while the menu looks like it has some good stuff on it, IRL, you don’t want it.
I’ve got to add something to this
If you’re my local one , you make up new menu items by leaving off one of the above, even when it’s supposed to have it.
D. Pirahna
FWIW, Ryan’s also tolerates a hostile work environment and grossly favors their male employees. Or at least they did when my mom worked there.
The chain with the worst food is O’Charley’s. I’m not sure what has happened to them … they used to be great. I went there for Prom my junior year.
Now they suck, though. 
Red Lobster poses as a seafood restaurant. It doesn’t matter what you order, it all tastes the same. Like crap.
The only thing I ever get at Olive Garden is the all-you-can-eat soup, salad, and breadsticks, which are all pretty safe and usually quite good. But I’m totally unimpressed with all their pasta dishes and sauces, especially for what they charge.
A&W restaurants have the worst fast food burgers and fries, at least the new A&Ws that have popped up around Florida in the last few years, usually connected to a Long John Silver’s (which is just gross, and hardly worth mentioning). To be fair, it is a real treat to get A&W root beer served to you in a frosty mug, but the food is just bland and nasty. I would much rather at at McDonald’s anyway (although I don’t have the vehement McDonald’s hatred a lot of you seem to).
As far as buffets go, Quincy’s was the worst. In college we all loved all-you-can-eat places, and cheap food in large quantities. I heard a commercial on the radio for an all-you-can-eat buffet at Quincy’s for $2.99, so I dragged a bunch of friends with me. We all hated it and everyone was pissed at me. I’ve been to Ryan’s once and didn’t have a strong opinion of it, but heaven help me, I actually like the Golden Corral. And I LOVE Cracker Barrel, even though it’s not all-you-can-eat.
We don’t have them all here but Pizza Hut has always been the worst pizza available. Many seem to be going broke lately. Taco Bell was the last to open here. When they opened one near my work I talked a couple of guys into trying it, “It’s an American icon.” My friends liked it, I ate half of my order and threw the rest away - impossibly bland, tasteless crap with drab cheese all over it. I am just amazed that they ever got a name in the US, at least Pizza Hut beat the suburban pizza place rush by some years here, but surely proper Mexican was available in the US when TB started?