In the Adirondacks, near Lake Placid, we stayed at a nice inn, and there was a cute quaint diner across the street, serving breakfast and beautiful cakes, and at night on weekends, pizza. How bad can a pizza be, you ask? I do think they did use tomato sauce or soup on the thick crust, and…maybe imitation cheese of some kind? It was hard to describe how awful it was. No oregano, basil, garlic, and that odd translucent plasticky cheese. It was disgusting, we threw it out, it was in.ed.ible…hard to ruin a pizza, but ruin it they did! (there’s a gas station pizza here, unlimited toppings, was $10 but more, now, and it is just scrumptious. Probably pre-made and frozen from somewhere, with toppings added… That diner pizza, they claimed, was ‘made by hand right there.’ when we complained. Yeah, made out of WHAT?)
I visited Cuba in 2015, as part of one “educational” tours meant to allow Americans to work around the rules about travel there. There are two kinds of restaurants in Cuba – family run paladares, many of which are quite good, and state run restaurants, most of which are mediocre at best. The worst was a cubano sandwich at a state run place in Havana our guide took us to (I don’t remember for sure, but I think that meal was included in the price of the tour. Some, but not all of them were). A cubano sandwich seems like a hard thing to screw up, but the pork just tasted old and gristly and just bad.
The runner up might be a chicken sandwich I got at the Havana airport before the flight back to Miami. It just consisted of a small, bland piece of chicken breast meat, a little bit of chopped onion, and a big helping of mayo on a bun. That wasn’t terrible, just kind of bland, with only the onion to give it a bit of flavor.
I don’t get how Panera Bread stays in business. The one time I went, I ordered a sandwich and fruit instead of a side. The sandwich was nothing exceptional. I could have made a better one at home for much less. The fruit was an apple on the point of shriveling, and it wasn’t even washed. Haven’t been back since.
Another chain restaurant, forget the name: I ordered a turkey dinner. It looked to be the only thing that was a complete meal instead of.a sandwich and side. I don’t think they had the food in stock. It took over half an hour to get. I’m pretty sure they ran to a nearby grocery store, grabbed a frozen meal, microwaved it, and dumped it on a plate.
Mine was during a conference in Manila, Philippines, but to be fair, it was mostly my own fault. Our hosts took us to the Makati area which is know for it’s fresh fish, and our restaurant allowed you to pick out your fresh fish like a buffet and take it to the table where the waiter would find out how you wanted it cooked/served. A rather interesting way of doing things.
However, I do not and never have liked fish of any type.
So I asked if they had anything else and the waiter said ‘chicken’ so I ordered that because how bad could it be?
Found out. That bird was all muscle and sinew and barely an edible piece of chicken to be found. I will be convinced to my dying day that I had been served one of the losers of the previous night’s cockfights. Not a memorable evening, although my fish-loving friends thought it was great.
Runner-up is a diner somewhere in New York (the name and exact place is lost to memory). Ordered meatloaf because what could go wrong–meatloaf and diners just go together naturally. Well. It wasn’t so much bad tasting as it had no discernable taste at all; no seasoning, no flavor, just a lump of meat with nothing to recommend it. Which is why I forgot all about it until this thread stirred a memory.
Here’s a photo… I took one apparently. You can see the congealed blood chunks to the right on the spring roll plate. I had forgotten about the mystery “sausage” (look at the very top of the bowl), and the various gristly sorts of meat (in the bowl).
I’m generally pretty good with Asian flavors- actually grew up in a part of Houston now called “Little Saigon” (I lived just south of Bellaire @ Wilcrest, for anyone who knows that part of Houston). I had my first bowl of pho in the late 80s in fact.
This stuff was ghastly by just about any yardstick. Maybe they were off their game that evening, maybe they just don’t do bun bo hue well, maybe it’s just not my thing. I don’t know, but it was memorable enough for a picture, and for me to talk about it more than a decade later.
This one is all on me.
Mrs. Mortimus took me to an Asian restaurant for my birthday. When my order arrived the server said, “Don’t eat the purple pepper, its very hot!”
Ok fine. And of course I ate the purple pepper. Server already had me sussed out and arrived shortly with a pitcher of milk to douse the pain.
Bacon at a Waffle House God knows where. It was burnt to being black as charcoal.
In the Soviet Union, anything was fair game for pickling. I had fried potatoes that had been pickled first, and were served on a plate with undercooked meat, probably beef, and bread, soaked in pickled potato and beef juice, and some other grated crap from probably the vegetable family. There was caviar on the table, as there always was, because it’s a condiment in Russia. Watching people take slices of bread, spread them thickly with unsalted butter, then layer on caviar, and bite into it usually put me off eating much anyway, if I hadn’t had a plate of pickled potatoes.
There was another time I got served a bowl of chicken soup that had a feather in it. Maybe it tasted OK, but I didn’t try it.
Lived there a year when I was 10. Grew 2 inches, and gained no weight.
Was that the bad part, good part, or neither? I’m not sure from your description.
Oh, wow, now that brings back a memory all of a sudden. Back c. 1988, so Warsaw Pact Poland, my mother and I were visiting a cousin who was a Catholic monk or whatever the proper term was at a monastery somewhere just outside Krakow. For lunch, we were served either potato soup or pickle soup (I’d have to ask my mother, as she is fond of retelling this story) which apparently had a bunch of dead weevils or worms/maggots in it. I didn’t seem to care much, as I just ate the whole bowl down without complaint. Perhaps I noticed them – my memory is really hazy about the incident – but I didn’t much seem to care as they were dead and the soup tasted pretty good!
Can’t blame you. I’ve burned my fingers many a time because a server told me not to touch a hot plate.
Many years ago some friends and I ate at a place called Oscar’s Pizza on the Tennessee/Georgia border. We said, “this pizza is horrible; we can’t eat it” after a bite or two. We’d paid up front, but after some hemming and hawing he refunded us. I think we still tipped the server, though.
Ok, what’s this purple pepper? I’m unfamiliar with it.
The last time I ate at an Arby’s I was in high school. That was over 50 years ago. I thought “That was not worth what I paid for it,” and I haven’t eaten there since.
This wasn’t actually eaten at the restaurant, but one Thanksgiving we were arriving at my mom’s house (from 500 mi away) Thursday morning with no time for us to make pie, and my mom was all pie-making’d out. So, she bought pies from the local Coco’s. Oh, my, someone mistook the salt for the sugar, and the pie was inedible. Nowhere to get pie then.
That’s weird. I’ve had squid ink pasta, and I didn’t notice any taste difference to normal pasta.
He would have fit right in at this place. It’s not on the sign, but they also sell tires. The food is supposed to be pretty good, though.
A friend and I once shared a creme brulee at a very fancy restaurant and, after one taste each, it was immediately apparent that the chef had, as in carrps’s story above, mistaken the salt for the sugar. We invited our waiter to take a bite, too; he did, blanched, whisked it away and soon brought out another at no charge, with his and the chef’s apologies. The second was just fine.
Another time I ordered a foreign beer I’d never heard of, just to try it. The waitress warned me that it was pretty bitter. I said that was ok and that yes, I really did want to order it. She brought it and, sure enough, it was bitter - so bitter as to be undrinkable (by me, at least). She offered to take it back and waive the charge, but I said, no, thanks, you warned me. Fair is fair.
This is the worst I can remember at the moment, not counting bland and overpriced, which is just disappointing.
There were clumps of baking soda in the biscuits. Baking soda is bitter and fizzes in your mouth, which is a very unsettling flavor burst.
Similarly, I haven’t eaten at a Hardee’s since college. I remember the last time I ate at one – if you’re unfamiliar with Hardee’s menu, in addition to the usual burgers they also serve a roast beef sandwich that’s pretty much the same as the ones at Arby’s. I used to like them, but that last one was like lukewarm beef on a soggy bun, and I vowed never to go to Hardee’s again (I’d already noted that their quality seemed to be declining before then). And that was the last time I ate at Hardee’s.
Of course I moved to California a few years after that, and we don’t have Hardee’s out here. But I’ve never been to Carl’s Jr., either. Mostly because in my mind I associate them with Hardee’s. Actually, I have heard Hardee’s improved after Carl’s Jr. took them over, but I’ve never bothered to find out for myself.
I will confess that Arby’s is my favorite fast food. Don’t you judge me!
The roast beef sandwich always makes me happy.