Your worst restaurant experience ever

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t know why I thought about this as it happened over 10 years ago, but we took my Mom out to breakfast on Mother’s Day that year. The restaurant we went to was very busy as most of them are on Sunday mornings and probably even more so on Mother’s Day. Usually such restaurants will expect to be busy on this day and operate with as much staff as is available (which I know from experience is difficult to achieve on a Sunday in the restaurant industry). This particular restaurant could probably seat about 80 people. It was nearly full when we arrived. There was nobody available to seat anyone, so we had to seat ourselves and hope we would get waited on. We sat for awhile before anyone came to our table. A very rushed waitress finally came to our table and offered coffee and then handed us our menus. She was gone for several minutes before coming back to check on us. We placed our orders and we waited…and waited…and waited. She was the only waitress on the entire floor as we never saw anyone else but her, trying to keep up with all the work she had to do. There were carts full of dishes left out on the floor as she could not gather them up and run them back to the kitchen, and also look after several angry and impatient customers at the same time. Meanwhile, several other customers around us were complaining and many of them eventually left after giving up. The manager (the owner, actually) would not come out to talk to people because he was too busy in the back (I can only imagine what a mess it must have been in the kitchen). It was well over an hour before we finally got our food, and it probably would have been even longer had everyone else stuck it out like we did. The food was okay, but nothing worth waiting so long for. We never got our coffee or other drinks refilled. I don’t remember if a tip was left or not, but if anything she probably deserved a big tip since she was trying her hardest. By the time we got back home my grandparents had arrived, wondering where we had been. The only reason we didn’t walk out is because this restaurant was next door to my parents’ place of business and my dad sometimes ate there for lunch during the week, so it would have looked bad for him to have walked out with the rest of us. The next year we stayed home. The same restaurant closed in the middle of the day on Mother’s Day the following year because of the lack of staffing. It didn’t surprise me that this restaurant was always so short-handed as the owner was an absolute prick to his help and nobody ever stayed there for more than a week. My dad never got the same waitress twice. Not surprisingly, this restaurant eventually closed and was reopened as a pizza parlor, which is managed much better.

Sorry about the long story to preface my OP. What is the longest time anyone has had to wait for service in a restaurant? Was the food any good by the time it finally arrived? How courteous was the help? I’m sure all of us have a few horror stories like this to share.

2

Never order Italian food in a Greek restaurant in Australia.

Zorba’s in Townsville (North Queensland) had the worst pizza ever. After trying to choke it down, we gave it to a homeless guy who would appreciate it more than we did.

3

Not a long wait, but definitely bad…

VERY nice restaurant in Taipei, ROC (Taiwan). Splurged and went in for lunch, couldn’t afford dinner there. Had salads before the meal (in Taiwan, yet - it had been a while since we had salads, they aren’t much of a thing in Chinese cooking…).

Salads, yum. Lovely dark greens, very fresh. Lovely speckled inch-long slugs scattered amongst the lovely dark greens, quite dead. Very unsure if the scattering of slugs were a garnish or not… Very usure if we’d look like total idiots for even ASKING if the slugs were a garnish (what if they are not? What if they are?). :eek: Being young sturdy types, we picked off the slugs and put them on the side of the plates, and ate the salads anyway. (I have had escargot in China, chinese-style with ginger and garlic -YUM, and have had sea cucumber there, too, so slugs as a garnish weren’t that far out as a concept… I just didn’t want to eat them if they were just raw dead slugs, there by accident…)

And no, I never discovered if they were there on purpose or not. The waiter had that bland expensive-restaurant-waiter look, no expression. He was probably busting a seam internally, though, laughing at the foreign chics, regardless.

4

cracker barrel in north carolina: waitress is rude , takes forever, and i find a rubber band in my freakin eggs! and they didnt even apologize.

5

Went to some restaurant in downtown Chicago in the summer, several years ago. It was probably 2 pm, and there weren’t many other people there. We’re promptly seated and the waitress comes for our drink order quickly, but she takes forever to actually get it for us. We’re waiting maybe 10 minutes and a friend of mine goes to the bar to get me the water I’d ordered, as I was suffering from heat exhaustion after too much rollerblading in the hot weather, and really needed to rehydrate. Finally she shows up and is missing a drink, which takes a while to replace. It just got worse from there - she takes quite a while to get back to us to take our food order, some items are incorrect when she does bring them finally, etc. We waited so long that we pondered sending someone to the McDonalds nearby to get some fries. By the time our meal was up, enough had gone wrong that her tip had dropped to zero. I’ve worked in a restaurant before, so I try to give waitresses/waiters the benefit of the doubt, but she rarely apologized for any problems/mistakes even.

I ran into a bad waiter in a restaurant along the Tiber in Rome, as well. He was taking our orders, and when I was asking about one of the items because, as I told him, I’m a vegetarian, he basically decided what he was going to get me and ran off. He came back with some kind of batter-fried vegetables, cold and flimsy, and set them down in front of me. I looked at them, then looked at him. My mother-in-law was there, and she’s better at speaking Italian than I, so she went off on him and asked for the maitre d’. She explained the situation, he apologized, took my order, and offered us free digestifs afterwards. (Note that I’ve had that particular kind of food in Italy before; my problem was that he just decided for me what to get when I was merely asking a question about one menu item.)

6

I found the paper still on the cheese on my omelette at Terrible’s in Las Vegas but I didn’t blow a gasket over it. They made me a fresh breakfast and all was right.

TheLadyLion and I were in Auburn Indiana and stopped at a cafe with an Irish/Mexican name of some kind. The decor was small town and quaint. I ordered a chicken salad and she ordered a chicken sanwich. Her sandwich had one of those frozen breaded mcsubstance chicken patties. … and bread. Nothing else. No condiments, no lettice, nothing. She had so ask for mayo, lettuce and tomato. My chicken salad had dry tortilla chips, iceberg lettuce and a breaded mcstubstance patty chopped up. It was edible. Nothing more. I’lladd it next to blue pepsi on my list of things there’s no reason to try twice.

7

Picture It:

Pittsburgh, 1996.

Mr. tlw and I are at a small diner (thankfully closed now) which can be described as a greasy spoon, but which has proven to be clean and has really delicious food. The diner claims to make all baked goods fresh from scratch, on the premises, daily, and watching pies moving in and out of the ovens during early morning breakfasts there prove this to be so.

So this evening, I decide to partake of a slice of (what had always, in my experience been) delicious apple pie. Halfway into the pie, I lift the top crust with my fork. This action reveals the carcass of a large, scary, insect resembling cockroach. Nay, not large, huge. Perhaps 3 inches long from the end of the intact antennae to the butt end.

I scream. Loudly. Only by the grace of all that’s holy do I refrain from expelling the entire contents of my stomach right back out onto the dining table. Diners all around are prompted to look, see the big, ugly bug, and a loud melee begins. Those who have not yet been served walk out. Those who have been served either stop eating and demand checks or begin cutting into all of their food, lifting buns and otherwise closely inspecting everything on their plates. (I suppose that was the frugal minded patrons, not wanting to waste food and money.) Completely disgusted, the only thing that I could do was begin to weep like a little baby. I had eaten portions of the pie within millimeters of the thing.

The manager comes over. I show him the offending pie. He quickly grabs the plate and hands it off to a waitress who was hovering behind him. (So that I couldn’t take it to the health department, maybe?) I expect him to tell us that our meal is comped, but in the face of my revulsion and all of the people now streaming out of the restaurant, he offers only a vague apology, nothing more. Moments later, our waitress places our check on the table which still includes the piece of infested pie. I run outside, because I’m still feeling as thoough vomit may happen, and find that when Mr. tlw asked the manager why we were still being charged for even the pie, the response was (and I believe this to be true, my husband is very honest) “Well, she ate half of it, didn’t she?”

When I heard that the sonuvawitch that owned the joint went bankrupt, I diid a jig. An honest to goodness jig.

8

One year on my birthday, we went to IHOP for breakfast - not a wise choice on the weekend, but what the heck. It was a crowded, frantic Saturday, but we were finally seated. A rather frazzled waitress took our drink orders, brought them back quickly, then disappeared.

When we were able to get her attention, we pointed out that we lacked a set of silverware and my glass was dirty. Not angry, just to get it right. My husband even tried to lighten the moment: “Looks like you’re having a rough day.”

She replied “Yeah, considering I just decided to divorce my husband!”

Ummmm, ok. I’m sorry her life was sucky at the moment, but I don’t think that’s the sort of thing one shares with complete strangers. And it kinda put a damper of breakfast. Wonder if that’s why I don’t like IHOP?

9

Short story: LIttle restaurant mid MI, at a maplefest. ORdered sandwiches, ice tea. Stuff arrives, I take a drink and discover that they’ve ‘pre sweetened’ the ice tea w/maple syrup. (where’s that barfy smiley when you need it?)

shorter story: Steak N Shake - Snookie actually fell asleep waiting to get served.

Longer story: There’s a restaurant in East Lansing that’s been several different restaurants at the same location. We think it’s an old Indian Burial ground since most of them seem to die off pretty quickly. During one incarnation, they served Oriental food. I asked server about a chicken dish. “Is this boneless?” Oh, yes, I was assured. So I ordered it. When it arrived, it was a plate full of chicken wings with the bones sticking up. He then mentioned “Could you give me my tip now, 'cause I"m going off duty”.

Same location, different restaurant (the worst over all experience):
We arrive, and are seated. NOtice that none (and I do mean NONE) of the silverware matches. (not a big deal but a bad omen). We order an appetizer, and our meals, and are told to ‘help ourselves’ to the salad/soup bar.
Salad bar : Salad bowl has about 6 strands of wilted lettuce in the bottom of the bowl. Soup turreen, some one had put the lid back on upside down. Which isn’t a problem 'cept they’d tied a napkin to the lid, and when it was upside down, the napkin drizzled in the soup. Went back to the table, to find they’d served rolls and butter.

We couldn’t cut into the rolls 'cause they were too hard (and we didn’t have a steak knife).

Appetizer comes. Crabmeat stuffed mushroom caps. The crabmeat was dried and sharp enough to actually stick us (like toothpicks).

We wait. and wait. and wait.
Finally, our server comes out and tells us that they’re ‘out’ of what I ordered. They bring a menu and I make another selection.

OF course, they’d prepared Snookies’ meal when ordered, so they were busy playing ‘catchup’ with mine.

They bring out our main courses, I’d gone w/a Swordfish Steak.

It still had ice crystals in it.
Snookie asked if they had a matchbook or something w/the address on it. The server (who’d been appologizing all night) said “oh, good, are you going to complain? cause they’ll probably offer you a free meal”. Our response “Here? NEver mind then”.

We don’t dare try it again.

10

tlw-EEEEEEWWWW!!! That’s disgusting! I’d have refused to pay, or at least I’d have called the board of Health right after that!

YUCK!!!

Which is a shame-since here in the 'Burgh, we’re known for some really good restaurants.

11

I think tlw wins. Yuck.

I went to a place, Cafe Capitola, with a group of friends. It was an all-night joint, at about 1 am, with very few people there. We were there to socialize, so we were willing to be more patient than normal when the service turned out to be slow. Very slow. My friend asked for a glass of water. And again, 15 minutes later, and again, and again, for a total of 45 minutes for a single glass of water. Getting our food to show up took over 75 minutes. We finally got food, ate it, and everyone chipped in to pay the bill. While piling up the money, the waitress wandered by and slyly took a twenty off the table. One of us caught her, and asked “What are you doing?” She didn’t really have an answer (no surprise; she’s not going to say “ripping you off”) and she put the money back. We counted up the money, it was plenty to cover the bill, and we left. A week later, I went there for lunch with some friends. The manager saw me, and told me “You’re part of the group that didn’t pay your bill” and kicked me out of the restaurant.

Lessons learned:

  1. if it takes 45 minutes for a glass of water, just leave.
  2. if you catch the waitress stealing, tell the manager, no matter how kindhearted you may be.
  3. never go back to a restaurant that employs crooks.
12

TGI Fridays.

I stop in for lunch. I sit down the waitress gets me a coke. I wait…wait…wait…She comes back and takes my order, just an appetizer platter…I fall asleep waiting for it get there. I wake up thirsty, my coke long gone, I go and find the hostess and ask her if she can get me a refill. She does, and I wait a while longer…doze off again…wake up and go find the hostess again for another refill.
wait wait wait
Finally, the waitress comes by, on the run, drops off my appetizer without even stopping. It slides to a stop before going off the table luckily, and I’m to find the hostess again for another refill.

I finish, set my card on the table, and wait for about 20 minutes till one of the other people working there notices it and asked if I am ready for the check. I am extremely late for work at this point, so I tell him just run the card and bring me the reciept. He does the same number as the waitress, and just drops it off in motion, and I see that he rang up 50 bucks or so on my card. Seems the previous tenants of this booth, thier 6 month lease being up, packed up and moved on without paying thier bill…I can hardly blame them, so he just forwarded thier rent onto my lease. I’m beyond pissed at this point. I go off in the direction of the dork that took my card, and find him in the kitchen. I show him the card and tell him that I want a manager. I then notice the manager standing next to me screaming obscenities into the phone at someone, and the dork tells me “So, you just had an appetizer right?..I know it took a while to get your food, tell you what, you take care of the waitress, and I will comp your meal”…So, I figure, 15% of nothing is nothing, so I turn around and walk out. They are of business a month later. This place was in a major mall parking lot, not a mile from where I work with 15,000 other people who have to eat lunch somewhere every day, and they chose to understaff thier resturant and lose all that business. Every one I talked to at work after that said the same thing, they wouldnt go there for lunch because it was too slow.

13

Most of my bad restaurant experiences have happened when some overdramatic, anal-retentive snob at the next table over throws a hissy over some small mistake that “ruined” his/her meal. I end up getting extremely embarrassed for them when, because they paid some money for some food and weren’t totally satisfied with it, they seem to think they can treat everyone around them like absolute dirt. Even worse are the people who are straining their necks trying to find something wrong with their meal so they can take it up with the manager and get “comped.”

I wish someone would show up at those peoples’ jobs and scream at them when they make a small mistake, then dock their pay for it. I have never worked in a restaurant but I think there are a lot of jerks out there that should.

14

Guin – I called the health department. They said that they’d send out an inspector. I don’t know if they ever did, because we moved back to NYC within the month, and I sure as hell wasn’t going back there to find out what happened.

I can tell ya where it was if ya want the dirt. :smiley:

15

I think my posts in this thread pretty much cover why I’ll never again set foot in a Perkins.

16

We took a long road trip to a small town near Cincinnati to pick up our puppy in March. Tired from the drive, and hungry, we headed out to find a restaurant. Hubby spotted a Bob Evans, so we pulled in.

Hostesses (2) were chatting animatedly and in great detail about a co-worker. This conversation took quite some time, as we stood in the foyer about two feet away from them, waiting to be noticed. About five minutes passed, and I finally made some loud throat-clearing noise that got their attention. We were seated in a booth toward the back. After the hostess anounced that Steve would be right with us, she wandered off and I said to my husband, “Gee, I sure hope we weren’t BOTHERING her.”

We read our menus, decided what we’d order, and then watched as the tables behind and in front of us were served. A harried looking young man wearing a nametag that said “Steve” walked past us several times. We continued to watch as Steve greeted and took orders from other tables. Eventually, a waitress walked past and I hailed her, asking if perhaps she could locate our server. She apologized for the wait, then took our drink order, brought our drinks and said, “I’ll get Steve.” We then saw her talking to the harried looking young man, who nodded. Steve then took orders from two more tables, then returned to the table behind us to ask if everything was all right. He then walked past our table again, this time HOLDING HIS TRAY ALONGSIDE HIS FACE. WTF??? Another five minutes pass and we hail the friendly waitress again, who this time takes Steve by the hand and brings him to our table.

Steve does not apologize for the delay, but notes our drinks (now empty) on his check. He takes our order, without offering to refill our drinks. I stop him and ask for another teabag, at which time he tells me, “I have to charge you for that.” Fine, whatever.

ANOTHER 20 minutes pass. Steve has gotten several more tables cleared, re-seated and served. Finally, he returns, with half our food. He sets this on the table and walks away without a word. He still has not brought me a teabag.

At this point, we hail a manager. She tells us that Steve is very busy tonight, and she’ll check on our food. Five minutes later, she returns with my dinner, which, I kid you not, is obviously badly burnt and room temperature. She has also forgotten to bring the side dishes of vegetables that come with our dinners. We finally complain vigorously (although not loudly enough for anyone else in the restaurant to hear us.) The manager shrugs, says, “Well, I’m sorry about that. I can take that dinner off your check.” My husband informs her that she wil be comping the entire meal - we have now been at Bob Evans for nearly two hours. Steve, incidentally, never returns to our table. The manager actually argues with my husband over this, until she finally YELLS, “FINE! I’ll take it ALL off your check, OKAY?!?!”

On our way out, we snag a hostess and ask her to give our $2 tip to the nice waitress who DID bring our drinks and our waiter. The second hostess jumps up and says to the first hostess, “I’ll give it to her - she fuckin’ hates YOU.”

17

This is mine: The Cheesecake Factory

18

Man oh man. I need to know where you can get good Mexican food in the NY capital region.

19

Okay, tlw, I’ll bite (ha!). Could you please fill this yinzer in as to where the pie roach incident occurred? :slight_smile:

20

At a Wendy’s in Cleveland, in my burger was a half-eaten lifesaver. I went up to the counter and told the cashier what had happened. A cook beside her quickly spit a lifesaver into the trash can. The manager came over and assured me that none of his employees would eat while cooking. Well, I told him to look down at the trash can at his feet, and then he became a little more agreeable. He offered me new food, I said a refund would be more in order. I then took my cash to the next door convenience store and bought a large bottle of Listerine.