Damn those hackers, stealing your ident-i-tee.
Again, if the wait is that long, then it’s probably prime dining time, and every other restaurant in driving distance is also slammed. Too, if I’m alone, I have my book to read (never go anywhere without a book is my motto), and if I’m with someone, I’m generally socializing with my group, even if it’s just my husband and me, so I don’t notice the time until suddenly we both realize that it’s been 15 minutes or more since we’ve seen our server. Or since we’ve been seated.
FINE!
It was bad in everyway expressed in this thread so far.
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Wait time of an hour to get seated (they don’t have much competition there and so feel no need to staff I guess)
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Expensive
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Time to actually get food - another hour.
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Bad tempered waitstaff.
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Poor service. I actually had to go and get refills a few times and was yelled and glared at each time. EACH time. We were charged for each one.
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I had steak and potatoes. The potatoes were cold and the steak was borderline uneatable. I managed to eat about a third of it and it was very tough but the other 2/3 was pure gristle/fat/whatever.
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On top of it…it tasted a little different and somehow…wrong.
The place…smelled. Not horrible but unpleasant.
I was all for leaving at anytime, but my wife was diabetic and insisted she needed a meal. All other shops and food stores were closed.
I believe, as a poster further down indicated, got a mild food poisoning. I had the shits and stomach ache for a day or two.
BAD!
I review Diners for a hobby (doing it for two years and nobody is paying me so… yeah… it’s a hobby)
The Brite Spot in Los Angeles-
Clipped from my review blog.
We walked inside, racing another couple to get a spot since we could see people piling up at the door. The Brite Spot is divided into two sections. On the right hand side I saw the waitress that I had had there a couple of times. She was clearing a table for us when I noticed my friend Dan (author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World) and his fiance’ sitting at a table on the left. We went over to say hello and they invited us to join them. They had just ordered so there shouldn’t have been that much of a discrepancy between when their food and ours arrived.
The waitress in this section was a anemic blonde running at half speed–no–make that quarter speed. After a little under ten minutes, we got our menus and in a little under an additional ten minutes, we ordered. Our order was simple: oatmeal with banana for my girlfriend and a breakfast burrito for me. We both got coffee as well and proceeded to drink a lot of it. The refills came at a decent pace since another person entirely was handling that function. After about fifteen minutes, our friends got their food–at least most of it. Halfway through they realized they had never gotten their toast. After flagging down our waitress and reminding her of the toast, she paused for a few seconds and replied, “Oh, right.” Then she moved on.
After about five minutes of our watching people who had been seated at the counter after us getting their food, our waitress brought the toast. “Umm, sorry… it got all messed up. Better late than never.”
Your waitress saying that about your food is just…wrong. It goes beyond terrible service.
We then reminded her about our food. " Oh, yeah… it’s coming." My girlfriend suggested that we leave, but I don’t walk out of places. I just don’t. It’s not something I am comfortable doing. I see it through.
At this point our friends were done eating. We talked for another ten or so minutes, waiting for the check to arrive. They finally had to flag her down again to get the check. She avoided eye contact with our side of the table. [Remember waiters: give the gift of eye contact.] Now, remember what our order was? Oatmeal with banana and a breakfast burrito. These take twenty minutes at home. We have now spent close to an hour at our table.
Our friends went up to pay and we said our goodbyes. After a moment, our food arrived. I took a bite of my burrito. She took a bite of her oatmeal. “It’s cold,” she replied. I jammed my finger into the wet mound of cereal and felt that it was, indeed, cold.
That was it. I had taken all I could take and I couldn’t take any more. We got up and walked to the door. Our friends were still at the counter waiting to pay. As we walked past they asked what happened. “It’s cold!” we announced and finished our walk out the door.
Dan said he watched the slow realization dawn on the face of the waitress when she looked over and saw an empty table.
This was such a bad experience that I did something I never do. I had done it only once before and that was at a Guatemalan restaurant that had stale chips and a wait staff who blatantly ignored us ( I know enough spanish to get “I’m not waiting on the white people”). I might go back to Brite Spot again someday; it’s near where I live; it’s near where I hang out; if I do decide to return, I will certainly refuse to sit in this waitress’ section again.
-first post in over a year I believe.
Mine kinda pales in comparison to many of the stories here, but my friends and I decided to eat at a newly opened Così in Oak Brook, IL. Counter service fast food, mainly flat-bread type of stuff. It had opened the day before, I believe. I was with three friends and was first in line. I ordered directly off the menu and got my number for the table.
We sat at the table and my friends’ food came out. They ate it very slowly, conscious of how awkward it would be for me to eat alone. The place isn’t empty but it definitely isn’t busy, either. After an hour and a half, I went back to the counter and said “never mind, just give me back my money.” The manager was apologetic, gave me my money back (including what I’d paid for a smoothie that I was given right after I ordered) and gave me a gift certificate for a free meal.
I’ve been back since and it was much better. Still not the hugest fan of their food, but it’s decent.
I had the two worst breakfasts of my life in Farmer Boys/Bros./whatever it’s called and some little rinkydink place called Costa’s.
So what happened? Or didn’t happen.
Most people here are describing once in a lifetime experiences. If this kind of stuff happens routinely to your parents, they are the unluckiest people on earth.
Or, they live in Utah, which is Navajo for “bad food”.
I can’t even describe the unbelievably awful meal I had in Ogden once. I should have known when I opened the menu in the Chinese restaurant and saw Chow Mein and Chop Suey on it.
In Provo, after I had learned my lesson in Ogden, I went looking for a safe chain to eat in. I found an Olive Garden and thought I’d do the safe soup-salad-breadsticks thing, but the waiter sold me on the daily special, which was a meal salad with sliced sirloin, sun-dried tomatoes, and gorgonzola cheese. It sounded good so I went with it. It didn’t occur to me that there might be a reason why the beef would be paired with the strong flavors of gorgonzola and sun-dried tomatoes. It did occur to me after my first bite, when I discovered that the beef was way old, bordering on rancid. I spit it out into my napkin.
I told the waiter about it and asked for the soup-salad-breadsticks instead. As I left, the hostess was erasing the special from the specials board in the lobby. I must not have been the only one who ordered it.
I have a bad worst experience and a good one.
The good one - ate at a local Italian place. When the waitress put food on the table the people she got next to mentioned a distinct odor of weed. Between the salad and main course she wandered off for a long time, and again between clearing the dishes and bringing the check. But the check was for $3.40 instead of $34.00. I’m sure her altered state had something to do with the decimal point.
The bad one - was eating at a local greasy spoon Chinese place. As we were eating we notice a cockroach run out from under my plate and hide behind the salt shaker. Needless to say, my appetite was ruined and we never went back. As we were paying at the counter the hostess asked if we liked our meal. “Actually, it was not so good,” said my companion, “there was a cockroach on the table.”
“Yes,” the hostess replied, “we sprayed the kitchen yesterday and they all come out.”
I’ve only had one walk out experience, late lunch, me and a co-worker after a meeting or some other useless drivel. Green chile cheeseburger/enchilada/burrito “diner” type place. Always good food, cheap and fast, $2 beers, thick fresh tortilla chips and home made salsa.
So go in a bit after the insane lunch rush, I sit, friend hits the can to wash his grimey hands. I order a Bud and a Negro Modello for him, she has to wait to see his ID. Brings the Bud, checks his ID, takes our order. I was thirsty so I asked for another beer.
Food comes out, good sloppy tasty mexican food, still no chips and salsa, still no Negro Modello, still no 2nd bud. She says “Oh! beers and silverware” so she takes off and then comes back with chips and salsa, then says “OH! silverware” Me:“and beer?”.
So the very “good” waitress proceeds directly to the other side of the dining room, yacks with some of her friends, buses half their table, goes back to her friends, gets them drinks to go and sits down to yack further.
Well, no silverware, we can’t eat, we left, two big full plates of heart choking red chile sitting in front of us. I left $2 for the beer that did show up. I was not happy, I know that food was good, I just didn’t have all day to wait for a fork. Ended up at the brewery down the street, the service wasn’t much better, but at least there was silverware on the table when we got there.
My worst restaurant experience ever was in Madrid.
We’d just arrived that morning and neither of us deals well with flying… so we were very jet-lagged, disoriented and sleep deprived - in short, we generally felt like crap warmed over. After checking into our hotel, we decided to check out the Reina Sofia museum (which is absolutely awesome), but picked a random restaurant along the way to eat lunch since we figured we might feel a little better if we put some food in our bellies.
The waitress must have been having a really bad day. She wordlessly gestured us towards a table, and flounced by a few minutes later to literally throw cutlery down onto the table and slap down a couple of menus. The food, when it arrived, was awful - everything from soup to dessert was simultaneously greasy, mushy, oversalted and bland. We walked out of there feeling even worse than we’d felt walking in.
As for Grumpy McThrowCutlery, she did finally crack a smile when The Boy explained in broken Spanish that his tummy wasn’t feeling so good when she scowled at his barely-touched main course. Go figure.
That’s rough, but please tell me that later in your visit you had several amazing meals in Spain, a country who provided me with several of the finest dishes that I have ever eaten…
(though to me, Barcelona had better food in general than did Madrid)
It doesn’t always help to ask.
My wife and I went to the Boston Pizza location on Hurontario St. in Mississauga a few years back. I ordered spaghetti, and she ordered a pizza. It was taking a very long time indeed, and after 20-25 minutes or so I asked the waitress, “Will our food be much longer?” “Oh, just another five minutes?”
Every five minutes after that I asked. Every time she assured me the kitchen was busy, just another 5 minutes. At the 40-minute mark I got my spaghetti; my wife’s pizza was “just coming up.” Again, every 5 minutes we asked, and every time we asked, it would just me another 5 minutes.
After an hour had passed, to be honest, we were staying solely out of morbid curiosity; we wanted to see just how long it would take. We certainly weren’t going to pay them a dime, but we wanted to know just how long a pizza could take. Perhaps it was being delivered from North Korea. Shortly after the hour mark we complained to the manager, figuring that the game wasn’t fair unless we escalated.
“Just another five minutes.”
Five minutes later: “Just another five minutes”
And so on. For 40 minutes or so.
One hour and 45 minutes later my wife’s pizza was finally brought to our table. She bit into it and was amazed to find that some of the toppings were frozen. The pizza was mostly cooked, but they’d put frozen toppings on top of a cooked pizza. She personally brought the plate to the manager and demanded an explanation. Her honest-to-God response: “Um, uhh, um. Ummmm. It’s supposed to come that way.”
“What?”
“Uhhhh… those toppings are supposed to be frozen.”
“Show me your recipe that says that.”
“Uhhhh. Uhhhhh. We don’t have anything like that.”
By now I’ve grabbed our coats and walked over to them so I heard the last part. “You’re a liar, and we’re leaving, and not paying.” And we simply walked out.
Since then I’ve refused to to to a Boston Pizza under my own power but I’ve been forced to go on business lunches and the like several times, to a wide variety of BP locations. The service is always awful. Never quite as bad as we’d gotten from Frozen Toppings Franchise, but invariably amazingly slow; if they bring your drinks in less than 15-20 minutes it’s miraculous.
My worst restaurant experience was also kind of funny. It was on Good Friday in 1999. My parents and I went out to a local German restaurant called the Hilltop Inn, which always has EXCELLET food. They were packed, due to it being a holiday, and one of thir specialties is catfish fiddlers. Mom was in a wheelchair, and we were seated at a corner table.
The waitress looked-and acted- loke something out of a sitcom- cigarette roughened voice, skin like leather old woman. She was obviously miffed that Mom’s wheelchair was in her way. She brought the silverware out to us and tossed it in a pile on the table with the folded napkins and walked off. Then she came back with a wet cloth- the table hadn’t been wiped down from the last patrons, and since the wheelchair kept her from easily getting close, she…
Are you ready for this?
Handed the towel to me to wipe the table. OH yes she did. My parents and I were too stunned to react while she was there, but when she walked away, we all cracked up laughing.
As always the food was superb, but that visit remained a running joke with us until they died.
When you travel on business about 1/2 the year, you gather bad dining experiences the way a dog collects fleas.
In no particular order here are a few I recall.
[ul]
[li]The teriyaki chicken bowl that should have been called soy sauce soup. The bowl was literally 1/2 full of soy sauce. Place was closed about 6 months later.[/li][li]I had an early AM flight. I go to the restaurant in the hotel to get a little something to hold me over till I eat on the plane. I order a plain croisaant. I ask for it to be heated. She hands it to the cook who butterflys it, applies some butter and puts it on the grille. Then he applies a bacon press. My croissant came out maybe 1/4" thick, looking like road kill.[/li][li]A raw chicken salad. Didn’t get sick from that one.[/li][li]A chicken Caesar salad that I did get sick from in BC. Up all night to go to the bathroom. I had to teach the next day. We took lots of breaks that day. Never went back to that restaurant and that location is out of business.[/li][li]The dinner house my parents took some relatives to when I was a kid. It was so dark, we could not read the menus. We had to use lighters.[/li][li]A Fudruckers. My partner and I used to take our classes there for lunch. We would drop about $100 a day each on lunch. (lunch for 9-10 people each) Anyway one day one of our guys ordered the super deluxe one of everything burger and when they called us up, only a base 1/3 pounder was there. He protested that this was not what he ordered, and was told tough shit somebody else took your burger. At that point I got involved and told her in no uncertain terms that I paid for a super deluxe burger and that is what I expect. If somebody else picked it up, that was not my problem. So they cooked him one. It only took another 30 minutes. We were done when he got his food. I pulled our expense reports for the last year and wrote a nasty gram to the manager about it. I told him that together we had spent about $26,000 dollars on burgers in the past year and I was not happy with the service. Never heard back. Never went back.[/li][li]The cook running though the restaurant with the fire extinguisher from his car right after I ordered. Waitress came out a bit later to say the kitchen was closed. No shit.[/li][li]The Denny’s manager that was breaking out the night cook for his dinner when I ordered a double cheeseburger with no bun. (low carb diet) Burger takes an insanely long time to come. I get the burger and it is beyond done. Beyond well done. It has passed into crispy. At this point I am so hungry that I start to eat anyway. About 1/2 way though the waitress comes and asks how everything is. “Don’t let your manager cook” I reply [/li]“Why?” she asks.
“Because this burger is so overdone it is inedible” I reply.
She starts to launch into how they have to cook the burger to a particular temp… I hold up my hand in the STOP gesture and I pick up the reminder of the burger and tap the side of my plate with it. DING! DING! DING! goes my plate, just as if I had used my knife. The waitress goes :eek: When I left I tipped my usual 20%. The waitress and her partner both commented to my face how surprised they were that I tipped at all. I explained that the service was fine, and I knew they did not split tips with the manager. They could not stop thanking me.
[li]A restaurant in a hotel in Denver. It was snowing. I didn’t feel like fighting traffic and snow. I go to the restaurant in the hotel. I order dinner. I wait, I wait, I wait some more. After 25 minutes I strike up a conversation with the guy at the next table who ordered before me. After 35 minutes he says fuck it I’m outta here. The waiter brings his food. I tell him not to bother the guy left. I pointed out that I had been waiting 35+ minutes and he had ordered before me. Waiter goes back to the kitchen to check. He returns to tell me the cook swears that my order has been in for less than 15 minutes. I pointed to my watch (7:40PM) and told him I ordered at 7 PM. He goes off to do his waitron duties. A couple of minutes later he brings my meal and tells me that he went to the manager and my meal is on the house. I tell him he has to charge me for something as I need to leave him a tip. He gives me that 
:dubious: look and I explain that I have to put dinner on my company credit card, and there has to be a charge before I can leave a tip. I see him wander off and play with the register for about 5 minutes. He comes back and tells me I ordered a seltzer water for $1.50. I whip out my credit card and he runs it. I left him a $25.00 tip (the price of the dinner that got comped) to show him that no good deed goes unpunished.[/li][li]Day before yesterday in Denney’s. Here is my exact order “I want a senior bacon cheese burger no bun, and sliced tomatoes instead of french fries.” Waitress writes it all down. What do I get? Senior bacon cheeseburger on a bun, french fries and a single tomato slice on a separate plate.[/li][li]Want more? I got a million of them.[/li][/ul]
I have various bad experiences, but I have to tell about one that blows almost everything about service/cleanliness etc out of the water.
I have two friends that went to a local Pizza Hut. * And **(This was about 8 years ago)
It had a small buffet. Six pizzas, some salad. It was in an older building in a smaller town that’s now become a suburb.
They get their slices of pizza. They get some salad.
And they’re sitting and eating. They keep hearing these odd noises.
But, it was an old building at the time, they’re talking, no big whoop.
Then:
A baby/fetal mouse falls from the a/c vent over their table and begins to squeak pathetically.
ON THE TABLE.
I’ll call her J–she says "That was awful. What was worse? We could hear the mommy and daddy mice squeaking in the ceiling. "Where did Jr go???’ "
This is where extra creepy comes in?
They both still ate lunch there.
They didn’t pay and said mouse was escorted off to mouse hell by a worker there.
My face at this story?
There isn’t a jawdrop smilie THAT BIG.
- It has been since razed <TO THE GROUND> and rebuilt into a newer wingstop/pizzahut thing.
**I still know both people. This is not a FOAF thing.
Awww. Poor baby mousie!
I’d say the “venomous/non-venomous” part may be important, wouldn’t you? 
(Though I suppose few snakes that small would be, but still.)
Farmer Boys served old bread/toast and everything else was cold when it should have been hot, and it was just greasy and dreary all around.
Costa’s did roughly the same thing, and they do it all the time. Nasty little cheap sausages and pancakes that taste like paste that’s been grilled.
I went to a Thai resteraunt with two friends. We all ordered our food and everything was going great. They recieved their food and liked it. So they finish their food and I still haven’t gotten my dish yet. Waiter comes by with the check and just about says “Oh btw, we didn’t have duck.” I didn’t even get an apology.