Worst restaurant experience you ever had

I hate those buffet restaurants. Regretfully, we got tricked into going to on, by in-laws, we were visiting out of state. Ugh!

Elderly people love buffets. My dad thought Old Country Buffet was the greatest thing ever.

Our waitress lost control of her tray and dumped eight margaritas with salt right in my lap. She could barely be bored enough to hand me a dry towel, although I did get the restaurant to pay for the dry cleaning. Still, I had to get home on a freezing winter night in Boston in wet, sticky clothes.

Food-wise, I guess I'd say Popeye's and the ensuing gastro-intestinal distress.

I was served a BLT on cold, untoasted bread, and the waiter couldn't understand what the problem was.

Went to a Bob's Big Boy years ago while traveling through the wilds of western PA. There was no place decent to eat and we didn't have a choice because we were starving. I never saw such strange, hickish people in my life. It was like we were in a foreign country or a Stephen King movie. The patrons looked like in-bred simpletons with greasy hair and clothes from another era.

Anyway, it was an all you can eat buffet with a lot of crap food. I can't remember what we had and it doesn't really matter. The most fascinating thing about that stop was a man who picked up his plate and licked the whole thing clean like an animal......at an all you can eat buffet, where he could have just gotten seconds, thirds and fourths if he was that hungry. We were stunned. LOL.

Shigella tainted nutloaf at Le Maison du Michfest.

Stopped at Deanies Seafood in the French Quarter. The service was horrible and a mouse ran across my table. On top of it got food poisoning and my trip was ruined.

Ugh R7,that reminds me of eating at Antoines ! $200 plus for dinner for two,and we spent the next day with explosive diarrhea .Of course it could have been something else,but that was the only pace where all 4 of us ate at together.

Twice I've been to IHOP.

Never ever again.

"Went to a Bob's Big Boy years ago while traveling through the wilds of western PA."

Oh Sheldon Cooper, you are never satisfied.

Why are old people always chasing diarrhea? Cruises, buffets, Mexico...

When I was 11 and we were on the way to my cousin's Bat Mitzvah in Cincinnati, we stopped at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Kentucky that looked like they hadn't mopped the floors since Colonel Sanders was still alive.

Some rotisserie chicken place in Peru, anyone who ordered a whole chicken received a live chick. As a seven year old I was elated and sad when I had to return to ny and leave my lil chick behind. My aunt Anna assured it would “taken care of”. They had the chicks on this glass case kind of like how popcorn is kept, pretty fucked. Poor chicks :(

R13 What did the locals do with them? Dip them in sauce and bite their heads off, like what Koreans do with live baby octopi?

The locals could give a damn there’s no PeTa in Peru. I’ve seen fuckers throw pots of boiling water at stray dogs and they’re usually made into hamburger meat, for 50 cents you could get a mammoth sized burger with all the fixings. I haven’t been there since 2000 so now things might have changed they all have iPhones now haha

A pitcher of beer dumped down my back. And yes, it was 20 degrees outside.

As the waitress place the last plate on the table she vomited right on the table, splashing all four of us with her vomit.

What's a restaurant?

This was about 20 years ago, but my then BF and I were driving home from Columbus OH, back to NE OH, and we decided to stop at some random truck stop restaurant halfway on the way back. It was a total dump and literally looked like it hadn't been updated since the early 70's. We both got a burger and fries, and by the time I got home, I was projectile vomiting, and projectile shitting diarrhea for hours afterwards.

any place i ate with my now ex-boyfriend.

R20, I feel your pain.

Another one here for New Orleans. Projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea

Chick Fil A. Worst case of the shits afterward.

I ate at a Noodles and Co. a few months ago because it was there, and I was hungry. It was so bad I'd describe it as insulting.

Many years ago I found a used band-aid in my chicken salad. Had to rush to restroom as my immediate reaction was to vomit.

But I’m still here.

Went to a Sizzler all you can eat buffet in Moscow, Idaho. Fattest people I've ever seen in my life. It was as though 300 lbs was the minimum size for women and 400 lbs for the men.

Any good cruising in Moscow, Idaho?

The only thing good about buffets is the great comedy that John Pinette got from going to them. May he rest in peace .

a couple of years ago we went travelling through the four corner states, so im eating at my first applebees. dont bite my head off. it was either this or mcdonalds or a gas station. there's a homegrown mexican place but its closed. anyway. this sad place gives new meaning to thoreau's famous phrase: "quiet desperation". all the food on the menu is trying REAL hard to be cheery. "we built this city" by jefferson starship airplane whatever the fuck is on their music PA...literally the worst song of all time. i see a row of folks drinking at the bar and i imagine to myself who the fuck would come here to get drunk at the bar? that's when u know you've hit rock bottom...when the bartender at apple bees refuses to serve you any more bahama mama-tinis. oh and after we ate i noticed there was a full big toe toenail on the booth seat beside me on my left side.

i was also at a chinese buffet called the moon palace. we were seated not far from a man, who when finished with his meal proceeded to take his false teeth out and lick them.

A very forgettable touristy restaurant in Miami Beach. Ordered a seafood meal, with a fish soup, which was a broth, and tasted like someone dipped a bowl into the aquarium. Horrible. And of course it cost ten times it's value. Any time I see an article about great restaurants in this area, I cringe.

Runner up: Pizzeria Uno, Union Station, Washington, D.C. I ordered Chicken parmesan, and the chicken tasted like some freezer-burned rock from the back of the Frigidaire freezer.

I went to a Denny's while on vacation in Riudoso, NM. There were huge deep holes in the booth seats. The waitress was wondering around doing nothing. They didn't even have that many customers. It took her 15 minutes just to come to our table to ask what we wanted to drink. Then it took another 15 minutes just for her to come back with our drinks and ask what we wanted to eat. Took over an hour to get our food. The food was gross. If you are in Riudoso, I would recommend you avoid that place like the plague.

This thread had some doozies too. My favorite:

[quote]At an old Mexican dive (Curtis Street Bar) in Denver before the gentrification of the lower downtown area, I was sitting with coworkers as a large roach skittered along the table and posed, wiggling its antennae. One of the prissier members of the group screeched and called out to the waitress (let's call her Juanita), pointing and declaring "THERE'S. A. COCKROACH. ON. THE. TABLE!!!!"

[quote]Juanita aimed her fingers and with a practiced flick shot the thing across the dining room.

[quote]"Now there ain't," she calmly said as she walked away.

Well there was the time I was served a glass of water at this Upper West Side Indian restaurant and when I glanced down there was a cockroach floating in the water dead.

I believe that R30 comes close to beating R17.

In my traveling salesman days I stopped at Wendy’s somewhere in central Illinois. Seated at one of the tables was the fattest family of four I have ever seen. The daughter had emptied five or six biggie fries on her tray and was shoving them in her face . The father was using a bowl of chili as a dipping sauce for one of the 10 or 12 burgers that were on the table. There were gobs of chili and catsup in his beard. It’s a good thing I saw them before I ordered my food Because I immediately lost all my appetite and had to leave it was years before I could go into a Wendy’s again

I was raped, robbed and written a bad check

I agree, it's a tie for R30 and R17.

OP I've been to that buffet in Mt Vernon. They had fried smelt. I pocketed several and threw them at my brother on the car ride home.

we were at a diner type place in arizona and the waitress came over and said: "what can i get for you'se guyses?" we left her a 15 dollar tip.

Red Lobster in times Square gave me food poisoning and diarrhea.

This story was posted on DL some time ago. Because of its relevance to the thread, I racked and racked my memory to recall the name of the restaurant in the story, almost giving up. However, the restaurant's name miraculously popped into my mind at the last moment before recall shutdown (weird).

Enjoy -

A woman I knew said she was pregnant in the 1940s and was at dinner with friends and saw a half of a cockroach in her plate after she’d eaten off it. She said she puked right there where she was seated.

earrings

AND CAFTANS!!!

I've never gotten sick at McDonald's.

I wonder whatever happened to that vegan restaurant where the owner's kids presented hole to the customers while they were eating.

It got good reviews online so it must be YOU OP, yes, it's YOU.

[quote]Our waitress lost control of her tray

Could have been worse.

Great thread!

1) Lordsburg, NM, a small greasy-spoon diner that looked pretty unassuming. It was. I ordered two beef tacos. Each turned out to be a thin hamburger patty cut in two, which made them exactly fit the tortilla in which they were wrapped. I decided to eat them anyway. I asked for salsa and was given ketchup. Had this been in Vermont or Finland I might have understood, but it was in Lordsburg, FUCKING-NEW-MEXICO, where you'd think they'd know how to make a goddamn taco.

2) The Burger Mill, Kahuku (Oahu), Hawaii. Ordered the Kahuku Burger (I think it was called). It contained the strangest meat I've ever tried to eat. It looked like a normal hamburger patty, but when you bit into it, your teeth bounced off it. It was beyond rubbery—it was damn near pure rubber. I literally couldn't bite through it. The Burger Mill was staffed by a group of what appeared to be very sturdy and cranky Samoans, so I chose not to make an issue over the rubber burger.

3) The park snack shack, Hawaii Nudist Park, Kahuku, Hawaii. Just a friendly little camp-run snack shack at Hawaii's only nudist park back in the day. I ordered a kraut dog. Ruthie, the "waitress" du jour, heated the hot dog, put it in a bun—and then dumped an entire CAN of sauerkraut on it! I don't think she understood the concept that you only need a tablespoon or so of sauerkraut for a kraut dog. I wouldn't say that was a bad restaurant experience, just a strange one.

4) Carrow's Restaurant, Santa Barbara, CA. I was having Sunday breakfast with my family. As a young waitress was passing our table, she accidentally dropped the tray she'd been carrying with 6 or 8 glasses of ice water, all of which landed on me—and only me. The poor waitress burst into tears. I assured her that I wasn't hurt, that I was "wash & wear," and that my Levi's and t-shirt would certainly survive. "But this is the second time today I've done that," she sobbed. I really felt sorry for her. I would have left her a nice tip, but she wasn't our server.