Food disappointment

I hate it when they won't deep-fry their chocolate cakes at my local bakery.

Tough steak

Anything with mushrooms in it, like pasta sauce, soup or salad. I won't touch it.

Getting a pizza delivered with the cheese stuck to the top of the box.

Driving all the way home with your takeout order and finding out they fucked it up.

"I said no mustard, dammit!"

OP - bad dressing absolutely is a salad-killer.

That's why I always get mine on the side and also get a slice of lemon or lime if the salad dressing is gross so I can put some moisture on it.

Also too much or too little cheese can ruin a meal.

Bad icing is a buzzkill too - you can spot the bad shit a mile away, but I still take a bite hoping it's not the overly sweet crap I think it is. You'd think I would have learned by now. Best to just scrape that shit off. Too much sugar in American desserts is an epidemic.

Overcooked, dried out steak.

More of mine: Fries without ketchup

Not enough salt when it's needed

Snooty chefs that won't let you have _X_ with your food because they think they know better. Last I checked, I was paying.

I like chocolate so at Christmas I'm sometimes given a big tray of Ferrero Rocher chocolates by somebody. I HATE hazelnuts so I won't touch them or anything else hazelnuts are in.

[quote]so I can put some moisture on it

Pics please.

I just have never had a taste for Peppers, don't like them at all, they overpower every other taste for me and they are put in a lot of things for taste but I don't like the taste. Clearly they are popular and a lot of people must like them, just not me, the ruin whatever they are in.

Too much ice in a drink - not enough of the liquid I want and then it gets watered down so much within a few minutes.

Fries that aren't sufficiently browned or crisp. I hate mushy, pale fries. Hash browns are the same - there's a reason why BROWN is in the name!

A black fly in your Chardonnay.

For me, olives. I hate the taste and the texture and even the color. I don’t even want them in the same room with me, and they get smuggled into no end of dishes.

You don't want to know.....

I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings!"

I hate lettuce in tacos or burritos.

Pimento in crab cakes or anything.

Anything runny or watery. Guacamole, burritos, wet lettuce, too much watery stuff and I'm not eating.

My guacamole is fabulous. Substandard guac is ick.

I just can't stand the flavor of bell pepper. Many microwave dinners I'd otherwise buy are ruined by diced bell peppers.

Too much salt

Getting a pizza delivered with the cheese stuck to the top of the box.

R4 same goes for Sara Lee boxed desserts.

Good God, why do so many cuisines use cilantro? Ugh.

[quote] Good God, why do so many cuisines use cilantro?

Some people don’t like the taste of cilantro.

Shrunken portions.

High food prices in Trump's America. Thanks, asshole.

A beautiful, delicious fresh salad ruined by the inclusion of goat cheese.

when some home cooks chop up the contents of that bag of guts inside the turkey and add it to the stuffing.

When you see a chunky chocolate chip cookie and it looks really good and you're expecting this sweet, chocolatey burst in your mouth, and you bite into it and...

It's FUCKING OATMEAL AND RAISIN!

God DAMN YOU Oatmeal and Raisin, disguising yourself as chocolate chip cookies. Shame on you! Why do you keep doing this to me?

Don't fuck with my chocolate chip cookie dreams, oatmeal raisin. It ain't right and no, it's NOT funny!

Earrings

CAFTANS

I don’t like whipped cream on a milk shake. I’m surprised by how many places automatically put the whipped cream on. It’s just cloying.

I also get mad when they toast the bagel. I never asked for it toasted. I assume they’re serving stale bagels. No fresh bagel should ever be toasted.

Came here to say “when they insist on toasting the bagel” but R32 beat me to the punch.

A hard, crunchy cookie instead of a soft, chewy one

When you order scrambled eggs but get a brown chopped up omelet.

Salt and pepper crimes.

About every third spur-of-the-moment sweet I whip up with ingredients I already have is iffy.

As much as I like to cook I could never ever be a chef. I hate mushrooms and seafood.

I hate the fish options in most restaurants - there's usually 1 option.

It's going to be 50% of the time salmon, 25% branzino, and 25% tilapia. The last two are garbage fish and salmon is usually farmed and lacking in flavor.

Just don't serve it and focus on having a really nice vegan/vegetarian dish instead.

Chilean sea bass.

A hunk of prime rib that’s 50% fat. And the not fresh grated horseradish served with it.

Cilantro after I’ve requested no cilantro. I’m severely allergic to it and have used my EpiPen at the table on a few occasions.

Undercooked potatoes, from baked ones to steak fries to hash browns. Any undercooked root vegetable, for that matter — carrots, beets, kohlrabi.

Cucumbers. And people put that shit on everything. And its not one of those things you can just remove, the taste lingers any place it touches.

Also, sauted onions. Love raw onions and even caramelized onion (if they are really really caramelized) but sauteed onion have a consistency of dead worms, and they also put that shit everywhere.

Bresse chicken en vessie, but they've swapped the pig bladder for a sous-vide bag? For “precision”? Mon Dieu. Le mets, c’est le geste. You’ve reduced a culinary theatre to ethical lab work, you tragic Ted Talk technicien with boundary issues.

Quenelles de Brochet, Sauce Nantua. Typical sins: Quenelles too dense. The sauce made with shrimp instead of crayfish. You’ve made a fish dumpling and topped it with a Vietnamese shrimp farm crime scene of a bisque.

Tiramisu drowned in cocoa powder.

Truffle oil: the Axe body spray of faux gastronomy.

Burnt champagne

[quote] Cilantro after I’ve requested no cilantro. I’m severely allergic to it

Some people don’t like the taste of cilantro.

Mint is often confusing.

Startling substitutions in one's Kwanzaa Cake. Cherry pie filling instead of Apple. It's now Carrie's Prom Cake.

r46 Did you...did you just malign truffle oil?

My grandparents always bought terrible discount store brand salad dressings. Thank god for salt and pepper.

The ‘beet ash’ with the pan-seared scallops was just burnt beet. Not dehydrated then charred to powder, but carelessly blackened slices, slapped on the plate like firewood trimmings.

Florid overuse of rotary evaporation to extract umami compounds from recherché local botanicals — spruce tip, sea buckthorn, and something called fermented celery root air, then reconstituted into a consommé so unnervingly clear and uncanny valley it lands as 250ml of anxiety sweat, not Kaiseki-Fusion transcendence. We’re looking at you, Alinea and The Fat Duck.

Dry, cakey brownies - unforgivable

Processed meat in sandwiches instead of the real thing.

Coffee "creamer" instead of real half and half.

"Chocolate-flavored" anything, which means it ain't chocolate.

"Frozen dessert" instead of actual ice cream.

R55, what about “cheese product”?

Watery Hollandaise sauce on Eggs Benedict, Hollandaise sauce doesn't contain ANY water, so what's it doing in this sauce. It ruins the whole meal.

Shredded lettuce on sandwiches that are subs/hoagies. You can tell it's leftover from a day or two ago by the brown coloring.

Over-easy eggs that are actually hard cooked. When I want a Taylor Ham, egg, and cheese on a roll, I want some yolk to ooze out. It also keeps the sandwich from being dry. Also, NO FUCKING KETCHUP or HOT SAUCE on the sandwich. I don't care who else likes it that way; I don't.

That disgusting "cherry" or "strawberry" goop that's drizzled on NY style cheese cake. I want mine plain, please. And for that matter, Ricotta cheese cake. Blech!

Food that's supposed to be spicy but itsn't. We had a Jamaican restaurant near me that served Jamaican meat pies and jerk chicken. Neither was spicy as it should be. No wonder the place was always overrun with white people who'd never been to a real Jamaican restaurant. No surprise it closed in less than a year.

R56, I have to admit I like Velveeta LOL.

R58 here. That first line should be "on sandwiches that AREN'T subs/hoagies."

Fish & chips insufficiently salted

I like my potatoes slightly undercooked in potato salad. I don’t like them skinning themselves or falling apart in it like mashed potatoes. I’ve had mashed potato salad and it confuses me. Like cold soups.

Evaporated filled milk. My God the filling is soybean oil.

When they make your salad and put the finely shredded cheddar on it. I think it’s a Midwest thing.

Ordering a well done steak only to find they don't carry A-1 Steak sauce.