QOTD: The worst meal you ever had

[atlasien]

As a spin-off of the "worst room" thread, what's the worst meal you've ever had while on a trip?

Mine was an empanada (pastry) at a train stop in Peru that I suspect was stuffed with rancid llama meat.

A friend of mine went to a diner in Helen, Georgia and was served a bowl of cheese grits. The cheese was a slice of American thrown on top of the grits... and they didn't bother to take it out of the plastic.

[silkie]

Worst meal I've ever had was in this tourist trap seafood place in Boston. The ironic thing is that all the friends that I went with are locals, and I have been there for 4 years already, and we still fell for it.

The restaurant is right next to the water, and they claim to have th freshest seafood picked directly from the nearby water. The night we went, it was rainy and disgusting, and whoever had the bright idea of going doesn't take into account that it was outdoors under a tent. So that in itself is pretty gross, coupled with the fact that it is still packed with a wet and sweaty crowd.

So the first course came, and the clams are shut tight. It smelled faintly of garbage. We ignored it because we were hungry, don't feel like treking through the rain to another location, and figure the smell is from being close to the ocean. When opened, it will leak water inside. I almost busted my teeth because most of them have sand in it. And I realized why I have never been a big fan of western seafood, because of its lack of any sauce except for butter.

As the evening progressed, we ordered more and more food, just because we were so unsatisfied with what we've had and wanted to leave with a fuller stomach. The worst for me came when I ordered a lobster, and it was, like all the other things, disgusting and smells like trash. But I ignored it, and then I saw that it has lobster eggs which is a good thing for chinese people. But after several bite, I noticed that it has the wrong texture, more gelatinous that I remembered, and it is black instead of orange. So I just put it down. At the end we, ended up ordering a huge load of calamary because you just cannot go wrong with fried stuff. It was passable, aside from the faint smell of garbage. If the waitress wasn't so nice, we would've refused to pay (I would never do such a thing, but that shit is so bad I was considering it). Instead, we sweet talked her into giving us a discount.

A week later, I heard the restaurant was closed down by the board, because they were keeping their live stock in the water, where the fecal matter from their bathroom gets dumped into.

[Vahz]

Worst meal I've ever had was in this tourist trap seafood place in Boston. The ironic thing is that all the friends that I went with are locals, and I have been there for 4 years already, and we still fell for it.

The restaurant is right next to the water, and they claim to have th freshest seafood picked directly from the nearby water. The night we went, it was rainy and disgusting, and whoever had the bright idea of going doesn't take into account that it was outdoors under a tent. So that in itself is pretty gross, coupled with the fact that it is still packed with a wet and sweaty crowd.

So the first course came, and the clams are shut tight. It smelled faintly of garbage. We ignored it because we were hungry, don't feel like treking through the rain to another location, and figure the smell is from being close to the ocean. When opened, it will leak water inside. I almost busted my teeth because most of them have sand in it. And I realized why I have never been a big fan of western seafood, because of its lack of any sauce except for butter.

As the evening progressed, we ordered more and more food, just because we were so unsatisfied with what we've had and wanted to leave with a fuller stomach. The worst for me came when I ordered a lobster, and it was, like all the other things, disgusting and smells like trash. But I ignored it, and then I saw that it has lobster eggs which is a good thing for chinese people. But after several bite, I noticed that it has the wrong texture, more gelatinous that I remembered, and it is black instead of orange. So I just put it down. At the end we, ended up ordering a huge load of calamary because you just cannot go wrong with fried stuff. It was passable, aside from the faint smell of garbage. If the waitress wasn't so nice, we would've refused to pay (I would never do such a thing, but that shit is so bad I was considering it). Instead, we sweet talked her into giving us a discount.

A week later, I heard the restaurant was closed down by the board, because they were keeping their live stock in the water, where the fecal matter from their bathroom gets dumped into.

rofl. awesome, dude.

[ellencho]

During the first week of January this year, the bf and I walked 2 miles into the next town for an Indian buffet we had never tried. I should have known better, because for about a year this particular restaurant had a giant posterboard letter hung in their front window written out by a local elementary school thanking them for the delicious food and for not making it too spicy.

So we get there, and there are only two other people eating there. Since it was close to 130PM we figured we must have missed the lunch crowd. We get to the buffet set up and they had a couple of dishes with items that I recognized. Some chicken, some chick peas stewy type deal, naan, rice, raw veggies. Most of these items just looked plain sad, while others looked normal.

We should have just gotten up and walked out, but instead we got plates and served ourselves. After two bites I was disgusted. The rice was really old and tasted like playdoh smells, the chickpeas tasted like they were cooked in campbell's tomato soup, the chicken was completely dried out and had a sort of sticky sweet outer layer. The naan was the only edible thing on our plates. I looked up at the bf, and he started laughing and said that I had the saddest face ever. I then asked for the check, and we paid and left. I felt bad for the waiter, the food was horrible, but it wasn't his fault.

We then walked down 3 blocks to another Indian buffet and ate really well. I'm not sure how that first place manages to stay open. I always thought it looked empty because I always drove by at 2 or 3 PM, but I suppose it's always empty because the food tastes like ass.

[DONKEY]

about every meal i had in london
i dunno why but i saw an "italian" restaurant and thought maybe it would be good. maybe my hunger was confusing me. i was never more wrong. everything tasted stale, the pasta was sticky and the sauce just like a canned tomato afterthought.
guess ive been lucky with never getting served rotten meat. there's some pretty awful places where i live but ive stopped eating out.

[ZhuBaJie]

worst meal i had, that i can remember, was probably this big eggroll i bought from a Vietnamese street vendor that sells snacks and drinks to tourists. it was literally eggroll skin around nothing but boiled cabbage. it tasted like shit and my stomach felt like shit afterwards.

[ellencho]

Why did you keep eating it if it tasted like shit?

[ZhuBaJie]

Why did you keep eating it if it tasted like shit?

because i was really hungry, and because i'm a pig. but i threw it away after eating about half of it. then half an hour later my stomach started feeling like shit.

[ChÈ]

I've learned from experience not to pander to assholes who serve me dogshit and then expect me to pay for the pleasure of eating it. If it's not edible, I don't pay. If it's not palatable, I will remonstrate and, chances are, I won't pay either. I get up, give the waitron or maitre'd a filthy look and walk out.

My wife occasionally gets an urge for pasta and this one time we walked into an ok-looking place and ordered the lunch special. Hers arrived and she said it was ok, mine arrived and it was lousy. Not inedible, just lousy. I waited until my wife's meal arrived before I sent mine back. I didn't order anything else and I wasn't going to give the incompetent chimp in the kitchen the opportunity to hoick a loogie into our food.

And I do not reward bad cooking or service. If you are being served lousy or unacceptable food, then the entire staff body is complicit in the gouge to some degree, from the waitrons up to the cookbot and the maitre'd. You don't owe them a damn thing. If it gives you a kick then tip the waitron because you feel sorry for him/her. But I wouldn't bother.

Worst meal I ever had I was 10 yrs old at a school canteen in Asia. I was at the end of the queue and I was getting the last of the fried noodles left in the wok. The cookbot used her grubby fingers to scoop up the last dregs of noodles (the same hand that she had used to collect money)into my plate. I ate it because, at that age, I had been taught not to waste either food or money. I can still taste that tinny, metallic flavor in the rancid noodles. Ugh.

[ChÈ]

Here's a review I was inspired to write for an internet food forum after a particularly egregious experience:



Food 1 Ambience 3 Service 1 Value 1


I was trying hard to like this place but after our experiences last night I won't be going back. Ever. And the comment about the staff lacking social skills is spot on. And they (i.e. the kitchen staff) are utterly incompetent and completely oblivious as to customer relations. The menu prices seem reasonable at first glance but this an illusion which vanishes when the very small and measly portions appear on the menu. The rice was cold and greasy, the kangkung was grimy, insipid and barely enough for one person, the ayam goreng mentega was a bunch of bony, inedible stuff drowned in sauce.

We had our order in by 7.05 but did not receive our first dish until 7.45 then subsequent dishes began appearing at 10 minute intervals. The waiter apologised for sending our squid to the wrong table (which they did not realise for about 30 mins) but neither he nor the other 3 waiters or the manageress herself could not find it within themselves to apologise for giving us such appalling service, explaining that it was a "busy night" and that they each only had "two hands" and that we needed to understand their point of view. Huh, my heart bleeds!

They explained that everyone else had been served first because they ordered the "easy dishes" so we must have ordered the 'difficult' ones. Actually, the dishes we ordered were pretty basic so the kitchen staff must be feeble-minded as well as incompetent and indifferent. The menu is already pretty narrow but if they can't handle it then they should only serve fried chicken and nothing else.

The skinny, dimwitted, inbred-looking 'waiter' (and I use that description loosely) offered twice to fight me outside on the sidewalk. The other staff were pretty hopeless as well. Will not be going back and I suggest that you all avoid this one like the plague. Unless you want to have a Fawlty Towers experience (without the humour, of course).

[cattygurl]

I had chinese food at this new restaurant where the food was so bad, I just refused to pay and walked out. The restuarnat closed within a few months, so I'm sure I was not alone in my opinion.

[ChÈ]

I think the most sick I ever got from eating bad food was during a train journey through Malaysia. I ate a nasi lemak bought from a vendor off the platform during one of the stops. The kind where the entire transaction takes place through an open carriage window.

Within hours, I was heaving and vomiting in the toilets. That was me for the rest of the trip. For years after that, even the smell of lemak rice (coconut rice) would give me the dry heaves.

I generally have a fairly strong stomach. It gets irritated easily (too much garlic or too much chilli will generally do it) but I rarely get Deathbed Sick from eating contaminated or bad food so it takes a lot to fuck me up that badly.

[ChÈ]

I've had fish and chips where it turned out that the fish fillet was still frozen (like ice) in the middle. I took it back and got another one - with exactly the same result. I just said "fuck it", threw it away and never went back. This was from the surf club canteen run by volunteers, though.

[DONKEY]

i thought usually food poisoning takes more than a few hours to kick in? 12 hours? maybe it was something else you had eaten earlier.
dunno but everytime i had food poisoning i tried to go back in my memory 12 to 48 hours to remember everything i had eaten. then i always remember one particular thing that seemed suspect.
i wonder what % of food poisoning is a result of selecting food while drunk.

[ChÈ]

i thought usually food poisoning takes more than a few hours to kick in? 12 hours? maybe it was something else you had eaten earlier.
dunno but everytime i had food poisoning i tried to go back in my memory 12 to 48 hours to remember everything i had eaten. then i always remember one particular thing that seemed suspect.
i wonder what % of food poisoning is a result of selecting food while drunk.

AFAIK, conventional medical opinion says about 6 hrs.

But I've found that my system reacts almost immediately.

[Ike]

I got food poisoning from pho once. Spent a night curled up next to the toilet, taking short naps between pukes.

I still eat pho.

[Scowl]

Worst meal I've ever had was in China. Me, my friend, and a local were out and hungry, so we just popped into the first place we saw. It was a tiny place with three walls, and I had some zha jiang mian. It was nothing like any zha jiang mian I'd ever seen, but I figured, "hey, lots of people around the world make it in different ways, I don't have to be such a wimp about food."

There were dead bugs in the tea, there were dead bugs in the soup, and I had to pick them out of the noodles. I ordered some raw garlic, because eating that with meals helps to keep you from getting sick. It was dirty. I ate the noodles and the garlic because I was hungry, and because I wasn't going to let a few dead bugs scare me off. I should have let it scare me, because that shit fucked me up.

I forget what my friend got, he had the shits for a couple of days afterwards. Actually, I think he got the same thing and just didn't eat more than a couple of bites. The local dude was fine, of course. He was scarfing that shit down like it was his last meal. I finished my plate, had a couple of spoonfuls of the soup. I had constant, piercing stomach pains and horrendous shits for a week. Like, "wake up in the middle of the night to go squat over the toilet" kind of shits. Without the garlic, dirty as it was, I might have been puking my guts out, too. When I finally decided that I was going to have to see a doctor, it went away.

After that, though, I was able to eat the street food, so in the end it was worth it.