What’s the worst thing you’ve ever been served?

[OneMoreCheekyOne Profile]

Mine was in a restaurant in Mexico. We had no choice when it came to the menu.

One course was cheese and spinach filled pasta served in warm grapefruit juice. It made no sense and was genuinely inedible. Even thinking about the flavours curdling in my mouth makes me gag. Any other monstrosities to share?

[aero280 Profile]

Years ago, we were camping in Spain. We went into the camp shop and bought an oval tin with a key that looked exactly like the tins of Oak Ham that we had in the UK. It was branded with a picture of a thrush on it instead of an oak tree.

When opened, it turned out to be a tin of cooked thrushes in jelly. All lying there staring up at us, complete with beaks, eyes and claws...

[Earthmaiden Profile]

OMCO, that sounds awful!

Most awful things I've been served are more due to my personal taste rather than being truly terrible. I've mentioned before the time I was offered 'spaghetti bolognese' made by adding copious amounts of ketchup to spaghetti topped with grated mousetrap cheese. Undercooked meat of a kind which should have had long, slow cooking is another horror to me. A friend ordered prawns with a garlic dipping sauce in a pub and got a small bowl containing what appeared to be a weak Bisto gravy devoid of garlic with prawns hanging round the edge. I was glad I'd ordered something else.

[Suffs Profile]

Some 20+ years ago we went for a meal at a place called the The S*****s at Delabole on the North Cornish coast ... it was a Monday and out of season and we were very hungry and we couldn't find anywhere open ... we walked in to find a couple sitting by the fire in the bar ... both looked scruffy, he had a pint in his hand but she was sewing ... putting a new zip in a pair of man's trousers ... we asked if they were open and they said that they were and showed us through to the dining room ... took the chairs off the table ... dried the wet seats with a teatowel and set the table ... OH ordered plaice on the bone ... I ordered duck in a honey glaze, both with mashed potatoes and peas.

We waited and waited ... there were sounds of an argument in the kitchen and lots of pinging of microwaves ... eventually the food arrived ... OH's fish was frazzled around the edges and absolutely cold, almost still frozen, at the bone inside. My duck was very well done indeed, covered with honey which had been heated so much that it looked like a solid varnish and welded the duck to the plate. The potato was powdered and hadn't been stirred ... lumps of powder ... the peas were a tin of mixed vegetables. We were ravenous and had no food at the cottage where we were staying ... it was our first day ... we nibbled at what we could, put some money on the table and left. There didn't seem any point in saying anything ... if they didn't know that was wrong there seemed little point in telling them and we were so exhausted we didn't want an argument.

As we left another couple walked in .......... we walked past the windows to see more chairs being taken off a table ..


We still talk about it ................... I think it closed down shortly after our visit ... unsurprisingly ... there's not been a S*****s restaurant in Delabole for years and years ...

An experience to rival that one was the poached egg on toast I was served at a café in Peterborough .... it was obviously a stale egg so the white had spread ... it had been boiled so that the white was like a lace curtain and the yolk was more like a lump of modelling clay ... totally inedible, but the waitress said the cook had left for the day so she'd made it for me herself ... I explained that I wasn't feeling well and couldnt eat if after all ...

[herbidacious Profile]

Vegetarian offering on a package holiday on Leros - Greek dancing night out: a whole marrow which must have been cooked in half a bottle of olive oil and nothing else. c. 1992.
Package holidays could be a very cheap option in those days, and I was very poor (on my second or third degree.) This was the first time I went on one. For the most part it was fine/good. We didn't need to go on the trips, but not having a car it seemed to make sense and we didn't know any better Other trips out left me without much to eat too, in spite of being promised vegetarian options.
I enjoyed the dancing (Must have been the wine...)

[Stokey Sue Profile]

A few things stand out
Salt cod served at a Portuguese folklore night- I love salt cod, but I do think you should soak and cook it properly, not just rinse it and deep fry it

A paella (sic) served to my friend at a Mediterranean restaurant (Greek roots) in South Africa - spaghetti in packet cheese sauce studded with minced seafood

Endless steaks ordered rare/bleu, with great emphasis on the rareness in both UK and France but delivered shoe leather brown and dry all through; the French often don’t believe that les Anglaises even know what rare means and certainly don’t think we can tolerate it

[Sakkarin Profile]

Jugged hare that a friend's mother lovingly presented to us for dinner when I was visiting, shot and hung by his father.

I've had game since - I made a game pie at college complete with meat from a pheasant I'd plucked and drawn myself (that was the lesson for that day), which was actually rather good, although that "gameiness" is not really to my taste.

[scullion Profile]

my birthday, last year, at a recently reopened place nearby - a side of chargrilled brussels sprouts (blackened and raw) swimming in a savoury gruel the title of which may have been teriyaki but wouldn't have recognised as anything now. sent back once and the replacement left after trying.

a bowl of home grown raspberries and yoghurt that, by the time the main course had been eaten, had released their wiggly tenants to take their exercise over the surface of the yoghurt.
ridiculed after explaining that i was sorry and couldn't eat them on being asked why i had left them.

a meal at a local, renowned, pub that was normally really good but which may have changing hands at that point. an obvious packet mix pasta and broccoli bake (my mother thought it was ok - see below) and a microwaved pasty, that my daughter had and that left her puking up for much of the night with food poisoning. we should have been warned by the lack of cars parked up the lane and all the room in the car park.

my mother's cooking.

[Seatallan Profile]

We once ate at a branch of Pierre Victoire near where we lived previously. I can't remember now what we ordered but mine was fish and his was meat and when the meals (finally) turned up, they were indistinguishable (and both smothered in a gloopy, brown, unidentifiable sauce). It took us three attempts to get the bottle of wine we had ordered, the service was appalling and the pudding came covered with cheap (Happy Shopper) custard (I saw them opening the carton). Later that night, Mr S came down with some sort of food poisoning and spent the following 24 hours projectile-vomiting. Happy days....

[Stokey Sue Profile]

For the record, I had a fabulous meal in the branch of Pierre Victoire at 5 Dean Street Soho just last week, but think they may be a franchise so variable. Most of the other customers at lunch time were regulars

Scullion sprouts remind me of a local wine bar, I ordered the cauliflower steak with Romesco sauce. The sauce was ok but lacking in oomph, the steak was raw with char grill marks here and there, a sort of craft exercise in poker worK. I complained and was assured that was how it was supposed to be which is always the final straw isn’t it?

[aero280 Profile]

OH has a couple of tales from the more rural parts of the country when staying away on audit.

One was a dirty fork with "stuff" between the prongs. She asked for it to be changed because it was dirty. The same fork returned with a comment from the waitress "Chef says it's not dirty, it's just soap".

The other was when a bottle of wine arrived. When poured it was cloudy with dregs. They asked for it to be changed, which it was. But the young waiter came back later to say "We thought that we would drink the wine you didn't like, but, the whole bottle was cloudy, not just the bit I poured out".

[Earthmaiden Profile]

I was with a friend having food at Frankie & Bennys before going to the cinema next door. She ordered fish and chips but the fish was cold in the middle with the sort of frozen lump you can get when defrosting in a microwave. She sent it back and a very short while later was presented with a new piece of fish but in the same state. The waitress told her that the manager had eaten the previous piece and couldn't find anything wrong with it and that she was making a fuss over nothing.

[karadekoolaid Profile]

Probably the Italian restaurant where I ordered Spaghetti with 3 sauces.
The 3 sauces were:
1) Ketchup
2) Mayonnaise
3) Underwood´s tinned devilled ham

[Lusciouslush Profile]

andouillettes & bulots - not at the same time, or on the same plate - but both in France & never forgotten

[Kacey Profile]

Somewhere where the only veggie option main course was pasta Napolitana, and it turned out to be spaghetti with a huge dollop of ketchup.

Around 20 years ago I ordered a baked potato with cheese for lunch and it arrived with additional cubes of ham - the waiter thought it acceptable to flick them off and offer it me again!

[Stokey Sue Profile]

In July 1984 I was admitted to Bart’s. For supper I was served a “sausage roll“ apparently constructed from sawdust and grease with a side of watery cubes of swede, probably frozen.

I had meant to ask for vegetarian as I thought I could survive a few days of cheese salad - but the vegetarian in the next bed was served a plate of spaghetti boiled to a grey glue and topped with lukewarm canned tomatoes, no other ingredient added

[Sakkarin Profile]

andouillettes

It's not a real dish anyway, it's something the French pretend they like to eat so they can see the look on Brit's faces when they try it. They especially enjoy it if the Brits pretend they like it, to appear to be a connoisseur...

[KeenCook2 Profile]

Somewhere where the only veggie option main course was pasta Napolitana, and it turned out to be spaghetti with a huge dollop of ketchup.

When I was little, spaghetti and tomato ketchup was a big treat! The spaghetti was very long, and came in blue paper wrapping!

My worst experience, at dinner at a friend's, was eating what I thought was a steak and mushroom pie and the "mushrooms" turned out to be kidneys ...

[Stokey Sue Profile]

andouillettes

It's not a real dish anyway, it's something the French pretend they like to eat so they can see the look on Brit's faces when they try it. They especially enjoy it if the Brits pretend they like it, to appear to be a connoisseur...

You should go to Troyes, home of the andouillette de Troyes

Actually you should go if you get the chance - it's a beautiful old town that makes a nice break on a specially boring section of autoroute surrounded by fields of sugar beet

They are definitely and without question very fond of their andouillettes

[Lusciouslush Profile]

Agree with you there, Troyes was ( is ) hopefully, at some future point a good stop-over.

They certainly do adore their andouillettes & not a Brit in sight................