Tell me your worst food experience in Chicago

I did a search and did not find a thread to this specific topic, but if it has been covered before, please forgive me..

OK, so the forum is dedicated to primarily speaking about good restaurants in and around Chicago but we often forget to pay homage to those, shall we say, experiences that either make us never visit an establishment again, or that repulse us so much that we can never eat a specific type of food again.

No need to specifically name the institution (calling it a restaurant may be too much), but rather give the city and cuisine

My wife had one recently at a Chinese restaurant in Niles where whe found a roach in her Chicken and Broccoli....Nedless to say, they did not make her pay for her meal. Their response was that is must has come in with the Broccoli....I guess that they don't pay much attention to what they put in their meals...Chicken good, roaches bad (even if they both have a protein value)

KevinT

Two Words...Beefee's Beef:

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=2546#2546

There is this tapas place at Irving and Lincoln. It was so bad, we kept ordered to see if it got better and it kept getting worse. It was almost a parody of a bad restaurant, everything was so terrible.

Mars Chinese on Broadway. They went to the trouble to put together this really nice room where they serve Chinese Food that tastses as if it came from a can.

there was a french vietnamese place on north clark that is now closed. it's the only time i have walked out in the middle of a meal - after 90 minutes seated we hadn't gotten out entrees and the place was almost empty...

ann sather on southport - selling day old connamon rolls as fresh

southport grocery - everything is overcooked and over seasoned

george's hot dogs on damen - easily the worst hot dog i've ever had - stale bun slim trimmings...

silk road downtown -WYSIWYG - i'm not unconvinced the chicken didn't meow at one point.

thai room - i know alot of people like it - their tom yum is tastey...their pad thai - truly inedible...

Nestled on the east side of the 95th street bridge,right about where Jake and Elwood crash landed the blues mobile sits this oddly inviting hamburger joint.

Having an hour to kill between sales calls last Friday I passed thru Phil's portal and entered a grease stained hell. Everything in the place including the sullen and sweating waitress/grill person is layered in a patina of grease. Fox News was blaring from a wall hung TV and the layer of grease on the screen gave the evenings news a somehow just right yellow hue.

In for a dime, in for a dollar I ordered the monster burger(buy 3 get 1 free). When I asked the waitress why it was called the monster burger she replied in a deadpan, over medicated tone that it's "as- big -as -a- whopper". The only difference being the 1/8 inch pattie is griddled to hocky puck hardness , served up on a 2 day old bun and bedded down in room temp wilted lettuce and tomatoes.

Next to a monster burger the whopper would truly shine.

John

Phils Kastle
95th St. and Ave M
Chicago

I am sure many, especially the owners/operators of this forum, are watching this particular thread just to see how, when and it what manner it crosses the line. I for one am all for this discussion as I am 100% sure every writer here has done so in the spirit of education and/or entertainment and not to slander or defame any business. And as a potential customer of some of these establishments I do feel I have a right to know if something could be wrong inside. And like most of us I am wise enough to know that barring certain conditions (e.g infestations, no hot water) you should not really judge a dining experience on a single visit, especially if it was below par.

The reason for the poorly worded disclaimer above is because after reading and laughing out loud at some of these comments I have a lot more stories to relate, most with a humorous/entertaining slant but still factual nonetheless. My questions are as follows:

Are we OK doing this? My concern is some proprietor gets lawyered up and causes grief for the wonderful moderators here.

Can we proceed under the assumption that as long as what we write is true, we are ok? I am about as ignorant of law as I am of French cusine, I have always heard that it isnt slander if it is true.


I am not a chef, cook, food industry person etc. But for about 15 years I worked remodeling bars & eateries and servicing the coolers and refrigeration equipment. Granted they where not high class places, mostly neighborhood places although I have seen some mentioned here and on that other forum.

Very early on when I was doing this, I think it may have been my second project, I encountered cucharachas while working in a kitchen. I informed the owner and he more or less told me " Kid if your gonna work in kitchens, get used to it. They are everywhere, they all have 'em. They just control them and never talk about them. If you are looking for a place that doesnt have them you will never eat out again"

I didnt really think about that again until I read this thread. So I ask those of you who are in the business, tell me honestly, is this true? Or in lieu of an answer is this something that is under a policy similair to the US Military policy on same sex realtionships? If so I would of course understand.


Bob

Bob,

Very funny comment....As a patron of some less than desirable establishements too, all we are doing is sharing the truth in hope of having these places change their ways (yeah, right)....As a recent visitor of Central DuPage Hospital after a visit to a place that shall remain unnamed in the western suburbs, I consider this a public service to keep our insurance companies from paying huge bills, $8K in the case of my wife and I for an less than desired extended stay in the hospital.

Bob, you are in fact correct. As the posting guidelines say:

Some types of posts have legal implications for you and the site. Please refrain from accusations of criminal activity, health code violations, or other wrongdoing. If your complaint is serious and provable, please take it to the proper authorities.

Food poisoning and other Health Department-level accusations are something that we cannot allow-- we've got legal issues there, based on the unprovability of such accusations. (The reality is that people often get it wrong where their food poisoning came from, as it takes longer to manifest itself than they think.) So alas, we are going to need to remove a few of these. We're not shutting the thread down, it's fun and hey, we've all been there, but please keep it shy of alleging actual legal violations from named places and either 1) talk about taste/opinion matters in regards to named restaurants or 2) tell horrible stories without naming actual names or giving enough clues that we can guess.

I grew up in restaurants. Mom worked in restaurants and owned one for several years. She never had roaches but there were rats in the basement. I never saw one, but I was always afraid of running into one when I used the bathroom. Several years ago, I took the restaurant management course at CHIC which required a class in sanitation. I had a State of Illinois sanitation certificate. I am probably a little more sensitive to restaurant sanitation issues and notice things that could lead a kitchen to trouble. And, it's not just the cooks, it's also the servers, the way they handle the dishes, grooming issues, etc. etc.. There was a story in the New Yorker a couple of years ago about restaurant sanitation from the point of view of the health inspectors. It was very interesting but if I lived in New York, I probably would never eat at the restaurants that were visited. And, there's Anthony Bourdin's book with his behind the scenes look. But, I'm getting a little off the subject, I think. As one poster mentioned, you could have a beautiful dining room (and a state of the art kitchen) and still have bad food.

Just one thing before I get back on topic. We all discussed the "sanitation" issues encoutered in restaurants and one thing that has not been mentioned is the fact that insects can and will enter a restaurant in the products that come in....many warehouses have infestation issues and it is known that these critters can be transported into a restaurant in a cardboard box. With that being said, I will refrain from further hijacking this post and talk about some of my least favorite dishes in the course of dining out.

a wierd carrot terrine in tomato water. just didn't work, on many levels

a resto with a dessert menu that had nothing on it that remotely interested me. too many esoteric, wierd things with spice and not enough chocolate, fruit, and ice cream.

restaurants that use the same sides with every plate. a mixed vegetable sautee is a favorite among some north shore resto's because its perceived as a "safe" option

to further that, I once at one of the top restaurants in the burbs and had a duck entree that had a great red cabbage and butternut squash garnish, only to be marred with that everpresent zucchini, pepper, and onion garnish as well.

more when I think of them.....

In September, for my birthday, my fiance took me to an expensive French restaurant in the southwest burbs, IL. I've never bitten into more vile scallop in my life. I told the waiter to have the chef check the remaining scallops as they might make someone quite ill if they kept serving them. They were kind and offered something different, but by then I was feeling quite ill. Thankfully, the awesome 5 chocolates dessert made up for it all. I'm not going to hold it against them, I was just REALLY surprised considering the reputation of the place.

Olive Garden. Mundelien. Several years ago. We met my wife's parent's and grandmother for late lunch or early dinner. (Why there, I don't recall. Grandmother may have picked.) It was the weekend before Mother's Day. Because we would not see my mother-in-law on Mother's Day, my wife decided to give her mother her gift in the restaurant. Big mistake. After we had finished our entrees (which were predictably bad, but, it's the OG, so what do you expect), the entire waitstaff surrounded my poor m-i-l and started clapping and shouting some sort of birthday chant, composed, no doubt, at company headquarters -- something peppier than "Happy Birthday," you know, more 'fun'. The teenagers working in the restaurant didn't want to do this. We didn't want them to do this. It was no ones birthday but but shock and midwestern politeness prevented us from pointing that out. It was aweful. We were all caught in vortex of forced corporate gaiety that no one really wanted any part of but were powerless to escape. The birthday cake wasn't very good either.

edk wrote: the entire waitstaff surrounded my poor m-i-l and started clapping and shouting some sort of birthday chant, composed, no doubt, at company headquarters -- something peppier than "Happy Birthday," you know, more 'fun'. The teenagers working in the restaurant didn't want to do this. We didn't want them to do this. It was no ones birthday but but shock and midwestern politeness prevented us from pointing that out. It was aweful. We were all caught in vortex of forced corporate gaiety that no one really wanted any part of but were powerless to escape.

I believe a lot of them do it because Happy Birthday is copyrighted (until 2030!), and commercial use of it requires a fee and all that jazz.

that's why the chain restaurants usually have a CYA happy birthday knock off. a lot of smaller restaurants just do a normal happy birthday.

-ed

Lee's Chop Suey, Diversey near Western

Went there for the first time about 2 years ago. Someone in this thread mentioned that a restaurant should be given more than one shot to truly judge it, a belief I partially share. I've given Lee's two shots, only because the first time was so jaw-droppingly, I-must-be-on-Candid-Camera, wouldn't feed this to my worst enemy wrong that I had to go back a second time to be sure it wasn't a prank. Both times, the "food" I ordered (and I went with other people both times as well) was absolutely devoid of taste. This is not a joke. I'm not talking bland or not enough salt or not spicy enough, but NO TASTE. The shrimp egg foo yung looked decent eough on the plate, but was mushy, limp, and tasted like - nothing. Remember the Neverending Story? The big creature warning about the "nothing?"

"You mean, is it a hole?"

"Well, a hole would be something. This is .... nothing."

It was as though a flavor vampire had sucked the life out of this plate of food. Really, it tasted like it had been intentionally boiled and blanched for hours just to make sure no taste molecules somehow sneaked in. My friend's chop suey (the "signature" dish . . . haha) suffered a similar fate - limp, beyond bland food in a place whose idea of chop suey is wallpaper paste with greyish hunks of meat and a lot of celery and peanuts. The second time at Lee's, I got more adventurous and tried garlic chicken. True to form, the chicken was like biting into a piece of foam rubber, and there must have been a garlic embargo that day, cause there was none to be found. It's too bad about Lee's - an old-school American/Chinese looking place (all reds and vinyl booths and hanging lanterns) so close to my house, with nice owners and waiters too. Unfortunately, I could think about food and get more taste on my palate than from what is actually served there. As Mad Magazine would say, "Yeccchhhh."

Da Reb

At Lula, my wife was served a plate of overcooked, sticky pasta that was flavored with a dusting of cinnamon and the puddle of starchy water it rested in. It was the worst dish in the history of eating out for us, easy.

Tuscany, about 3 years ago. My husband and I were dating, and as poor college students, it was a big date-night splurge on what we were led to believe would be very good Italian food.
The overall feeling was akin to a previous poster's -- the experience was so astonishingly awful, I was left wondering if we weren't somehow caught in the middle of a prank. Nope, just a horrid dining experience. It began with an unexplained 20 minute wait: there were rows of empty tables, and yet the host made no move to seat us -- but was seating others who had come in after we had. We were finally seated, but with no menu. Our surly waiter brought them a few minutes later, then gave us water that, I'm not even joking, smelled and tasted like it had been wrung from the hide of a wet dog. Things continued to go downhill -- as I recall, there were zucchini flowers involved that, in terms of the greasy "ick factor" would have put McDonald's to shame; my husband's meat (steak, maybe pork - really don't remember) was frozen in the center, and Mr. Surly balked when my husband asked for it to be reheated; my pasta dish was undersauced to the point that I honestly thought they had just forgotten and had served me plain pasta. It was one thing after another, and by the time the check came, we were ready to run. Instead, after literally throwing the check at my husband, the world's angriest waiter simply didn't return to our table. After 10 minutes, my husband walked up to the host and handed him his credit card. We both came away from that experience with our minds absolutely blown.
In desperation, I once ate at an Olive Garden in Toledo, OH - it was too mundane in its badness to win any "worst-of" award.

The funniest bad dining experiences I've had have been with my friend Emily who, on three separate occasions in three very different restaurants, has not been served her food. Each time, she placed an order with the rest of us, yet didn't get anything. The first time this happened was in a Thai place on N. Clark, and, after it was clear that she wasn't getting her dinner, she called the waiter over to ask about her food. He stared at her blankly, repeated, "Food...?" and then hurried back to the kitchen. Periodically, we would catch him peeking around the corner, staring at her and, ostensibly, waiting for us to leave. It wasn't awful, just bizarre.

Grizzley Lodge - everything was either overcooked or reheated. My blackened chicken was just that! The only thing worth eating were the wings. My stomach did not settle until lunch the next day.

Many years ago when my wife was going to school in Dallas we found a wonderful Italian restaurant in the Highland Park neighborhood. Several months later, on my next visit, we reserved a table there for Saturday evening. Upon arrival we noticed that there seemed to be a different atmosphere to the place, although nothing essential seemed to have changed. In particular, the staff had become very young.

After we examined the menus, I asked for the wine list. The waiter replied: "I'm sorry, sir, we don't have a wine list. A month ago our school purchased the restaurant and it's now part of our Hotel Management program, and since we're a Baptist school no alcoholic beverages are allowed on the premises. Can I get you a Dr. Pepper or a coke?"

"Water will be fine," and I realized that my initial inspection of the menu would require serious reassessment. We finally decided on the Fettuccine Alfredo. After all it only has, basically, four ingredients (fettuccine, butter, parmesan, cream) and how could they . . .

"Good choice, sir, although I should warn you that this is a dish we prepare at the table and some of our patrons prefer that we cook the garlic first rather than press it directly onto the pasta. Which do you prefer?"

I think I preferred the former, and the rest of the meal remains, mercifully, a blank.

Genesee Depot was our worst dining experience so far. The food there lacks flavor and the prices are ridiculous for what they offer.

My worst food experience was in a sports restaurant downtown, perhaps it was run by a cable sports network.

The place was only open a few days, in fact I might have been there before the grand opening. I thought it might be a fun place to have a beer, and after one, I ordered some sort of buffalo chicken strips. They arrived raw. Strips of pink fleshy chicken covered in buffalo sauce. I cut one in half to make sure I was seeing what I though I was seeing. Then I cut another one, just to see if it was the whole batch. Then I gave them back to the bartender, and he got the manager.

The manager and another management guy examined the basket of raw meat and then accused me of eating most of it, and then trying to get a free meal. I tried to explain just how bad serving raw chicken was, by wiping the sauce off one of them and flopping the fleshy and uncooked strip around, explaining that cooked meat doesn't flop around like that.

Just then a channel 7 news camera guy walked by (shooting a feature on the new place) and I said to him, floppy chicken piece still in hand, "hey get a shot of this".

Next thing I know I'm being physically thrown out the front door, but not before being forced to pay my tab (the chicken and one beer), under threat of having the police be called.

I attempted to reach the management by phone for a week after the incident, but they were so new, they weren't even listed.

I'd like to hear more about your experience at Genessee Depot. The few times I've been there, I've been more than impressed with the flavor, presentation, and quantity of food served, minus the pierogi for 10 dollars. The prime rib price seemed very fair for the portion size and quality of the meat served. On the last occasion I was there, four out of four diners were more than pleased with their entrees.

If you are talking about ESPN Zone downtown, I would agree that the place is one of the most overpriced purveyors of really bad food. I took my two nieces there on the way to O'Hare and the food was served cold and not very well prepared at all. $50 for a light lunch. Should have gone over to foodlife.

I will neither confirm nor deny where it was.

As for a general opinion on giant entertainment complex restaurants, they are very efficient in delivering huge amounts of processed, portioned food at tourist prices, so we should expect food that's not that bad, but not worth the price. Those places aren't going to win any regulars, but they don't need to.

That said, corporate places are very careful and very stringent about anything that could be considered a health/legal issue. My opinion about most corporate QSR's and causal dining places is that the food isn't good because it is so sterile.

Wow, let me stop laughing hysterically. I just got back from a ride thru NWI and I decided to stop at the above mentioned oddly inviting Phil's Kastle hamburger's (Im mad I wasnt able to finally try the Mexican Inn, I just didnt feel like Americanized taco's). As I walked in I was kind of in awe or shock at how different this place felt (like it or the people hadnt changed or been cleaned since Gary was an up and coming town) I wasnt sure I wanted to order anything but I said "the hell, why not" and ordered a monster with cheese. I was hoping for a 30's style burger or maybe a Schoop's style, something that hadnt changed just like the place and people in it, but what I got really cant be described any better than that above...a rock hard hockey puck with a grey tone served with lettuce and tomato's that were greasy and oddly warm. I took one look and smell and decided then and there it was off to Calumet fisheries because this monster of a thing had just replaced a beef I never ate a while back from Beefee, as the world's worst beef thing-a-majing ever. Period.

DaBeef wrote:As I walked in I was kind of in awe or shock at how different this place felt (like it or the people hadnt changed or been cleaned since Gary was an up and coming town) I wasnt sure I wanted to order anything but I said "the hell, why not" and ordered a monster with cheese.

Well beefy boy, it's not like you weren't warned ! The place is nothing more than a worm hole in the fabric of culinary time that leads straight back to hamburger HELL !!
I've not been back since my last report of three years back, but I am starting to think that the "oddly appealing" Phill's Kastle ,nestled on the banks of the Calumet is where the Sirens of Greek mythology settled after taking down Jason and the Argonauts.

Da Beef wrote:this monster of a thing had just replaced a beef I never ate a while back from Beefee, as the world's worst beef thing-a-majing ever. Period.

Da Beef,

I feel your pain.

The worst thing I have eaten in Chicago was at a Vietnamese restaurant that I actually love. I decided to get adventurous and picked a dish that consisted of pork skin, pork chop and something called, I think, egg cake. The pork chop was good, but the pork skin was revolting - I could swear I could taste the little bristly hairs - and the egg cake turned out to be a slab of pink meat that smelled (and, I think, tasted) exactly like wet dog.

I ate as much of the excellent pork chop as I could, but it was hard going, since I couldn't banish the reek of the egg cake entirely.

probably sea cucumber... it was even weirder when i found out that sea cucumber = sea slug

I'm beginning to worry that I'm just not adventurous enough, because while I've had my share of disappointments, seen the odd cockroach, plucked stray human hairs out of an entree, I haven't really experienced jaw-dropping, throat-closingly awful food. Most of my worst experiences have involved service and behavior rather than the actual food.

The most revolting that I recall was a pre-opera dinner at a fairly upscale Chinese restaurant near the Lyric (whose name I forget and which may no longer exist). We had eaten an unexceptional but adequate dinner and requested my wife's entree left-overs to be wrapped. The bus station was located within our sightlines, masked by a folding screen from most of the dining room, but not from us.

After requesting the doggie bag from the waiter, our busboy came by and cleared the table and went straight to the full bus pan and dumped all our dishes into it. "Oh, well," we thought. "No great loss. He just didn't get the message from the waiter." Then, as we watched with growing horror, the waiter encountered the busbuy. They had a brief cconversation, where the waiter pointed to our table, and the busboy pointed to the bus pan where he had just deposited our left-overs. And then we watched as the waiter dug nto the bus pan and scooped my wife's leftovers, along with god knows what else, into a take-out container and presented it to us.

At that point, I just wanted to make our curtain at the opera, so rather than confronting him, I penned a letter to the manager, feeling that this behavior was a genuine threat society. I never received any reply.