Worst Meal Ever

There's a lot of talk about good food here, but what about the worst restaurant meals you've had?

This is at the forefront of my mind as I just returned from what was supposed to be a fun weekend in Nashville. It got derailed by a raging case of food poisoning, picked up at a restaurant I shall not name, though I really wish I could, if only to spare fellow LTHers the pain and suffering we all went through for the past few days.

To add insult to injury, the food was awful in addition to apparently being cooked by Typhoid Mary. The veggies all had a strangely monotonous flavor, or lack thereof; the cabbage tasted like lentils tasted like collards and so on. And when we tried to order yebeg alicha (one of the most delicious things on earth when done right) the waiter didn't know what it was, and neither did the cook, despite the fact that it was on the menu! We received a dish of gray, tough lamb in a greasy, sick-making broth spiced only by jalapenos (?!). How do you make lamb tough, anyway? I've never had it so bad even in the grittiest of gyro joints.

Awful. Awful, awful, awful, and I haven't been so sick since that one time I had tainted sardines. But that's another story.

Suzy Creamcheese wrote:There's a lot of talk about good food here, but what about the worst restaurant meals you've had?

Since we're not mentioning names:

"All You Can Eat Lobster" read the sign. It should have read "Projectile Vomiting for Suckers"

Wow. Sounds like you got a double whammy, there, suzycreamcheese -- both a terrible meal and food poisoning. What a drag. Hope you're feeling better now.

The one time I got really serious food poisoning was also a meal where I had no real expectations -- meatloaf at the Philly airport. It wasn't bad for what it was, it just made me deathly sick.

But as for worst meal, that would probably be yak lung and ground barley in Tibet. Or possibly the rotted shark and rams testicles in Iceland (though fortunately, in Iceland, there were other options, once you'd sampled the traditional food).

I'm sure there have been others, ranging from simply disappointing to really dreadful fare, but I have happily forgotten them and retain mostly memories of meals that were memorable for positive reasons.

I know it's been said before, but it's probably worth noting that depending on the nature of the food poisoning, it's possible that you ingested the offending item up to a full week before you got sick. So it's difficult/impossible to pinpoint the source (though you may have your suspicions) without cross-referencing multiple people.

My worst meal was in Shenzhen at a restaurant called First Work Team. Apparently it's a chain of Chinese theme restaurants based on dining during the cultural revolution. People ate in rooms that were supposed to resemble spartan city dwellings of the period. Personally, I think the "theme" was an excuse to avoid any maintenance. I really enjoy the ramshackle hole in the wall places I've hit in China over the years (and have had some of my best meals in some of the dirtiest little caves), but our room was about 10x10, the walls were bare concrete, there were no windows, the lighting was provided by a pair of dim, exposed bulbs and the staff would occasionally peek in through a small opening in the large, wooden door. It wasn't a dining room. It was a prison cell.

Our first course consisted of some sort of starchy tuber I couldn't identify. It was boiled, completely unseasoned (by anything... literally. No salt, nothing.), and totally bland by nature. I was told this was commonly consumed during the famines when there wasn't enough rice to go around. The menu contained a myriad of pictures, as is quite common in China (even on the Chinese-only menus), except that in lieu of photographs, the pictures were illustrations of assorted wildlife in their natural habitats. After my host ordered, I attempted to ascertain what we'd be having.

"A water bird."
"Duck?"
"No... bigger."
"Goose?"
"No... like a goose. But white."
"Uh... swan?!?"
"Yes! Swan!"

I was excited about this! I'd never had swan. It arrived, sizzling in a wok, which was set in the center of the table. It was also barely seasoned, but had been stir-fried over high heat for what I'm sure was a very long time. It was tough to the point of being almost impossible to chew, made more difficult by the fact that it was still in pieces on the bone (ordinarily, huge fan of on the bone... but not when I don't possess the jaw strength to tear it free). It was also greasy. And as it continued to cook, more fat rendered off, and the pieces that weren't eaten right away fell into the swan grease and continued to cook, getting tougher and greasier with every moment.

When we were done, the remainder of the meat was removed from the wok, leaving swan grease at least an inch deep in the bottom. A bowl of broth was added to the grease, and then a large plate full of at least seven different varieties of swan entrails. Again, I'm all for offal. But this just wasn't a pleasant way to experience it. It was a business lunch. Politely declining was not an option.

My meals in China over the years have been, almost without exception, incredible experiences. I suppose this was also incredible in its own right, just... well... alternatively incredible.

Cynthia wrote:Or possibly the rotted shark and rams testicles in Iceland

Coincidentally, my worst meal ever is any meal where I'm served rotted shark without ram's testicles. I consider it a slap in the face and invariably send it back, letting the chef know my displeasure. So numerous are my bad experiences with unethical purveyors of rotted shark, that I have taken to carrying a pair of ram's testicles whenever I go to dine out. Better safe than sorry, and as an added benefit it often leads to some amusing and interesting discussions ("Does anyone else smell that?", "What did you just drop down my dress?" etc.)

Dmnkly wrote:I know it's been said before, but it's probably worth noting that depending on the nature of the food poisoning, it's possible that you ingested the offending item up to a full week before you got sick. So it's difficult/impossible to pinpoint the source (though you may have your suspicions) without cross-referencing multiple people.

True, but in this case we all ate the same thing, and all got identically, copiously sick. I suppose we could have experienced some kind of mystical convergence in which last week's bad hot dog for me and maybe tainted dollar-store pizza for them erupted at exactly the same time....but it seems unlikely

I've never had the pleasure of consuming rotted shark, but I have had the singular experience of eating natto - rotting soybeans. Intellectually, I understand the argument that eating past-their-prime soybeans is not that much different from eating moldy cheese (which I do, with relish) but unfortunately, it is impossible to override one's tastebuds, or one's stomach, when it tries to escape the horror by leaping out of your mouth.

My spouse contributes as worst meal in a very long time: the "Mexican" food at Hardee's. It looks like a Taco Bell meal, but is so much worse. Really, so very much worse.

cilantro wrote:

Cynthia wrote:Or possibly the rotted shark and rams testicles in Iceland

Coincidentally, my worst meal ever is any meal where I'm served rotted shark without ram's testicles. I consider it a slap in the face and invariably send it back, letting the chef know my displeasure. So numerous are my bad experiences with unethical purveyors of rotted shark, that I have taken to carrying a pair of ram's testicles whenever I go to dine out. Better safe than sorry, and as an added benefit it often leads to some amusing and interesting discussions ("Does anyone else smell that?", "What did you just drop down my dress?" etc.)

Hee hee hee!

As for me, I can't remember any bad meals...I seem to have blocked them out.

Oh, I have to take this on - probably the worst meals I've ever eaten were prepared by...me, myself and I.

I love to experiment and rarely follow a recipe - and sometimes, it results in disaster (typically, these disasters are catalogued by my family and their memory stockpiled for later use - few remember the truly great dishes, but the disasters are immortal) Numerous dessert failures spring to mind, a truly awful paella served to a large group, a "wild rice" dish that I fortunately removed to its rightful cylindrical resting place before it was served..the list goes on...

I thankfully don't recall too many bad meals. I'm usually pretty good at getting something tasty, but there are some I'd rather forget:

A French Dip while on vacation with my parents. The meat was perfectly shaped into rectangles with slightly rounded sides. They were all exactly the same size, and all the same sickly brownish gray color of faded cardboard. It did not taste like meat in the least, and I ended up eating bread and gravy.

My high school friend's mother's flan. For the next ten years I refused to touch anything resembling flan. Hers was a watery, scrambled egg-tasting mess. Then I went to La Unica on Devon and had a bite of a fellow-LTH-er's flan during the Devon-a-Thon and I realized what I had been missing.

My cousin, who bills himself as a wonderchef even though he's had about the same level of education as any backwater redneck with a bucket of water and a campfire, made these pizza rolls that I was forced to try while waiting to be picked up for my grandmother's funeral. Let me tell you the funeral was the highlight of the day. I was told by another cousin that these pizza rolls were to die for, that I had to try them, so I did. Not only was this thing burnt beyond recognition, but it seemed to have been stuffed with peppers, pepperoni, and...mustard. Mustard!