eatchicago wrote:Also, I love raw clams.

Me too. But man, do they have to be pristine.

Dmnkly wrote:Me too. But man, do they have to be pristine.

Like any raw shellfish, this should go wothout saying.

One of my BIL's made Thai burgers....

What's a Thai burger you ask?

Add some peanut butter to ground beef and a touch of soy sauce....

KFC Buffalo chicken snackers.

Rosemary encrusted veal chop at Avenue M. Blech, it was so infused with rosemary, I couldn't taste the meat. Plus their wine list is atrocious. I will not return.

I am usually a fan of Cooker's Red Hots on Lake Cook Rd in Deerfield. Today i had a Polish chargrilled beyond recognition and served on what most have been an extra-large day old Gonella roll. The sandwich was truly horrible. It has been a while since I had a polish at Cookers and I have to believe (hoping?) that this was a one time abomination. Fries were great.

Cooker's Red Hots
469 Lake Cook Rd
Deerfield, IL 60015
(847) 272-7222

Absolutely dreadful Kobe Beef Hotdog ($14.95) at Rosebud Prime. Way overcooked and ridiculously salty. There is simply no reason for this dish to exist.

Rosebud Prime
1 S Dearborn St
Chicago, IL 60603
(312) 384-1900

iblock9 wrote:Absolutely dreadful Kobe Beef Hotdog ($14.95) at Rosebud Prime. Way overcooked and ridiculously salty. There is simply no reason for this dish to exist.

And I thought that a kobe burger was a bad idea....sheesh.

eatchicago wrote:

iblock9 wrote:Absolutely dreadful Kobe Beef Hotdog ($14.95) at Rosebud Prime. Way overcooked and ridiculously salty. There is simply no reason for this dish to exist.

And I thought that a kobe burger was a bad idea....sheesh.

I had a Kobe Beef corndog appetizer @ David Burke's some time ago, and while it wasn't the worst thing I had eaten lately, I didn't come off as a convert to Kobe hot dogs.

aschie30 wrote:

eatchicago wrote:

iblock9 wrote:Absolutely dreadful Kobe Beef Hotdog ($14.95) at Rosebud Prime. Way overcooked and ridiculously salty. There is simply no reason for this dish to exist.

And I thought that a kobe burger was a bad idea....sheesh.

I had a Kobe Beef corndog appetizer @ David Burke's some time ago, and while it wasn't the worst thing I had eaten lately, I didn't come off as a convert to Kobe hot dogs.

It strikes me as the equivalent of making frozen margaritas with fine tequila añejo.

"steak" pambaso off the catering truck this morning.

stupid rain, stupider me for riding the motorcycle to work.

aschie30 wrote:

eatchicago wrote:

iblock9 wrote:Absolutely dreadful Kobe Beef Hotdog ($14.95) at Rosebud Prime. Way overcooked and ridiculously salty. There is simply no reason for this dish to exist.

And I thought that a kobe burger was a bad idea....sheesh.

I had a Kobe Beef corndog appetizer @ David Burke's some time ago, and while it wasn't the worst thing I had eaten lately, I didn't come off as a convert to Kobe hot dogs.

This sort of ridiculousness inspired me to start this thread over here.

Sausage pizza--Wolfgang Puke at O'Hare.

Last night, the Corleone burger(provolone, and dived green olives with pimento) @ Boston Blackies. I have never been a fan of this chain, but got had try to make the best of a return visit last night.

The burger was cooked perfectly rare-medium rare. It was juicy, however the beef had zero flavor(come on add some salt, or some spices to your burger mix), much like other burgers I have had there. And would it kill Boston Blackies to put a pickle spear, or include an order of fries with their burgers?

Recently tried Ted's Montana Grill with a Restaurant.com certificate. My husband ordered a house caesar salad to go with his dinner. The menu's description didn't sound great, an "egg-less version of the traditional salad with parmesan croutons", but for $4.49, I was surprised at what was deliverd to our table. He took a few bites and set it aside. I said that if the salad was so bad that he couldn't eat it, he should send it back. Because the place uses "low-wattage" lights, I had him pass it over so I could have a closer look. It was a pile of limp, brown romaine, some croutons and some bitter, non-tasty dressing. It looked like old bagged salad, the kind you try to eat thinking it won't be too bad. You make a salad with it and it is too bad and you toss the whole thing anyway.

He sent it back, the manager came by and apologized and said he took it off the bill. They brought a small house salad to replace it and that was on the bill.

Also, they managed to make both a coke and a chocolate shake taste bad. How? With their thick cardboard-like straws. (They are 99% plastic free at Ted's).

Their menu talks a lot about the environment, to-go cups made of cornstarch and water-efficient toilets. I'm all for taking good care of Mother Earth, but I also like to get good care when we go out to eat and if that salad was "fresh", I beg to differ with Ted.

Met a large group at Cheesecake Factory for happy hour on friday....

I always keep an open mind, especially with chains, it's just one meal and no one is going to force you to eat something you dislike.

Someone ordered the infamous fried Macaroni and Cheese.... sounds good looks and even better. They were so odd, warm breadcrumb crust but cool glue-like texture inside. Worse yet they were swimming in a room temperature tomato soup like sauce that was just nasty! Thank god they had Fresca on tap to wash it down!

They do have a tempura tuna roll which is outstanding- just order the strange sauces on the side.

I'd like to point out that the last four WTYE[L]s all involve chain restaurants.

What lesson could we draw from this?

Mmmmm. Fresca.

Mike G wrote:I'd like to point out that the last four WTYE[L]s all involve chain restaurants.

What lesson could we draw from this?

We all need to stop being coerced by friends and develop a backbone.

Mak7185 wrote:

Mike G wrote:I'd like to point out that the last four WTYE[L]s all involve chain restaurants.

What lesson could we draw from this?

We all need to stop being coerced by friends and develop a backbone.

bingo.. Sometimes you just gotta take one for the team, and go along with the crowd.

Yes, it happens to all of us. I remember after my wedding, my mom and my sisters told me that they had taken responsibility for showing aged Great-Uncle John a good time at dinner, and the conversation went like this:

"Well, there's lots of choices, Indian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, middle-eastern, American--"

"American sounds good!"

Roast pork bahn mi at Tank Noodle. Yuck. To call it roast pork would imply that hanging on to the edge of the slices of pure fat in my sandwich there was, or at least at one point had been, some actual meat. Now, my grilled pork bahn mi was delicious as always, as was my Pho, so the meal overall was very good, but the roast pork bahn mi got one bite, a quick inspection of the slabs of meatless fat and gristle, and a quick toss in the trashcan. I'm a fan of reasonably fatty meat, will regularly order pork belly and other items with a high fat-to-meat ratio, but this was just unacceptable.

-Dan

I'd like to point out that the last four WTYE[L]s all involve chain restaurants.

What lesson could we draw from this?

$25 off is not always equal to a dining deal

Frozen Bertolli pasta dinner. Why oh why?

The "chicken wings" at The Bristo. Completely awful.

Bratwurst at Mirabell last night. Great sauerkraut, wonderful mustard, miserable sausage. It was like cake batter deep fried, but with less flavor.

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I had "Flaky Walleye" from Shor in the McCormick Place Hyatt and it was the worst Walleye I've ever encountered. The slowest service I've had in a long time as well. I think the fish was baked, maybe my mistake was thinking flaky meant fried. It was like eating plain bread. The fish had absolutely no taste and had the consistency of a heavy bread. The breading on the fish kind of looked like it was fried, but it was soft.
Not to mention the price-for me and my 2 little kids, it was $62. They had Kraft macaroni and cheese and milk. My wife had a separate check so she could expense it.
We were dropping my wife off there and decided to save time by eating at her hotel. What a mistake. We were in the restaurant for 2 hours and 20 minutes. Which was less than awesome with 4 and 5 year old boys. Especially for the 45 minutes between the time we ordered their milk and the time they got it.

Pretty much every bite of our meal at Cafe Martorano at the Rio, Las Vegas. I know Jazzfood really likes the original incarnation of this restaurant in Florida, and this would not be the first instance of a Las Vegas outlet not living up to the Mothership's reputation, but what an overpriced, over-hyped pile of horse flop the Las Vegas edition proved to be, at least on our visit on October 11. I had thought Cafe Martorano would be a nice dinner before seeing Penn & Teller (and fortunately, Penn & Teller rescued the evening for us), but I swear, that is the last $32 meatball* I'll ever order. Sap that I am, I went ahead and ordered it. I got what I deserved. Pasta dishes were just OK; seriously, trattoria quality food at ristorante prices. The only saving grace of this meal was the wine (Gaja Barbaresco, I think 2003 or maybe 2001; an excellent wine that, by the way, is regularly available at Sabatino's, but there it is served with delicious and satisfying food, rather than the air pudding, wind sauce and sexy star power of Martorano Las Vegas.) Prices here are only just a bit shy of Spiaggia, but the food was about the quality of Manzo's, and was further devalued by the crappy-sleek vibe of strobe-lighted rip-off that oozed from the pores of the establishment like a throbbing and mephitic cloud of disco inferno taint.

* Their online menu says it's a mere $18 for the meatball, which does come served atop a pile of salad, but I swear I paid $32. Why, I don't recall. As these pages well document, I am a moron.

Beef pad Thai.



Chicken pad Thai.

Beef pad Thai at Thai Village on Division. My friends picked the spot, and while I offered to drive if they'd change their minds to any of the decent Thai places in the city, convenience and location won out, so I took a deep breath, lowered the bar, and hoped for a dish that's pretty hard to screw up.

Just awful---a tangle of overcooked noodles congealing in a sauce that might well just have been ketchup, a dash of naam pla, and sugar. There might have been a couple of peanuts floating around in there, but I'm not sure. At least the beef came with a handful of scallions. I was starving (on purpose) and threw some sriracha on there and had at it, and we all had a good laugh about it, but boy, was this ever a sad attempt at a pretty easy dish. They should really be ashamed of serving this. One of our friends send his back, on the grounds that this "wasn't pad Thai," which our waitress seemed to not understand. She did ask him if he'd been there before and previously enjoyed it, which he hadn't.

Thai Village
2053 W Division St
Chicago, IL 60622
(773) 384-5352

Continuing on the bad Thai trend - pad siew from Noodle Zone on Clark St. My eight-year old visitor wanted to order in Thai and it's one of the few places that delivers to my area. They must have used the same recipe as the pad thai above. Mushy noodles and a ketchup like sauce with a few pieces of broccoli. It had no resemblance to any pad siew I've had before.