The Worst Ever...

I know that what happened to Trix & I last night is as expected an occurrence for any food nut as, say, breathing or losing another lottery. And I know that I’ll run into some potential flack for being a “half empty glass” kinda guy but I haven’t been able to shake writing this post all day.

After having a few drinks at the Matchbox, we were totally in the mood to have a great Chicago version of a greazy, yet tasty burger at Kevin’s Hamburger Heaven. Unfortunately, getting to Kevin’s fell into that “can’t get there from here” situation. All ramps leading to the Kennedy were closed along the loop. So we opted for a random gyros experience at Mr. Greek Gyros. Now, to say that this was just a bad place would clearly not do justice to a well deserved spankin' it’s about to get. Not only did the food rival the food I ate at my grade school cafeteria but every single element about the place was a nightmare. The kitchen as well as dining area were absolutely filthy with garbage strewn all over the floor, patrons sleeping at tables (is the term “bum” still considered politically incorrect?) and automaton worker-bots whose batteries had run low. The bots made low grade items that were either undercooked, overcooked, or in certain situations, both at the same time. From top to bottom, taking every factor that goes into a dining experience, this was the worst restaurant I’ve ever had the privilege to patronize in Chicago.

I guess this leads me to the nastiest of all nasty questions I suppose you could ask on a food board—but what is the WORST restaurant you’ve ever eaten at in Chicago? Remember, it’s not enough to just say that you had horrific food. Oh no. It has to be much more holistic than just that. This is a place that makes you shudder at the thought that if someone theoretically paid you to revisit it, you would tell them where to go without hesitation. This is a place so nasty that the thought of suicide creeps into the furthest reaches of your brain. You get what I mean?

My vote is for Mr. Greek Gyros.

Mr. Greek Gyros
234 S. Halstead
(312) 906-8730
(Not that you’re going to need it)

Easy: [Name Withheld Chinese Restaurant], Pulaski and Irving Park Road. They've been gone for years, and my one and only visit was 15 years ago. Turning the Wayback Machine to 1991, we find ex-Mrs. JiLS living in Old Irving Park and regularly ordering takeout from [Name Withheld Chinese Restaurant] with one of her girlfriends. It's greasy wok fare, but they are happy enough with the food, and the price is right. So, naturally enough, we find ourselves dining in one evening. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you judge these things, we are seated so that I am looking through the open door to the pantry area and kitchen. The service was desultory, the food miserable gloppy crap -- but that was a given, and at that time in my life, it was what I was used to. So far, so good enough. Then I notice a commotion in the kitchen. One of the workers is cursing and swinging a broom with a level of enthusiasm not warranted by any conceivable dust or crumb problem, and Lo! They are sweeping a rat out the back door. Yep, yep, yep. That was the low point of my dining experiences in Chicago (or anywhere).

The post raised an interesting question. For what it is worth, my wife and I have not had that completely horrible for an experience in Chicago, largely because we left before the experience was about to start.

A few that come to mind:

We were considering going into one Streeterville place last year, but we had been strolling along the water and so we entered from near the back (east side). It smelled so bad there that we left. A few weeks later the City shut the place down for a while.

We went to another place in our neighborhood one day and sat down at a table. It seemed like they were having some problems because the place smelled very bad (t it smelled like they had bathroom plumbing problems). We left. I note that we returned one more time, with an identical experience. We have not gone back.

For my wife's birthday one year, we went into Cerise. The place was empty, but the host still gave us an attitude about where we could sit. It was the complete hissy fit, along with rolled eyes, etc. The place was way too bright and ugly for us anyway, so the combination of ugly place and rude server caused us to leave. We ended up at NoMi where we had a great meal.

When things look ugly, we just leave.

Of course, if we want to talk about miserable experience OUTSIDE of Chicago, then the clear choice would be Maui Spago, where I have endured two miserable meals. But that is a story for another forum.

A Japanese steak house on Elmhurst called Kampai. My father took us there after I took him to Ron of Japan. He insisted it was better. First, I love Ron of Japan because I love the lobster. I do the same at this place. I get one of those little 5 oz. tails, WITH NO GLOP SAUCE.

The second thing that I like about Rons is that it's not showy. I don't like watching these chefs throwing around food and making noises. I don't need an onion volcano. Just cook my damn food.

Well the show is in it's full idiocy when our chef takes a huge slice out of his finger. At first he tried to hide it, then he tried wrapping his towel around it. Finally he turned to the cook at the table behind him and said something to him. The next thing you know, he's out the door to the ER and the guy at the next table is now cooking for 2 tables.

I've never had the urge to go back and, my father no longer gets to pick any restaurant.

LTH,

Interesting subject, but please keep in mind LTHForum's Posting Guidelines, specifically:

- 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. Further, we find reports of restaurant and purveyor violations or closures, regardless of the circumstances, to be an area ripe for competitor abuse. We will remove these posts unless substantiated with a published source, e.g. a link to a quality published account.

Enjoy,
Gary for the Moderators

One other that comes to mind. I won't mention the name of the restaurant because I'm leary about posting what might be a health code violation. But this was one of my favorite pizza places growing up and still remains one of my favorites.

I was there with my wife, being the smart one of the family, orders a hamburger in a place known for it's pizza. She gets a burger, and on this side is a pile of lettuce and other condiments. And on top of the lettuce is a dead cockaroach.

The problem of course is that my wife, forever forbids me from ordering from there. We're no longer in the neighborhood, so I can occasionally make the special trip and get a pizza to go. But she'll never go there or order anything if I pick something up.

It's almost ruined our marriage.

After my inaugural voyage to Honey 1, all I wanted for DAYS afterward were rib tips (something I'd never experienced in New Orleans). Another trip to H1 being infeasible, I ordered some rib tips from an establishment from a nearby jernt (Andersonville/Edgewater). Now, I knew full well that it would be hard to replicate the smokey majesty of H1's gustatory pinnacle, but damn, did I hope. What I received was a BOILED, corpse-grey carcass that was robbed of all flavor by total crap preparation. I was righteously pissed.

PIGMON wrote: My vote is for Mr. Greek Gyros.

Believe it or not, Mr Greek has been mentioned in this forum before, in the Big Baby thread. It holds the distinction of serving the northernmost Big Baby in the city (as far as I’ve been able to determine). But it’s really not a Big Baby because it has lettuce & tomato, cheese is placed on top of the burger stack, and it lacks grilled onions.

i don't mind "Mr. Greek" ... I wouldn't go there with very high expectations, but if you're in the mood to be downright GREASEY , its OK... (it really is one of those places that makes you run to the bathroom to wash the grease off of your face after you're done eating...). i think the food itself is ok though. it seems hard to complain about gyro's, when just about every vendor in the city uses the same meat and everything else...

my WORST experience has been well documented here on LTH already... and thankfully it still remains my worst experience

Amelia's Mexican Grill
1235 W Grand Ave
Chicago, IL 60622

After driving 12 hours through the night to Syracuse with my new boyfriend (now husband) about five years ago, we got his friends out of bed at 7 a.m. on a Saturday and went to a diner near the university where they had spent many hours and had many meals. As this was still in my "try every Eggs Benedict you can" days, I ordered it. There was no hollandaise. Instead, there was a melted mess of Velveeta covering the whole thing. The waitress overfilled my coffee and it spilled all over me and the table.

I was so hungry. So hungry. I was in a restaurant with food in front of me, and couldn't eat. It was torture. I was trying not to be fussy, but one bite of the Velveeta covered "benedict" and I knew I couldn't actually eat it.

And once I ate a steak on an airplane coming home from Paris that was lukewarm and completely uncooked. I couldn't even cut it. I was sick with food poisoning for two weeks after that.

PIGMON, your experience sounds dismal, and I'm sorry your random gryos drawing didn't land you across the street to the more sanitary and better tasting (less greasy) Greek Town Gyros. I believe it's open 24 hours. It's also a good thing that Zorba's, kitty corner from Mr. Greek, is now closed. Not that it's any consolation, but you could have done much worse if you had wandered into Zorba's when it was still open.

Greek Town Gyros
239 South Halsted Street
312.236.9310

We certainly had worse experiences outside of Chicago, but the one we had haunts me to this day: my husband (then boyfriend) and I, during our bohemian days, decided to splurge and have breakfast at a local diner (a local chain)

We'd made the bad choice to eat around noon on a Sunday, and the place was packed. My husband's meal came quickly enough, but mine (I think I ordered fried eggs) took over an hour and arrived cold. I was so starving that I slurped a bit down while my husband tried to find somebody to complain (we'd asked our waitress a couple times and she said it would be right up each time; clearly she just forgot it somewhere.)

The manager of the place was apprised of the situation, and immediately began yelling at top voice that if I had a problem, why did I eat any of it. No amount of reasoning got any response other than that we had to pay for everything we'd eaten and that nothing would be replaced with hot food- all at the top of his lungs, as though we were stealing money from the cash register.

To this day, we won't eat at that chain: it's the one scattered with signs that say what customers can and can't do (be seated without your whole party, use a booth unless you have X, nothing unreasonable, but very unfriendly)

Mhays, I'm not picking up from your clues which place this was. And I wish you'd let us know, so that we can avoid it. (Not sure why you're granting them anonymity after your experience there.)

O.K.

That story does remind me of my worst dining experience. It was at the Cafe de Architects.

We went for breakfast.

We asked for orange juice, which we never received. We asked for coffee, which came once, and then never again.

We would ask the waiters about the orange juice or the coffee, and they would assure us that it would be presented immediately.

The food was cold and horrible.

It is breakfast. How could they possibly be so bad at it?

The other interesting thing: I don't view it as a health code matter, but I have seen it the only other time we went there. The tables are glass set into wood. Crumbs get between the wood and glass, and are left there, along the border. It was not what you want to see on the table, although it wasn't really a health code threat.

Was trying to follow the caveat - although it wasn't a health code issue, so I suppose it doesn't matter. It was one of the "Golden" (nugget, pancake, apple) restaurants, truthfully I no longer remember which one specifically as it was over ten years ago!

It's a very popular chain, I can only assume our experience was a complete anomoly, but...

My worst dining experience ever was at Jackie's about 18 years ago. I honestly do not remember the food itself, but I do remember the stunningly abysmal treatment we received. We were with some couples that included colleagues and some clients of my ex-husband-- a table of 8 or so. This was supposed to be the sort of evening where everyone ends up getting to know each other a little better, and feeling that life is good and that we should do more business together in the future. A given in this scenario for the stuffy types involved is a "nice" restaurant with "great" service.

Things didn't start out too well, but I am a patient person and it was supposed to be a "hot" restaurant. We were seated 45 minutes after the time of our reservation, and then abandoned completely for another 20 minutes or so. No water, no menus, no bread. Nothing, in spite of our attempts to flag down a member of the staff. Finally, some wine was chosen and we managed to hold onto the waiter long enough to scan the menu and order. I thought the evening could be salvaged at that point, but then NOTHING WHATSOEVER happened for a full hour. One of the ladies in the party was pregnant and starving and cold sober and furious-- after all, the rest of us were drinking some pretty decent (and IIRC rather expensive) wine. Finally, we began our appetizers and the entrees arrived within five minutes or less. The maitre d'hotel then strode up to our table and and, to my utter astonishment, announced that we would have to vacate our table within fifteen minutes. He stated that another party with reservations was waiting for the table. But we had been waiting over two hours in total to eat and had not yet made a dent in our entrees! At this point, the pregnant woman protested that she wanted to order dessert. We were served with a check, without apology, or dessert. Astounding.

No doubt some will take issue with this airing of an ancient grievance. Fair enough.
The thing is, I was also there that night as a favor to a friend who freelances from Europe-- to review a Chicago restaurant for a magazine that caters to French dentists, or some such oddity. But what can one say about such an experience? So I think I recommended the Berghoff. I wonder if anyone on the board ever ran into a gaggle of French dentists there between bites of wienerschnitzel and creamed spinach. . .

My worst dining experience was already recounted here - almost 1.5 years ago. I didn't realize it'd been so long.

I'll sheepishly admit to finding Mr. Greeks to be a source of nourishment and amusement at 5:30am on many a drunken Saturday night. (You really need the drunken njguido.com crowd leaving the clubs to get the full effect. Wifebeaters, gold chains, attitudes and hilarity.) Think Weiner Circle, but dirty.