At an italian restaurant once I was happily eating away at my pizza when I bit into metal. We turned the pizza over and there was a great deal of circuitry embedded in the base, including fuses, wiring. Turned out an electrician had been fixing their oven and just left his stuff all up in there.
My worst experience is pretty sickening, my stomach turns over thinking about it. My ex, who at the time I was happily living with, brought home a fried chicken meal from KFC, which I put on plates for the 3 of us, including our child. When I bit into the chicken, I noticed it was kind of wet and tasted like an ashtray. That is when my ex revealed that he had gotten into an argument with a rude cashier and it took her abnormally long time to bring the food out. I assume she was a smoker and spit in the food and that's why the chicken was wet and tasted of cigarettes. I called the 1-800 number to complain, but they wouldn't help without the store number and my ex threw away the receipt.
Both of the stories are awful, so sorry for you both. CHEDDARS, hands down the worse. Nothing in the food, that I'm aware of, but we waited for 40 minutes to get our burgers, which was cooked wrong. We complained to the manager who was aggravated that we were bothering him and kept trying to make us believe we ordered wrong. After another 20 minutes of nonsense, he offered to re-cook our order, but we refused, and tried to leave, but were asked to pay for our drinks. We paid and went to Bob Evans. My mother always said...Never piss off the people who take care of you or fix your food. Words to live by!
There was this time when we went on a family dinner and the waiter was so, so dumb (really, he couldn't remember a single thing, he seemed distracted), that my dad got really mad and started yelling at him. It was embarrassing for the rest of us.
My worst experience is in a korean restaurant that offers shrimp soup. So I tried it and also some kimbop. I thought it really is a decent place to eat yet after few minutes a group of koreans got inside it and puff smokes inside.. I found out the management allow it. And when I got home, my tummy hurts and got diarhea later.
You have a really wise mother. It took me time to learn that one, however, I am pretty much polite with everyone in those positions so I have been okay. Also, I worked at a hotel for a while, I SAW what annoyed employees do... As for my worst experience, I suppose it was once when out on a road trip and we went to a good quality restaurant and when cutting into my bread...there was a fly waving hello. Gross! They still expected us to pay even though I never ate anything...and they never even said sorry. Jeepers Creepers.
My worst recent experience in a restaurant involved going to eat before a concert at Madison Square Garden. We were seating between the bathrooms and the kitchen. The place was a mad house and the waitress took our drink orders and didn't come back. We waited over 40 minutes! We got up to leave and she saw us and said, I was coming. I said, " too late you lost a customer having us wait 40 minutes for drinks. Proper customer service and courtesy could have kept us" She actually had the audacity to say " Well can't you see we're busy?" So terrible.
I didn't have any traumatic experience in restaurants. Anyway, in my particular case, there is a common denominator that makes a restaurant in a bad place: the lack of cleanliness. I have been to many places where the food was really delicious, but the general hygiene was not up to the circumstances. Undoubtedly, one factor as important as cleaning the place, generates discomfort and prevents sensory experience that we can enjoy food. I haven't gone to these places, or even recommend them. It's a shame, since many of them the food is delicious.
The worst restaurant experience isn't even something that happened to me, but what I saw happen to someone else. A guy literally found turd in his soup. HUMAN turd. I'm not even joking. I couldn't stop laughing with the way the guy was having a fit lol.
Nothing in my food, but I found a stray rat running across a supposedly high-end restaurant in Thailand once. Naturally, I didn't stay back to dine there. Had my drinks and left to find another place to have my meal. I have, however, had a bad experience with a sandwich sold in a supermarket once. It had two separate strands of hair in it. I lost my appetite for sandwiches ever since.
I once went out with a friend of mine to a local cafe for lunch and she ordered a bowl of soup. She quite liked it and said it was tasty but we were horrified when we found a lizard's foot in her soup. We're both terrified of lizards and we were started screaming. The manager of the cafe came to our table to apologize and offered to replace our food for free but we didn't want to take another chance and have another go at tasting lizard feet.
One time when I worked as a server at TGI Friday's, we had two salads sent back, the first one had half a gecko in it, the second salad had the other half of the gecko. Not kidding, saw it firsthand. And they do clean everything back in the kitchen, it's was just a freak accident that slipped through the prep cooks. More recently, a McDonalds cashier overcharged me by like $2 for a combo meal - apparently she was ringing everything in separately rather than as a combo. Then to make matters worse, when the manager was trying to refund me the difference, she actually ended up charging me the difference instead - and never fixed it. I had to call corporate to complain. Always check your receipts closely if you go there, especially if you're ordering a lot of food. I was kind of suspicious they were doing this on purpose.
I was at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. We noticed how they serve the food and we found a garbage tie in the food as well as hair and something else that escapes my mind. The server just said to remove the stuff and eat it. It was amazing that they only took a couple of dollars off the bill. We never went again and we only go to the places we know that are good and clean.
So far i don't experienced any worst during eating at the restaurant. I think you if you find a good restaurant, you will just stick to it and come back to that restaurant.
I went to an Italian restaurant and felt something hit my tooth while eating a salad. It actually got stuck between my tooth so I pulled out my mirror to take it out (discreetly). Imagine my shock when I pulled out a staple! We showed the manager and he gave us free dinner for all, and advised I go to the ER for my Tetanus shot. Apparently the salads are prepacked and a salad fell in. Waiting at the ER was a pain - and the whole night was a bit ruined. But in this case, a bad experience wasn't AS bad. However, I haven't gone back for dinner!
My worst experience was when I ate at a diner near my house. The entree was fine, but I didn't feel so well after eating the strawberry cheesecake. I'm guessing that someone touched the strawberries with dirty hands. I spent the night throwing up. This happened years ago and I haven't been back since. I also try to order foods that are too hot to touch when I go out to eat now.
My worst experience was a Long John Silver's in Corsicana, TX. We should have walked out when we saw the state it was in. The workers looked dirty with food splattered on them and the check out area. There was food on the floor, the tables weren't being bussed, the bathroom was nasty. The food ended up being half-cooked and soggy/doughy. Basically inedible. We were traveling, it was getting late, we were hungry and didn't want to chance making the next large town and finding everything closed. We ended up stopping at a gas station to fuel up and loading up on junk food just to keep from starving. I'm afraid if we had eaten the fish we would have been ill before we made it home.
Well I've never personally had any bad experiences at a restaurant since I don't usually eat out. Though I did witness my mother having one when she was eating out at this one Vietnamese noodle shop in Chinatown. It seemed like a nice enough place when I went with in with her, but I did leave them to their lunch since I ate beforehand and wasn't hungry. I went back about 30 minutes later to see my mother pick up a dish towel out of her noodle broth. Not even a scrap, a whole dish towel. Like the ones you use to wipe down tables after people leave. It was so disgusting that both my mother and sister quickly paid for their meal and left. They never did go back there, and for good reason. I dunno if it was an honest mistake, or if my mother did something to upset anyone, but it was still a bad experience for both of them.
There are some really terrifying stories in this thread! My bad experience was with a Rubio's Restaurant in Las Vegas. I love their fish tacos and it tasted pretty good while eating it. Later that night, I experienced some pains that made me think I was on the verge of dying and wishing that I would die already. I love fish tacos, but haven't gone back to a Rubio's in any state.
I forgot the name of the restaurant, but I would go there often on my way to work. I asked the man behind the counter for the same thing everyday, A chicken sandwich with cheese. As he was fixing the sandwich I noticed he was coughing over the food. This disgusted me and I took the food, but I didn't eat it. I threw it in the trash, and I never returned to the establishment.
