Worst Restaurant Experience?

Mesrine65 · 26-09-2015 04:23PM

^ love the username

P. Breathnach · 26-09-2015 04:31PM

thomasm wrote: »

In Rome and a bottle of white wine came out with a lump of ice in the middle of it like it came from a freezer. They took it back to the open plan kitchen, put it in microwave and brought it back to us luke warm. They were very offended when we refused it ðŸ·

They should have added anti-freeze to the wine before storing it in the freezer.

[Older readers will understand.]

Fluorescence · 26-09-2015 04:48PM

This is my story of shame.

A few years ago I was working in Subway, when one day we ran out of lettuce. Disaster! So, one of the girls runs over to the shop, grabs a few heads of lettuce and prepared them for service. I was working the counter and putting someone's sandwich together. He asked for lettuce so I put some on. Only it wasn't lettuce. The girl had grabbed a bunch of cabbages and now I was putting cabbage on your man's sandwich. I didn't say anything, just sold him his sandwich and off he went. After he had left I asked your wan where she had got the "lettuce" and she pointed... to the rack of cabbage :pac: :pac:

Your man never came back either :pac:

Saipanne · 26-09-2015 04:53PM

Billy86 wrote: »

Chinese takeaways don't sell Chinese food, though.

You're right. Genuine Chinese food is pretty tasty. Very hard to find, though!

MilesMorales1 · 26-09-2015 05:05PM

Birneybau wrote: »

Does every steak restaurant not ask how you want it cooked?

Not specialised places won't. Weatherspoon's and the like.

dr.fuzzenstein · 26-09-2015 05:53PM

Cienciano wrote: »

Even the chips are crap. The exact same frozen chips in every Chinese takeaway in the country

The exact same frozen chips in 95% of ALL food establishments in Ireland.

MilesMorales1 · 26-09-2015 05:55PM

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

The exact same frozen chips in 95% of ALL food establishments in Ireland.

You sound like got a bee in your bonnet about irish take away.

26-09-2015 05:55PM

JupiterKid wrote: »

For me it was a few years ago at a Chinese. We were only one of two tables that were occupied and the chicken was so tough I had trouble cutting it up. My dining companion was served up something that came out of a can and we left the place to go and eat something edible

Was I your dining companion? Several years ago in a Chinese restaurant I ordered sweet and sour chicken. I was served tough rubbery chicken, almost impossible to cut and the sweet and sour sauce was just a bog standard can of fruit cocktail emptied on top!

Valetta · 26-09-2015 06:05PM

MilesMorales1 wrote: »

You sound like got a bee in your bonnet about irish take away.

Check out the motoring forum.

Posts are even more obnoxious .

dr.fuzzenstein · 26-09-2015 06:14PM

Bulbous Salutation wrote: »

Wow. What an outburst.

I have lived here for 20 years. The 90's were tough. I think the only place worse for food back then was early 90's post communism Romania. Which had marginally better architecture.
Czech Republic, not a chance on both accounts...
And to this day a great many of any kind of place that offers food will have the same centralised "Industrial Food Conglomerate/Petrochemical/Pharmaceutical Supply Inc." food supplier.
Those are the restaurants that have the interchangeable menus:

Soup (ALWAYS Veg, for the love of god never offer anything interesting)
Seafood Chowder (if they're a better class of place)
Garlic mushrooms
Mussels (maybe)
Some kind of Chicken Bits (for kids so they grow up on crap food and get used to it young)

Some selection of wraps and baps, I DARE you to find ONE place that uses different ones than ANY petrol station or Centra/Spar.

Burger and Chips on a plate for €17, because it will have a dollop of coleslaw
Fish and Chips
Chicken and chips
Chicken "curry" with optional chips
Chicken Goujons with chips
Beef with Industrial Food Conglomerate veg and spuds (pre peeled and sliced and delivered in handy plastic vacuum packs) and optional chips
Lamb with the same and optional chips
(apart from Burger, plate of the above €20)

Industrial cheesecake
Industrial ice cream
Industrial apple pie

Tea/Coffee

The rules are NEVER make it local/organic/seasonal/interesting/different/cheaper/bigger/better than ANYONE else! The trick is that you can walk into a certain type of restaurant anywhere in Ireland and find the above menu with the exact same ingredients and it will taste the same/cost the same as in ANY other place in that category.
Of course there are exceptions, but the above type of restaurant is far too widespread here.
If you took their freezer, deep fat fryer and microwave, they would have to close.
It's undeniable!

MilesMorales1 wrote: »

You sound like got a bee in your bonnet about irish take away.

They are even more homogeneous than the restaurants. If you have good examples where the restaurant offers a different food experience, I'm all for it.

Final Disclaimer:
A lot of what I say has been colored by bad food experiences in the 90's. Things have improved. A lot of very lazy/standard establishments remain.

mr.anonymous · 26-09-2015 06:19PM

When I worked in a restaurant the chef used to pick bits of mash and stuffing off plates to eat before she gave them to us to serve. She used to cough a lot as well.

A few times there was crumbs of chips and various things blasted from her mouth while coughing over the next orders. Or sometimes over us when she was shouting!

She also insisted that any left over mash be scraped into a different container beside the food bin. When I found out that they used it to thicken the soup I stopped doing that!

My worst restaurant experience to date was working in one!

Lucyfur · 26-09-2015 06:47PM

My worst restaurant experience was while I was working in one. I was serving a rather handsome chap and I accidentally kind of swung his dinner at him and it all slid off the plate and landed in his lap.

dr.fuzzenstein · 26-09-2015 06:50PM

Lucyfur wrote: »

My worst restaurant experience was while I was working in one. I was serving a rather handsome chap and I accidentally kind of swung his dinner at him and it all slid off the plate and landed in his lap.

Are you married now? Because that would be awesome!

Lucyfur · 26-09-2015 06:51PM

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Are you married now? Because that would be awesome!

YES!!!!!

But not to him.

dr.fuzzenstein · 26-09-2015 07:06PM

Valetta wrote: »

Check out the motoring forum.

Posts are even more obnoxious .

Thankfully my reputation precedes me. Otherwise I'd be late for all my appointments...

Cienciano · 26-09-2015 07:27PM

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

The exact same frozen chips in 95% of ALL food establishments in Ireland.

Only cheap places. Even chippers use proper potato

Billy86 · 26-09-2015 07:43PM

Cienciano wrote: »

Only cheap places. Even chippers use proper potato

Though Sadly almost none of them seem to understand the importance of double frying them.

razorblunt · 26-09-2015 07:46PM

Luckily I've not had anything major,mince had the wings in TGIF which were stuck to the plate with the sauce. The sauce was like tar and made it incredibly inedible. They comped both starters.

JupiterKid · 26-09-2015 07:52PM

Am I the only one who thinks TGIF is hugely over-rated? Any time I've eaten there it's been a distinctly underwhelming experience.

Give me Captain Americas any day.

questionmark? · 26-09-2015 07:54PM

Cienciano wrote: »

Only cheap places. Even chippers use proper potato

Proper chippers always use spuds. Mate of mine funded his way through college by going into the local chipper for two hours every evening 6 evenings a week to peel potatoes out the back and put them through a cutter. I think he is still mentally damaged from the experience!!

Shergar6 · 26-09-2015 07:56PM

questionmark? wrote: »

Proper chippers always use spuds. Mate of mine funded his way through college by going into the local chipper for two hours every evening 6 evenings a week to peel potatoes out the back and put them through a cutter. I think he is still mentally damaged from the experience!!

I had to do that, well not peel them as there was a machine to do that - but i often had to chip them. Surprisingly hard work, especially when you have a blunt as **** chipper.

Give me a good Chinese, Thai or Indian any day.

I've just been to a Thai restaurant and it was absolutely revolting.

MilesMorales1 · 27-09-2015 12:48AM

Shergar6 wrote: »

I had to do that, well not peel them as there was a machine to do that - but i often had to chip them. Surprisingly hard work, especially when you have a blunt as **** chipper.

I've just been to a Thai restaurant and it was absolutely revolting.

You just need to go to a good thai restaurant.

FanadMan · 27-09-2015 05:17AM

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Hess Burger Latvia

I always thought Hesburger was lovely. Well, in Finland anyway.

Murt10 · 27-09-2015 05:05PM

Ever noticed when reading in the papers about restaurants that were closed down or ordered to make improvements by the FSA, that Chinese and Indian always make up the biggest numbers, and especially when you consider that they onlt make up a small portion of all restaurants in general.

heathledgerlove · 27-09-2015 05:34PM

Bulbous Salutation wrote: »

Wow. What an outburst.

I love Irish dinners! Loads of other cuisines are just meat, sauce and rice / bread. Like me greens

Tarzana2 · 27-09-2015 06:14PM

fussyonion wrote: »

Not surprised most of your stories are related to Chinese food.

I knew there was a reason I hated it; it's always nasty...spongy chicken, the same colour sauce no matter what dish you've ordered, voluminous looking spare ribs, big spongy chicken balls (I don't know how anyone can put those in their mouths), and then there's the little hatch so you can't see the kitchen.

Disgusting vile food.

Chinese food in this country is almost universally rank. Agree that chicken balls are utterly disgusting.

Thai food fares better.

JupiterKid wrote: »

Chinese cuisine when done right can be divine - but too many Chinese eateries here serve up pure rubbish - water injected "chicken" and watery sauces. The sad thing is that we Irish put up with this crap otherwise they'd be out of business.

No doubt actual Chinese food is lovely, but that's not what you get in Ireland. But Chinese takeaways are really popular for some reason, so there's no impetus for change.

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Oh yes and Irish "food" is so great. The zenith of Irish cuisine is the shnack box.

Such weird defensiveness. Chinese food is muck in this country, almost universally, whereas with chippers there are some awful ones, lots of middling ones and some really excellent ones. If you've never experienced good chipper food in Ireland, I feel sorry for you. And if you think all restaurants in Ireland are just glorified chippers, then again, I feel sorry for you because you have no idea how to find a decent restaurant to eat in when it's actually quite easy. Sucks to be you. I find very few restaurants serve up frozen chips these days.

As for people in Ireland being afraid of Indian, Thai and Chinese food. Such twaddle.

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Tbf, as a big fan of Indian and Thai, I find the European interpretation of Chinese food to be incredibly bland for the most part. Just because you don't like Chinese take away doesn't mean you only eat coddle.

+1

kfallon · 27-09-2015 06:25PM

Candie wrote: »

my friend was given a salad with a slug on it. He had horns and all.

Jaysus he got awful excited about a salad with a slug on it, that's one fetish I'd never heard of....

:pac:

KungPao · 27-09-2015 07:00PM

Disgrace of a chicken burger from a well-known fish and chips merchant with a name that rhymes with Jeshoff's. Just a totally tasteless chicken fillet in a cold dry bun with a head of lettuce shoved in there. Tasted like nothing and had a horrible texture.

Raw chicken nuggets from from a place that sounds like Rurger Bing.

Billy86 · 27-09-2015 07:06PM

Tarzana2 wrote: »

Chinese food in this country is almost universally rank. Agree that chicken balls are utterly disgusting.

Thai food fares better.

Funny enough, and I only found this out 1-2 weeks back, Pad Thai is possibly the most popular Chinese food in Ireland!

http://qz.com/198860/the-strange-and-potentially-stolen-origins-of-pad-thai/

cml387 · 27-09-2015 07:11PM

JupiterKid wrote: »

Am I the only one who thinks TGIF is hugely over-rated? Any time I've eaten there it's been a distinctly underwhelming experience.

Give me Captain Americas any day.

It was definitely worse years ago. Chris De Burgh used to play there.

Worst Restaurant Experience?

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