What is the worst meal you've ever had?

[Sequoia]

For me it was fried liver, over cooked spinach, and hominey (those round white things). Awful, awful, and the school I lived at served it every Wednesday for supper (dinner) for as long as I stayed there from 2nd grade to 10th grade. To this day the smell of liver makes me sick.

[rug]

1. Fried head chese with sauerkraut.

[sakabatou]

2. It was at a 50s diner.

It had the worst stomach pain afterwords, so my parents had to take me to the hospital to find out what it was.

[Mike 03]

3. Mexican Hat, Utah. We were on a family vacation and had no place but this

diner to stop at, and we ordered meals. We (kids) were young and dumb, so we ordered meat and it was rotten, literally. It could not be chewed. It became a tradition in our family to refer to these burgers as "moo burgers." I can't remember why.

[femmocrat]

4. No joke... it was at Olive Garden.

I was having lunch with three colleagues. They all ordered some kind of pasta, but I ordered a sandwich. The waitress brought them their salads and snatched away my salad bowl. I waited and waited for the sandwich. They ate their pasta while I still waited.

Finally she brought me a sandwich on moldy bread!!! By then everyone was done eating and it was too late to re-order. I was starving.

F*ck Olive Garden. I never went back. And that was years before I joined DU!

[yellowdogintexas]

5. fish at my school cafeteria, it was unbelievably horrible. It is all their fault

that I am squeamish about fish to this day.

other than than, anything prepared by my first mother in law

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. Many of my own efforts at cooking.

Or perhaps that one free birthday meal at Denny's (just because!)

[jmowreader]

7. It was the chili mac in basic training

It didn't taste too bad...but it wound up giving everyone in the company food poisoning. The mess sergeant didn't last too long after that.

[Generic Brad]

8. Baked bullheads with barbeque sauce.

Eccch! :puke:

[mykpart]

9. A friend of my grandmother made this casserole;

it had tuna, mayo, and spinach and god knows what else, and it was served hot! Oh. My. God.

[AwakeAtLast]

11. I cannot eat cooked tuna

I know the stuff in the can has been cooked, but that stuff cannot be heated.

I like it in tuna salad or as sashimi. That's it.

[AwakeAtLast]

10. Roast pork, served over potato filling with cooked carrots

Mr. WMU and I stopped at a restaurant between Reading and Lancaster, PA.

You couldn't cut the pork because it was so tough and hidden by a bunch of gravy. The potato filling was very thick and the carrots were so overcooked they had no flavor!

The waitress asks "Do you want a box?" I say, "Hell, no!"

She looked kind of surprised, but it was late, we had to get on the road and I was still hungry!

[LBJDemocrat]

38. LMFAO!

That's great. I wish I could've seen it.

[tigereye]

49. sounds like PA Dutch-type cooking - an acquired taste for some...

[Aristus]

12. A French Dip sandwich, fries and lemonade in a shitty diner in a shitty town, Thermopolis,

in a shitty state, Wyoming. When Dante wrote about the Ninth Circle of Hell, I can only assume it was after a visit to Thermopolis.

[Arugula Latte]

13. I bit into some sort of muffin when I was in Germany

I thought -- "Ahh, a breakfast muffin. Yum. Probably has some nice fruit in it."

Noooooo. There was some disgusting, vile meat (and I don't like meat, anyway) and some rancid, horrible cheese. Needless to say, I did not take another bite. x(

[datasuspect]

29. german meat muffins with stinky cheese sounds kinda good

[Arugula Latte]

36. Maybe I'll make a band called German Stinky Cheese Muffins

:)

[XemaSab]

14. A friend and I stopped for dinner somewhere along I-5

and he ordered the turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes.

The "turkey" was lunch meat. x(

[mockmonkey]

15. sushi

I had never had it before and was willing to try it. I was out with my BF and he loves it. It took everything I had not to throw up in the restaurant. I ate what I could and I could tell the other patrons were having a good time watching me try to eat it.

Later, when we got out to the car my BF promptly threw up. Heh!

[PaddyBlueEyes]

16. Haggis

ugh...

[crimsonblue]

17. jail food....

you never know if you'll find a shank or spit in it.

[Canuckistanian]

18. Sea Cucumber, 1995. Japanese restaurant, paper walls

Approximately 8:35 p.m.

It was raining.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

19. at The Art Institute of Houston.

One of those ripoff proprietary schools that advertises heavily.

A meal in their restaurant run by their Culinary students.

Weird combinations. Tiny portions. All I could eat was the steak, which I had to send back to be cooked more, and the iced tea, and the roll.

I ate some precious little potatoes. There was fruit compote that had this HORRIBLE LICORICE SAUCE (or liqueur) on it. YUCK!! Could they have put a fruit flavored liqueur over the fruit??? Hell no!!!
Grand Marnier or Cointreau?? Hell, no, that would be LOGICAL.

I Had a bad stomachache the rest of the night. My boyfriend had to drive home very quickly to make a deposit in the bathroom.

We both felt horrible.

It was like Moe Syslak describes Post-Modernism: "Weird for da sake of weird".

:puke: :puke:

[Lorien]

43. Hell, I ate at a diner on Disney property that served garlic infused fruit with

every meal. It was vile...and the establishment didn't last long!

[Adsos Letter]

20. I can't remember exactly, but I'm sure it was in the Army...35 years ago...

:scared: :puke:

[bluesbassman]

21. How long did it take you to quit putting salt on everthing you ate...

after you came home? I remember people looking at me like I was crazy 'cause I salted EVERYTHING!:puke: :rofl:

[flying rabbit]

26. The Army made me the hot sauce addict I am today.

MMMMMM Frank's red hot.Goes with anything but ice cream.

[LiberalEsto]

22. I was doing a restaurant review

I was in my first newspaper reporting job at a teensy paper back in 1973. The ad manager wanted me to review some hole-in-the-wall restaurant attached to a bowling alley, in order to get the owners to buy a small ad in the paper. (There were no journalistic standards at this rag, believe me.)

First of all I sensed something was wrong when I saw that I was the only customer in the place. The restaurant served me a piece of "meat" that was entirely fried gristle. It could neither be cut nor chewed. The over-boiled potatoes smelled bad. There was also some ghastly boiled corn on the cob that was falling apart from being over-boiled.

The "salad bar" was almost indescribably awful. I took a small spoonful of their canned pineapple, one of the few things that appeared edible, and the stuff actually fizzed in my mouth. It had fermented. The pickled beets were spoiled, God knows how. I ended up spitting every loathsome bite into my napkin.

During my "meal" a young couple on a date came in and ordered food. They were so horrified by what they were served that they got up and walked out. There were no other customers, undoubtedly because word had spread about how horrible this place was. I believe the woman who ran the place was mentally ill or something.

It was impossible to say anything good about this hellhole's food, so my 3-paragraph review focused on the relaxing pink decor and atmosphere. The ad manager and my editor took a look at it and ordered me to write a favorable review of the food, and I told them it could not be done because the food was so ghastly. We argued about it for a while, and I suggested they try the place themselves to see that I was telling the truth. Finally they dropped the subject.

The restaurant closed down soon afterward. That was my first, and last, restaurant review experience in a writing career spanning more than 30 years. Thinking about that nightmarish food still makes me queasy.

[rug]

25. That is the most memorable restaurant review I've ever read.

Vivid even after 35 years.

[LiberalEsto]

31. Thanks!

What makes it funnier, at least to me, is that the teensy paper that employed me was part of a small NJ newspaper chain owned by Dow Jones, owners of the Wall Street Journal. The paper I worked for no longer exists, which serves it right.

I think there could be a metaphor somewhere in my tale. Something about the Bastion of Capitalism pushing inedible gristle on average Americans and ordering them to eat it and, moreover, like it.

[alphafemale]

23. At a certain tourist trap, on a state border, along a major N/S Interstate

There was a dead palmetto bug laying in the ice on one of the breakfast bars.

[Liberal_in_LA]

28. Yum!

[hobbit709]

24. The chicken marsala they served at a Christmas dinner/party

where my wife used to work. It was at a now-closed hotel restaurant. It was godawful. I think the wine they used had turned bad. It was bitter tasting and almost vinegary. We stopped off for a burger on the way home. The next year they had the party at the same place. I swear that they took the leftovers out of the freezer and served it again. The year after that we ate at a different place because everyone at her work complained.

[KansDem]

27. Anchovy and jalapeño pizza...

I ordered it at the restaurant of a big-name pizza chain. I love A&J pizza, but this one must have had some rancid anchovies on it. I ate it, then promptly went to the men's room to vomit.

Never went back, but I still eat A&J pizza! :9

[Runcible Spoon]

30. Rotten fried chicken from my host family in Guatemala...

The mother ran a restaurant so I usually ate pretty well. But one day, she comes into the kitchen beaming, holding a platter of fried chicken. It was a special treat, since meat was expensive and usually only eaten on ceremonial occasions or if someone in the village had to butcher something for some reason and was sharing. Anyway, I was excited and honored, until I bit into the breast. It was putrid, and smelled and tasted like pus oozing from an infected wound. I don't know how or why I did it, but I choked it down so as to not offend them. I was rewarded with a nice horrific case of E Coli.


Ughh I still shudder remembering that chicken....

[TK421]

32. When I lived in Florida, there was this place in Ft.Myers called

the Clock Diner....a co-worker of mine convinced me to check it out because she said they have real Philly Cheesesteaks on their menu....that should have been a red light right there....and she knew how much I missed them after being without them for almost two years.

So, I order the "Philly cheesesteak"....about twenty minutes or so later, the waitress brings out our orders. I looked at my plate and called the waitress over, because I thought she brought out the wrong order. She was like "No,sir, that's the cheesesteak". There were so many things wrong with this, I'm not sure where to begin....first of all, the "roll" was a toasted ( I shit you not on this ) hot dog bun that appeared to be buttered, served open-faced with cold-cut grade roast beef ( hot,of course ) with maybe two slices of cheese half-melted on top of it. If you have ever had a cheesesteak, you would have found this hilarious...

THIS is what you call a cheesesteak!

[Raven]

33. Many! All of them cooked by me. :-(

[harmonicon]

34. a bad indian restaurant in France

Not just not good, but honestly the worst thing I've been served. I didn't eat much of it, and I was absolutely starving - that bad.

[The empressof all]

35. Chinese Food in Lake Chelan WA

Overcooked fettuccine with a can of LaChoy Veggies poured on top mixed with Campbell's Cream of mushroom soup mixed with Soy. I swear I'm not exaggerating. The joint was packed.

[LiberalEsto]

42. That brings back memories...

About once every other week the cafeteria at my junior high school served Chow Mein, heated up from huge cans. It usually wasn't too bad, although I admit I had never eaten real Chinese food at that age.

One unfortunate day, the cafeteria ran short on its canned Chow Mein. Some obviously deranged kitchen lady decided to eke it out with canned spinach and, even worse, OATMEAL. I swear to God, I have never seen a weirder-looking mess in my life.

They had a LOT of leftover Chow Mein a la Schuyler Colfax Junior High School that day.

[tigereye]

50. I had one of the most horrible Chinese meals ever in this little hole in the wall

strip mall. It was so bland and boring. Horrible. And the damn place was still open last time I rode by.


Horrible.

[hunter]

71. We stopped and had "Mexican Food" at some place in small town Kansas.

The "tacos" tasted exactly like hamburgers. The "burritos" tasted exactly like hamburgers. The beans tasted like Van Camp's Pork and Beans. The "hot sauce" tasted like ketchup. The cheese was American. It wasn't even Taco Bell not-Mexican. It was trapped in a drab alternate universe horror not-Mexican.

I also had "American Style Pizza" in England before the English had discovered cooking. I'm not sure what the pizza shaped object really was when they brought it to the table forty five minutes after we ordered it. There wasn't even a hint of garlic or olive oil. The prominent flavors were white bread toast, tallow, and canned tomato soup.

I can picture almost exactly the kind of Chinese food you describe!

[jobycom]

37. I don't remember, because the warm green chile beer made me forget the rest.

If ever in Taos, do not drink warm green chile beer. I doubt it would be better chilled, either. There is no liquid you can find anywhere that would not be preferable, and you know what liquid I mean, even if I am to polite to name it.

[annonymous]

39. The lobster dinner that had me on the toilet for 4 hours.

It was at some restaurant that has since gone out of business. I won't eat lobster to this day because of it.

[MorningGlow]

40. Chinese food in a small lakeside town near our old house

My former elder LOOOOOOVED the place. "Best Chinese food EVER" she and her husband declared. So she mandated that everyone in the coven would get together for dinner every Sunday night there. Went once--couldn't eat a damned thing. I don't remember what I ordered, but it didn't matter--rice that was tough, chicken you couldn't chew, and a sauce that was 99 percent MSG. Mr. MG, who's allergic to MSG, asked for a meal without. Yeah right. They swore it had no MSG, but of course he got a raging headache shortly afterward. He expected it, as he could taste it from the first bite, but he ate it to be polite and not starve to death.

Went a second time (without Mr. MG) and lied--said I wasn't hungry. I just ordered appetizers--ribs and an egg roll. I couldn't even get the rib meat off the bones--it was that tough--and the eggroll was overfried to the point that you couldn't tell the shell from the innards (and it all tasted like grease). How in the world can a Chinese restaurant destroy an eggroll?!

I learned my lesson--never went back--and my elder got offended because she thought I didn't want to hang with my coven sisters and their families. I couldn't tell her the truth, because she was friends with the restaurant owners. As far as I know, they still think this crap is the "best Chinese food ever" (Mr. MG says, "They don't get out much") although the "every Sunday night" dinners went by the wayside after a while (thank goodness). This was 10 years ago, and the restaurant is still open. They do a brisk business with customers who don't know any better.

[bif]

41. Sunday Night Surprise!

I remember getting toasted on a Sunday night and preparing what I thought would be a good lunch for Monday. When I opened up the Tupperware on Monday it turned out I made pasta with Hummous and parmesan cheese! Yuch! I've had several surprises like that since.

[child of the one]

44. Windex in my hash browns at some greasy spoon

And I was too polite to tell them about it.

[azmouse]

45. Sand dabs

When I lived in CA everyone raved about sand dabs, a type of fish. So I tried it. Never again. What a mess.

[Lyric]

46. A holiday dinner at which the SO of an extended relative insisted on doing the cooking.

I didn't know that ham could BE tough, dry, leathery, and bitter. I also didn't know that you could cook cabbage and potatoes until any semblance of flavor had long ago run away screaming, and all that was left was a slimy, pulpy, vaguely greenish-white heap of mess. I won't even go into the "cookies" and "fudge." Nobody said a word because we didn't want to hurt her feelings, but damn...it was truly horrible.

Although, the sliced fresh river eel breaded with corn flakes and fried in pork lard comes in a VERY close second. That was a "surprise" dinner that some friends of my parents made for us when I was a teenager. It took me years to forget the taste. What made it even worse was that outside of the house, the eel skins were still nailed to a tree in the front yard. Apparently the preparation process involves nailing the eels to a tree.

:scared:

[Tangerine LaBamba]

56. OK

You win.

:toast:

[tigereye]

47. I once made a tomato, carrot and peanut butter casserole long ago-

that was horrible.

And then one time I made a chicken and beet dish that was henceforth referred to as "the St. Valentine's Day massacre."



I learned my lesson and never made such bizarre dishes again. :hide:

[FloridaJudy]

48. A Chinese New Year Banquet

That was straight out of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". My FIL's business partner was Chinese, and he invited us to feast with his family in an extremely fancy Chinese restaurant.

I'm a fairly adventurous eater, and I love Chinese food, but I think they went out of their way to produce dishes you have to be raised on since birth to appreciate. Course after course of stuff that was fermented or made of things few Westerners find appetizing: hundred year old eggs, sea cucumber, bird's nest soup (that's made out of swallow spit, for crying out loud), fermented tofu. I stuck to vegetables, and the chicken feet - which while aesthetically unappealing - were relatively palatable.

As the crowning dish, the waiters brought out a beautifully grilled fish. "Ahhh!" I thought. "Finally something that looks tasty!" The hostess proceeded to pluck out its eyeball with her chopsticks and offer it to me. How I ate that thing I'd prefer to forget.

Each culture has stuff that seems appalling to outsiders. Most Chinese find cheese horrifying, and I can only eat tripe or chitterlings if I cut them into pieces small enough to swallow quickly without chewing - which I've had to do on several occasions in order to be polite. But an entire meal of oddities is memorable.

On the other hand, I adore Borscht - which several friends have indicated they only find suitable for feeding hogs.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

57. I had the exact same experience

Taipei, business dealings, a great honor for us, all of that.

And, yeah, I got the eye. I think I swallowed it whole, but I can't remember, because I think my brain exploded.

During that dinner, they were very nice to me when I stirred my soup and uncovered a bird's head. My scream wasn't really that loud, and everyone sort of tittered. Our host, who was to my right, gallantly leaned over, grabbed the head with his chopsticks, and popped it into his mouth.

I don't know that I've ever been more grateful to another human beings.

And the fried chicken feet were NOT good. Well, mine weren't, anyway. I'm glad yours worked. Sort of.

[sammythecat]

67. I always thought of myself as very unfussy about food,

but this business of eyeballs and bird heads is definitely past my limit. That is EXTREMELY gross and I really don't think I'd be able to do it.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

62. I love Borscht too.

At least the kind my mother and grandmother made (slightly sweet garnished with dill). I think that's Ukranian style--from what I heard the Russian style is somewhat different.

[HamdenRice]

51. Mopani worms in Johannesburg

a specialty restaurant serving specialty "indigenous" food, but in my years there I never once was served such a thing from a real African kitchen.

Anyway, they were big black catapillars with green goo inside. Yuck.

Second worst was something from a cajun restaurant in Manhattan that gave me food poisoning.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

52. also in Johannesburg...

it was some sort of terrible hash with veggies, chicken, weak gravey and some sort of mashed potatoe like substance that might have been plaster of paris or wallpaper paste, It looked inoffensive enough, like shepherd's pie but I still get ill just thinking about it.

[Natalya Slosky]

53. hospital food...

A year and a half ago I was hospitalized for depression for about a week. Almost all the meals were really awful; but the worst was the baked spaghetti I had my last evening there. It tasted like cardboard and made me sick -- literally.

[sammythecat]

66. It was probably just bad food,

but your story made me think of a medication that was prescribed for me about 6 mos. ago. Strattera was the name and it only came in capsule form. I took it for about 5 days and that was it for me. Everything, even water, tasted like metal. Day six I decided this stuff was ruining every day and stopped. I was never warned about side effects, but later I looked at one of the drug info websites and it said the powder was so intensely bitter that you should pop the pill toward the back of your mouth and immediately drink water and then wash your hands in case of any dust particles on your fingers.

So, your post made me wonder if it was possible something you received in the hospital might have altered your sense of taste. Or maybe it was just lousy cooking.

Oh, and welcome to DU! :hi:

[Xipe Totec]

54. Koi pellets from a dispenser in the zoo

I was really hungry, and only had a quarter in my pocket.

(I had not eaten in two days.)

Don't pity me, I've had meals since then that are incredibly delicious.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

55. Sweet and sour liver

I was a young bride, and my new husband and I were invited to dinner by his boss and his wife. Nice people, I liked them, and I was excited.

Just the four of us, and she served sweet-and-sour liver with a side of - man, my throat is drying and closing as I recall this - mashed cauliflower. There were chunks of pineapple and green pepper in with the liver, so I spent a lot of time cutting them into tiny pieces and chewing, chewing, chewing. I hid the liver pieces (I am THIS CLOSE to the dry heaves) under the cauliflower.

After that, I remember nothing. Time, mercifully, has blanked it all out.

None of us is married to any of us any more. Hell, serving food like that doomed all of us, I think.

Now I must go outside and breathe clean air until I forget it all again.......................

[madmom]

58. Lasagna my new daughter in law made using Velveeta.

[qanda]

59. Beans

Oh God, just the thought of it sends me into dry heaves. My mother made them every Saturday night. I believe they were lima beans. Luckily, she baked homemade rolls to go with them or I would have gone hungry once a week.

[Redstone]

60. Hurried K-Rats in a crater, waiting for the next flare drop. I don't remember if

it tasted good or bad, but that and other similar meals were pretty miserable.

Redstone

[applegrove]

61. God I hated liver. My mother cooked it all the time.

[Odin2005]

63. The buffet at an Italian restaurant called Valentino's

The food was pretty good, but both times I ate there I ended up with the most terrible nausea I have ever experienced a few hours later.

[CreekDog]

64. Something in Vancouver's Chinatown with "assorted meat"

they served me a giant bowl of it. i could barely take two spoonfuls of it.

the lady came over and asked me if i wanted to take it home. i told her i had to go across the border and they weren't allowing whatever kind of meat was in it across.

she walked away kind of laughing at me. :rofl:

:puke:

it took me way too long to get across to Blaine, Washington where on an empty stomach i was able to score some Chocodiles. :P

[LibDemAlways]

65. Cold cuts that were tainted with salmonella. I won't go into the

aftermath. It was grim.

[Deep13]

68. It's not what one eats but with whom one eats that makes the meal what it is.

Consequently, any of the meals I had with my mother, sister and step-monster in the 1980s could have been the worst.

[Common Sense Party]

69. Can't choose, Either cow stomach or blood sausage.

You never know what people will serve you in Argentina.

The intestines were pretty good, though.

[Wapsie B]

70. Greasy grimy gopher guts

and masticated monkey butts.