What's the worst restaurant experience you've ever had?

1. It wasn't the restaurant that made the experience horrible, but a certain person we were dining with. We were at this Moroccan place dining with another family. There was no menu to choose from, it was a full six or seven course meal of Moroccan food that they brought out to you. The other family we were dining with had a reputation of being cheapskates, and we really only hung out with them because my sister was friends with one of the girls in that family. Truthfully it was that girls mother who brought upon the cheapskate reputation on them, she would always look for ways to not pay for things and it made our family, my mom especially, uncomfortable. Anyway we were at this restaurant, and this lady already doesn't want to order the only option, the full-course meal. The restaurant politely tells her the way they do business, so she asks if she could share a meal with her daughter, to which the restaurant says that would not be possible. So fine, she goes along with it in the end. She later goes to the restroom. About 10 minutes after coming back from the restroom she shrieks and points to a bug in her water cup (this after we've been served almost all the courses). The waiter comes, he swears up and down that there was no way a bug could have gotten into her water cup. She and her husband are furious. Manager comes out and assures us they are up to date on health inspections and have an "A" grade there. They are screaming bloody murder still. The husband states that none of us should have to pay, and then offers to only pay half of our costs. A disagreement occurs between the restaurant and our party, and eventually the restaurant management tells us we can leave without paying. We all leave and wait outside while my dad goes to use the restroom one last time. After my dad comes out the other family leaves after bashing the restaurant and praising themselves for offering to even pay half. After they are well out of earshot my mom asks why my dad took so long in the bathroom. He spills the beans that he actually went back to pay the full amount. It seems he had noticed that after the lady had come back from the bathroom, she had tossed something into her water cup, and based on her past behavior put two and two together to realize that she had engaged in another one of her schemes to get out of paying. We never hung out with that family ever again.
   — SultanofShiraz


2. We were in a restaurant in Paris last fall. We ordered our food which NEVER came out. We were finally able to tell the manager who went and got the waitress. She claimed we had already been served, ate it all, and this was a scam to get second dinner. The manager believed us, but it felt like we were defendants in a criminal trial.
   — Abogada77


3. This happened like 30 years ago and it still haunts me. My first (and last) time I ever had Chicago style pizza. We were in a fairly dead restaurant since it was way after lunch. Only a few tables had people at them. A couple tables over from us was a rather large family consisting of Mom, Dad and two kids in the 9-12 age range. Our pizza comes and we get all set to dig in when the older kid at the other table just starts fountaining puke everywhere. No reaction from the parents. They just moved out of the way and kept eating. At this point every other diner in the place was moving en masse to pay/get their money back/leave. My family made it to the back of that line so I got to watch these people stand up, move away from the table, and continue to eat AROUND the staff that was cleaning up the puke. My last sight of them was the father putting his hand on the shoulder of this poor server so he could lean over and snag something off the table to munch on. So now Chicago style pizza and puke is forever intertwined in my mind.
   — maddomesticscientist






4. Went to an asian "fusion" restaurant with my family where they offered yummy delectable dishes as beef teriyaki with fucking mozzarella sticks and other culinary abortions such as tonkatsu with french fries. They really "fusioned" that shit up. After we finish eating, I head to the bathroom. One of the chefs is in there already peeing, wearing his apron and hat. While I'm peeing, he zips up and walks straight out. What the fuck. My mom sees that I'm upset and I tell her. She waves the manager over and I tell him that I saw a chef piss and not wash his hands. Then he just stares at me, grinning with his goofy ass teeth, not saying anything. It was weird. We got up and left. We never went back.
   — derpderp37


5. Went to Chili's for lunch after a doctor's appointment with my husband. The place is empty. We are finally seated after a ten minute wait (it was this or nothing, and i was starving). Waiter arrives, takes our drink order (unsweet tea and dr pepper) and app (chips and skillet queso). He never comes back. More customers arrive, maybe four tables, and he goes and sits with what we assume are friends of his. We flag down another waiter, who practically throws our drinks at us. He takes our entree order (bbq chicken and a burger). Throws those at us. I realize we have no silverware. After trying to flag four people, my husband gets our silverware himself. I cut the chicken and am surprised it didnt cluck and jump off my plate, it was so raw. Original waiter comes over and i show him the still-pulsing bird and he rolls his eyes and says, "Its rare. You want me to microwave it for you?" I explain i want it cooked through, not heated, and poultry isnt served rare. He snatches the plate and leaves. I never got my food back. Meanwhile, my husband is waiting on me (hes too polite) to eat. I finally tell him to go ahead, at which point he opens the bun and finds a fake fingernail. We attempt to get someones attention so we can pay and leave, but 15 minutes later we just got up and left. I've never gone to another Chilis.
   — KFiggNewton


6. Having dinner with my now-wife who had just recently moved back to MA from Cali, so she didn't have a new MA ID yet. We go to order drinks and the waitress takes my wife's Cali ID, immediately proclaims it is "fake," *snaps it in half* and hands it back to her. Like in the blink of an eye just destroys her only current ID for no reason. Manager ended up getting involved and agreed that the waitress was out of line and I think offered free drinks or something, but my wife was furious and we ended up just leaving. It wound up being a hassle getting a MA ID later on because of this, but that's another story.
   — MrMcSwifty






7. Went to an all you can eat buffet. It was supposedly redone with new food. It was not. The food was disgusting and everything was dirty. There were pieces of plastic from the food bags in the food itself and people were literally eating from the bins of food and putting half chewed food back into the bin Finally when we were about to leave someone puked by the only door trapping us all inside until someone cleaned it up. None of the teenagers working there wanted to clean it so the manager had to be called from home to come and break up the fight and assign someone to clean it.
   — Lizpuff


8. When I worked at this pizza place once, these two 4-5ish aged kids stood up at their tables and started climbing everything in the store and wrestling like the end of *Revenge of the Sith* starring drunk toddler scream-wrestling. Parent's didn't do shit. I had to clean table tops with dirty barefoot toddler prints mere feet away from them. I get kids are exhausting but fuck man, you're in public.
   — PositiveChi


9. I went to our nicest steakhouse to celebrate finishing a work project where I had been working up to 16 hour days for a few weeks, utterly exhausted. I ordered the enchilada and aged steak platter, excited for my first time trying aged steaks. Finally got my food, and took a bite of the enchiladas first. As I started to chew I felt a "crunch". Pull it out and it's a piece of broken glass. I'm pretty sure some of it broke off in my mouth that I swallowed. Call the waiter over. All he offers to do is replace the meal. Um... no thanks?! How the fuck do you get glass in enchiladas in the first place? Somebody was super careless. And if it does happen, how does that not warrant a more active response?
   — Ol0O01100lO1O1O1






10. I went to ihop for breakfast and the waitress takes one look at me and says "I can tell that you are single" and then proceeds to lecture me about going to a restaurant for breakfast instead of cooking my own food.
    — xsiu


11. The only restaurant in town was sold to new owners. While there was a lot of people saying bad stuff about it my family decided to try it for themselves. After looking at the new menu I decided nothing looked good. And good thing. My mom got a cold "hot-sandwhich" that they didn't even want to microwave for her. My dad got a sub. They were out of tomatoes though. And cheese. And subs. Try gave him half the meat on a hot dog bun with lettuce and charged him 12$. We have never returned, and tell all the people visiting in town to go to the grocery store or chip stand instead.
    — belle_poutine


12. There's a burger joint called Big Kahuna Burger here in São Paulo. It's a Tarantino themed restaurant, as you could probably guess by the name. I went inside the restaurant and Pulp Fiction had just started on the TV. I saw the whole fucking movie while my fries, burger and desert went to other tables, every. single. order. I left wanting to kill the whole staff. But the burger was very good. Went back another day and had a shitty serving for a second time. Never agains.
    — pcmaranha