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Original poster

What's the worst meal you've been served? Especially but not limited to those with restricted diets?

207 replies

CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:13

I mean if you're coeliac/gluten free/vegan/allergies or anything like? But others as well.

I went to a well-known Fish and Chip restaurant with family recently.I cannot remember how the vegan option was described, but what I got was a small lasagne dish containing some gloopy tomato sauce, inset with three or 4 slimy aubergine slices. A side of new potatoes (about 6, which in fairness were at least quite nice).

Completely tasteless and I was straight in the cupboard for snacks when I got home as I was so hungry. Vegan doesn't equal-no appetite/doesn't like food/is happy with a tiny dish of slop.

I suppose I should be grateful for anything at all with that type of restaurant, but vegans/other people who don't eat certain things aren't hermits-we often go to places with/for other people!

T'was the best part of £20, too.

OP posts:
icallitasplodge · 17/12/2023 23:14

Toby carvery. A10.

AllIsCalmButImNotBright · 17/12/2023 23:17

On a course for a day. On the original form I wrote that I was gluten-free and vegetarian, and I couldn’t eat onions or peppers.

I was just given a plate of raw onions and peppers.

Original poster
CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:17

What was it @icallitasplodge ?

I've heard good things about Tobys if you want a budget/good value dinner although I don't think I've ever been.

OP posts:

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KievLoverTwo · 17/12/2023 23:18

Something in France that looked and probably tasted like cat food. I was so disappointed, my mum had been raving about her little local cafe (that looked more like a working men's club).

Being gluten intolerant is a mare. I am limited with what I can cook my partner, and the gravy is absolutely disgusting. Paying £3.70 for bread that either doesn't toast well or is horrible as sandwiches isn't thrilling either.

AndThatWasNY · 17/12/2023 23:19

As a vegetarian in the 80s as a kid instead of sausages a tin of cold, still in the gross gunky juice, a pile of kidney beans.
My GF meal in hospital was special. So special I don't know what it was meant to be but it retained a tupperware container shape and was luke warm, congealed and lumpy.

jay55 · 17/12/2023 23:19

I ordered a pizza in a touristy restaurant.
I was served hot dog rolls with ketchup and plastic cheese.

AndThatWasNY · 17/12/2023 23:22

At my granddad's funeral i came with a 2 week old baby (as well as a 2 and 3 year old).There wasn't a single gf thing to eat at the wake despite being told there would be. So for 6 hours (including the funeral) all I ate cream and jam from scones.

mrsbyers · 17/12/2023 23:24

About 35 years ago I ordered a veggie lasagne and it was tinned brussel sprouts and asparagus in a white sauce - vile

Original poster
CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:26

All of these sound so gross 😫

OP posts:
icallitasplodge · 17/12/2023 23:29

CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:17

What was it @icallitasplodge ?

I've heard good things about Tobys if you want a budget/good value dinner although I don't think I've ever been.

It was everything, it’s been shut down a few times but this particular time we were desperate and it’s not always horrific. This time the buffet looked like the dirty plates that need washing up at the end of a party. Pasta all dried up with a skin on the sauce and burnt to the pan, the meat looked hard around the edges, no veg left, roast potatoes like they’d been out all day. This was about 5pm so not last orders.

I actually wrote to the council as the food looked like someone would get very very ill. The kids had to wash their hands after touching the tables too.

Original poster
CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:29

KievLoverTwo · 17/12/2023 23:18

Something in France that looked and probably tasted like cat food. I was so disappointed, my mum had been raving about her little local cafe (that looked more like a working men's club).

Being gluten intolerant is a mare. I am limited with what I can cook my partner, and the gravy is absolutely disgusting. Paying £3.70 for bread that either doesn't toast well or is horrible as sandwiches isn't thrilling either.

I need to know what it was!
Yes one of my friends is GF too, not quite coeliac but it makes him quite ill if he has even a tiny amount. Don't know about gravy but some of the bread seems awful and very dry and 'bitty' for want of a better word. I took to making him bread for quite a while until some improvements were on offer!

OP posts:
KievLoverTwo · 17/12/2023 23:33

CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:29

I need to know what it was!
Yes one of my friends is GF too, not quite coeliac but it makes him quite ill if he has even a tiny amount. Don't know about gravy but some of the bread seems awful and very dry and 'bitty' for want of a better word. I took to making him bread for quite a while until some improvements were on offer!

Show quote history

It is very bitty. Sometimes it gets stuck in his throat and gives him a hecking cough. It's almost powdery. Powdery crumb throat, yay!

Unfortunately my mum passed away and I no longer talk to the stepdad who was there with me, so I cannot ask. It literally looked like lumps of cat food, but a lighter brown.

He is the same. But it's not worth the migraines and upset tummy gluten gives him. Which is a shame, because all the best things are full of it.

Original poster
CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:34

icallitasplodge · 17/12/2023 23:29

It was everything, it’s been shut down a few times but this particular time we were desperate and it’s not always horrific. This time the buffet looked like the dirty plates that need washing up at the end of a party. Pasta all dried up with a skin on the sauce and burnt to the pan, the meat looked hard around the edges, no veg left, roast potatoes like they’d been out all day. This was about 5pm so not last orders.

I actually wrote to the council as the food looked like someone would get very very ill. The kids had to wash their hands after touching the tables too.

Show quote history

Ugh god that sounds horrible! Did you actually eat there?
As I've said I've heard quite good things about them and cheap doesn't always mean horrible but I'm very non-fussy about hygrine and I think I'd draw a line at that!

OP posts:
cristokitty · 17/12/2023 23:34

I was in hospital in Paris and told them I was vegetarian. I got a plate of smash, an orange that was half green and a pot of yoghurt. It was a private hospital, I dread to think what I would have been fed in a normal hospital Confused

Spartak · 17/12/2023 23:38

KievLoverTwo · 17/12/2023 23:18

Something in France that looked and probably tasted like cat food. I was so disappointed, my mum had been raving about her little local cafe (that looked more like a working men's club).

Being gluten intolerant is a mare. I am limited with what I can cook my partner, and the gravy is absolutely disgusting. Paying £3.70 for bread that either doesn't toast well or is horrible as sandwiches isn't thrilling either.

The M&S fresh Christmas gravy is gluten free and its lovely. I always get dispatched to buy some for a coeliac relative and I prefer it to any other gravy.

Spartak · 17/12/2023 23:40

I got put up in a Hilton hotel when my Easyjet flight was delayed by 24 hours.

I was veggie at the time and got served a plate of chips and carrots leftover from the roast meals earlier that day. It was the only meal that I was given all day.

Ballygowenwater · 17/12/2023 23:40

Went to a quite expensive local restaurant and the only available veggie option was the kids pasta and tomato sauce…. Which turned out to be just a warmed tin of tomatoes. And was served to me as a bowl of plain spaghetti with the bland watery tomatoes on the side.

Original poster
CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:49

@Ballygowenwater my experience usually is very expensive restaurants, great, very cheap places ('Spoons/yates/Greene King), good. In between meaning 'quite expensive' down to 'normal' priced places such as local business sort of restaurants, rubbish!

OP posts:
Original poster
CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:50

@Spartak that would give me the rage. Seriously what is so difficult about making a nice meal without meat in it?

OP posts:
CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 17/12/2023 23:52

I’m not sure if this counts but after my first ex dumped me I was taken to a rowing dinner with my mother. Everyone else was not a vegetarian but I was. They all had an elaborate three-course meal. My main course was a parsnip. A whole parsnip, not even skinned. And it was just a parsnip.

KievLoverTwo · 17/12/2023 23:53

Spartak · 17/12/2023 23:38

The M&S fresh Christmas gravy is gluten free and its lovely. I always get dispatched to buy some for a coeliac relative and I prefer it to any other gravy.

Show quote history

Thank you, that will make us both very happy.

Original poster
CrapGoat · 17/12/2023 23:53

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 17/12/2023 23:52

I’m not sure if this counts but after my first ex dumped me I was taken to a rowing dinner with my mother. Everyone else was not a vegetarian but I was. They all had an elaborate three-course meal. My main course was a parsnip. A whole parsnip, not even skinned. And it was just a parsnip.

WTF, was it a joke?!

OP posts:
SisterMichaelsHabit · 17/12/2023 23:56

I was GF and vegan for a while in 2010-2013, when neither of these things were well catered-for but I was awaiting testing to find out what was making me so ill.

I went out to eat at a place that has since gone out of business. I had an hour for lunch. They took 55 minutes to keep bringing me food with stuff poured over it that I couldn't eat, and I sent the food back 3 times then the waitress snippily said "all we can do you is a house salad".

She served me a bowl of chopped iceberg lettuce with nothing else.

I was charged the full price of the original thing I'd ordered (which I'd had before at the same place with no issue), which would have been GF and vegan if they'd just stopped putting cheese sauce, gravy and finally bloody Diane sauce on it every time they brought it out!

I was also late back to work by the time I'd had a few bites, so had no time to argue the bill as I had to run back around the corner.

I never returned.

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 17/12/2023 23:59

@CrapGoat nope.

DGHZ · 17/12/2023 23:59

I don’t think I can think of one particularly awful one off the top of my head but there have been a few! I’m a vegetarian so it always tends to be the vegetarian ‘option’ is what you’re having.. there is no option 🙄 I had a big plate of a weird mushroom salty slimey pasta thing at a friend’s wedding. I couldn’t even politely cover up that I didn’t like it and eat some or move it around my plate. It was such a huge bowl and I couldn’t even make a dent in it. It tasted like what I imagine feet would taste like 🤣 I’ve been veggie my whole life and I swear I’ve developed some sort of menu anxiety when I first go in somewhere. I’m frantically scanning for a safe bet and genuinely feel such panic if I have to order something I know is going to be horrible. I can’t imagine what it must be like if you eat meat and go places for dinner, get the menu and just choose from the whole thing! The concept is so alien to me