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

[CrapGoat]

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.

Veggie lasange and mushroom Risotto are things I think every vegetarian got sick of seeing back in the 90s let alone now!
Lasagne is boring I think and just over-done.
Mushroom Risotto is something I might make if I didn't have much in/couldn't be bothered going shopping or was skint/trying to save money-NOT something I'd choose to eat if I was treating myself to a meal-why do pubs/restaurants not know that?! Every mouthful the same and inevitably is overcooked to the point it tastes/feels like rice pudding but savoury. Nope.

Rememebered another 'incident' where my Mum (who is lovely in general to be fair but doesn't 'get' people who don't eat 'normal' food) was cooking some meat-orientated dish for a gathering but with Mediterranean vegetables on the side. I saw how much veg she had done and figured as that was all I was going to be eating, I'd make some more so I chopped up some more, put them in the oven and went back to whatever I was doing, she was busy cooking but also in an out of the kitchen doing other things.

We sat down for the meal (me, her and other family members/friends) and she served me just a morsel of the veg on a tiny side plate while everyone else got a full meal. I said to her 'Oh I put some more veg in for me as that's all I'll be eating' and she said she had taken it out of the oven as she knew she'd made enough for everyone.

YES enough for everyone as a side but you think I'll be satiated on a few bites of courgette/tomato/aubergine?'

Apparently yes.

I am not on a constant diet-I just don't eat meat ffs!

@SisterMichaelsHabit that's so bliddy dangerous let alone annoying! In a hospital too?

In hospital for the first meal I could eat after quite major surgery I chose the vegetarian option of baked potato with cheese, small salad and apple crumble with custard. I was absolutely starving after not eating for nearly 3 days. The meal came and they apparently had run out of vegetarian cheese so I got a plain baked potato no dressing or anything else, the small salad was a tablespoon sized portion of lettuce with 2 slices of cucumber. I don’t know what was amiss with the apple crumble but it never appeared I got an apple on a plate and a small bowl of custard. I actually cried. I ate the 2 cereal bars I had taken in with me and messaged my DH to bring me a sandwich and snacks in when he came to visit. Bizarrely all the other meals I had in there were okay ( for hospital food) so goodness knows what had happened at that meal time.

In my catered halls at uni, a pasta dish that tasted like it was full of cinnamon. For different reasons, also in said halls, when I was served the teeniest portion of salmon you've ever seen and had a row with the server about it.

A family wedding where we got asked several months before about any potential dietary requirements etc for those attending and asked by one member of the family involved about what we'd like for the dinner the night before the wedding and on the day itself. Myself and another family member who have quite plain tastes simply asked for a baked potato with butter and cheese. Pretty easy to accommodate you'd think? Then the roast chicken without the jus sauce (due to fruit allergies) and veg.

Forward to us arriving the day before the wedding and we go down in the evening for dinner, which was a beef lasagne and sides buffet type thing, which I couldn't eat due to not being able to eat tomatoes and not to one of my other relative's tastes. Everyone had served up with the lasagne and was eating and we're sat there thinking, where are our potatoes? So we asked the waitress who asked the kitchen staff who said they had no idea what she was talking about.

Eventually about an hour later, 2 quite small and very obviously microwaved "baked" potatoes arrived. No sides - no cheese or even butter. Asked about them to be told they didn't have any cheese, which another relative complained about before we could say anything that that just wasn't good enough. Eventually some cheese arrived with some butter and we finally ate our dinner. The poor bride and also the groom's mother were so embarrassed and we were very disappointed given they knew months ahead about what we wanted/needed.

The wedding day dinner all I ended up getting was a very small portion of roast chicken, no substitute sauce such as a plain gravy and a very small portion of new potatoes and green veg which was in a serving bowl served with lemon slices (is that a thing?). Went to bed that night still starving hungry! This wasn't a small place either, think big country hotel type venue.

Thoughts and prayers hun 😂

I have coeliacs disease. On a first class Virgin Atlantic long haul to St Lucia I was served a pear for dessert. Just a whole pear. The air stewardess was so embarrassed she came and explained it was "just a pear" but was grossly apologetic and agreed it probably wasn't worth serving.

I'm sure there are others but this wins as the worst!

Hospital food in Germany after my second was born. Every meal was awful.

Many years ago being invited to another couples home for dinner. When I got there I found out it was tuna and sweet corn pasta. I loathe tuna almost as much as I loathe sweet corn. I tried my best to choke it down, but I felt more and more ill, and got quieter and quieter as I focused on not throwing it back up. Never got invited back.

in my teens I spent a week staying with an elderly relative. It was a week of every meal I hated.

In my family I’m the one, that if there’s going to be a mistake when we eat out or get a takeaway, it’ll be my meal that will be wrong, have parts missing, or, on one occasion, completely forgotten.

I have no specific dietary requirements
I was honoured to be asked to my friends huge Asian wedding and was pretty much the only non Indian person there.
It was a beautiful occasion and I loved all the amazing outfits and the ceremony but I hardly managed to eat anything and had to hit up a chippy on the way home.
The food looked absolutely beautiful but, despite thinking I was OK with spicy food, this was a whole other level. Everything on the buffet was so hot it took the roof off my mouth. I couldn't actually taste anything except a burning sensation. I wound up with just a few spoonfuls of plain white rice.

A meal at a local place where they didn't disclose nuts in the curry- had an allergic reaction and was ill immediately after and wiped out for days. Could have been so much worse, people die over these omissions/ carelessness.

I spent a few nights in hospital (in the UK), they couldn't accommodate my dairy allergy so just didn't feed me. Anything. I was too ill to get up to go find my own food, and not allowed to leave my bed without supervision anyway. I had some breakfast bars a visitor brought me on the first day, before I was moved to a ward with no mobile signal. I was too ill to feel hungry really, so didn't kick up a fuss but I look back now and wonder how on earth that was allowed.

I give you: Swede Crumble.

Also, a plate of peas and baked beans.

anything from Mcdonald.

Crumbed brains. I was a child visiting another child. Never went back!

Dinner party at a much older couple's posh country house. The (black) avocado starter had crunchy grey bits. Later saw the cat litter tray on the kitchen side.

At a wedding, where the vegetarian dish looked nice. Can't remember what it was, though, as by the time my table was served there was none left due to meat eaters deciding they just fancied it, despite not ordering the veggie option in advance.

All the kitchen had left that was vegetarian by the time they reached me was lettuce and potatoes, so that's what I had - a plate with a couple of undressed lettuce leaves and a few potatoes.

That's absolutely awful. I hope you were able to complain. (But totally understand if it wasn't your top priority at the time).

Pub lunch, just outside Maidenhead. The service was appalling, the food virtually inedible and it was ridiculously overpriced. Left feedback which prompted tirade of abuse from the owner.

On a hospital stay while pregnant. The only way to abate my nausea was to eat little and often. I'd been nil by mouth since 10pm the night before and they took me down to theatre as the lunch trolley arrived at 12:45. When I returned some hours later and begged for food they gave me the world's saddest salad. It was about a dozen lettuce leaves and a slice of cucumber cut into quarters but with the seeds removed so it was dry. It came with supposedly a samosa but in a manufacturing issue there was no filling so it was just fried pastry.

I think I actually did cry a bit.

My nieces wedding reception last year.
It was held in a fancy country club type of venue at god knows how much per head.
It was supposed to be a buffet style meal, a BBQ with a hog roast.
The meal consisted of lukewarm spicy wedges, lukewarm pizza, overcooked burgers, overcooked chicken drumsticks, dry bread rolls and a bit of salad.
The hog must have escaped on the way there! ( They did refund her for that tbf )
It was shocking. My parents ended up going back to their hotel to eat a proper meal.

At a wedding, where the vegetarian dish looked nice. Can't remember what it was, though, as by the time my table was served there was none left due to meat eaters deciding they just fancied it, despite not ordering the veggie option in advance.

All the kitchen had left that was vegetarian by the time they reached me was lettuce and potatoes, so that's what I had - a plate with a couple of undressed lettuce leaves and a few potatoes.

This has happened to me so many times! Same with canapés - they'll have one veggie canapé and all the meat eaters will wolf them down before they even get round to you. You then have to stand there for 2 hours smiling saying "no thank you" to plates and plates of meat while absolutely starving.

I had this happen at one wedding and then for some reason my vegetarian main was absolutely tiny. Everyone else had a giant chunk of meat and I had a side plate with a tiny pile of roast vegetables on it. I was running on such an empty stomach that I ended up totally hammered by the end of the night!

In a hospital staff canteen, the 'special' was spaghetti something.

When it arrived it was tinned spaghetti with cheddar grated on top and put under the grill.

Not me but at a dinner paid for by a pacemaker company at Simpsons' the first wourse was lobster bisque (I thought that was odd for a set meal as so many people can't eat it) but vegi ex colleague sitting opposite asked for something else, she explained she was vegetarian.

She told us to start, we were getting our main when her starter arrived, it was a slice of melon.

Then they tried to give her the meat main course, so she waited an hour to get a plate of steamed veg.

I think for pudding she had more melon.

My late ex-MIL's version of Sunday lunch. Brisket of beef, cooked the day before, sliced very thinly and served cold with thick gravy, undercooked boiled potatoes, and cauliflower chopped up with all its leaves and cooked for a couple of hours until it is a sludgy green slop.

Argh. Just no no no and my cat is also saying no