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.

I once went on a date

He cooked me mung bean curry-no rice,just this plate of foul smelling slop with a glass of full fat milk next to it

It looked like puke and tasted foul

The date died a few years back-i don't think it's related to that meal

Eel. It smelt, looked and tasted like something that had died and been left in the sun on a hot beach. Utterly utterly foul rotten fish taste.

I've had two boyfriends who 'cooked' for me and produced the same hideous 'dinner':

Tin of kidney beans
Tin of tomatoes
About a molecule of chilli powder
A pouch of stinky socks rice

So bland, so awful, so ex-boyfriend.

Gluten free. Went to a work event where they asked dietary requirements in advance. The only gluten free item was melon balls wrapped in wafer thin slivers of cucumber. This was supposed to be dinner.

When I was a vegetarian, once on a transatlantic flight my 'vegetarian meal' was a fruit plate with a side of fruit salad. Literally big slices of fruit on a plate with a side cup of smaller cut up pieces of the same sad fruit. I was starving by the time I actually got there!

Some of these sound so horrendous!

Just remembered, not me but a friend of mien on a student exchange trip didn't like any of the food at all and was really hungry all week. Then one day they brought out bowls of chips at lunchtime and she said she was SO pleased, and really looking forward to some 'normal' food.

And then the Mother of the family came out with some eggs and cracked a raw egg right on top of my friend's chips (and then everyone else's).

How is this normal in any country? Raw egg I mean.

I've no idea! I think it was France.

I've been given a baked courgette sprinkled stuffed with grated carrot before in a quite 'naice' put/restaurant too.

My wife went to a work do which was £55 a head for a 3 course meal. She is vegan. She was given

a plate of melon-starter
a roast pepper- main
a bowl of melon- pudding

Everyone else got meat starter and main, then cake for pudding.

@CrapGoat I spent a substantial portion of my childhood in France, and no, it is not normal!

That sparked off two more reminiscences. The first one is that my school cafeteria in England was standard low-quality stodge but I basically got by on white bread and lettuce, plain pasta, etc. It smelled a bit rubbish but mainly because it was foods that were triggering very ingrained sensory issues - I don’t think they were called that then but I was the only child in primary school who got to NOT drink milk. Then I went to France. There was a horrible smell wafting out of the cafeteria which carried all the way to the long entrance-driveway thingy. My mother would exclaim over it almost every day, but when I told her it was the cafeteria she would just refuse to believe me. The food was VILE! And we were forced to eat it with the “think of the poor children in Africa” line, or at least attemptedly forced because mostly what I ate that year was stale sliced baguettes.

thelastrose · Yesterday 04:08

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

Was that in the 70s? I remember being five and my mother force feeding me brains, telling me I'd like it this time, because it was beef brains, not pork brains. I was crying, as she held the back of my neck and shovelled the filthy cack into my mouth.

Roasted veg on ciabatta was actually served as onion on a slice of thin brown bread toast. Not another veg in sight. Who on earth wants to eat onion on toast?! That was in a golf club spa about 6 years ago.

A few years ago, we had New Year at my Evil SiL From Hell's place. Pulled pork in Coca Cola; I don't like meat with sweet stuff anyway and it tasted syrupy and like Jägermeister. She took a mortal huff, because I couldn't eat it!

Local restaurant served heated up pasta that tasted old and tasteless (like it had been cooked days ago and you'd have thrown it out of the fridge if you cooked it yourself - and I could have cooked it better myself to start with) with that 1980s parmesan in a tub that tastes like sick. Then they were really arsey when I complained.

The restaurant is much better now but this was 15 years ago and I still remember how bad it was.

I’m a vegetarian, at a wedding I was served slices of cucumber for my starter, my main was a boiled slice of cauliflower, no seasoning, no sides etc and it was so over cooked it didn’t require any chewing. My pudding was crushed ice with lumps of cucumber and melon.

The meat eaters had cod cheeks for their starter, wagu steak main and a trio of panacota for pudding. The couple were charged the same per head for vegetarians and meat eaters!

@Sirian that is due to NHS managers.

When I rule the world all NHS managers will have to spend a week working on a ward every year.

Food should be part of the health care given, but it is seen as a place to reduce costs.

Having said that when ever I have been n hospital I'm always 'nil by mouth' once for the best part of a week (I had a drip).

When I went in for a day case I took my own pack up.

Were you visiting Lord and Lady Whiteadder?

Once I was in hospital, and asked for the sausage mash and beans for the dinner option.
When it arrived, it was just half a portion of baked beans. Apparently they'd run out of mash and sausages and didn't think to try an alternative.
I cried!

"This reminds me of our wedding night" 😂

I’ve posted this before, but on an American Airlines flight from the UK (so long haul) I was served a single, dry Ryvita with two halves of baby corn on it. Absolutely nothing else. No dessert, no side salad, nothing.

That was the vegetarian meal, the “normal” meal was huge, starter, main, side salad, bread roll, dessert, little chocolates. Everything except the main was actually vegetarian anyway, so I asked the flight attendant if I could have a bread roll and dessert from the normal menu, and was told off for being greedy. It was like something from an Air Afrikaans sketch.

Grew up vegetarian in small town Germany.

One restaurant's idea of a vegetarian meal was a large plate of overcooked vegetables with no seasoning whatsoever. Nothing else.

Another served me very overcooked spaghetti with a tin of tomatoes tipped on top. Not sauce, just cold tinned tomatoes. It was an Italian place as well, so no excuse.

The accepted wisdom was obviously that vegetarians are opposed to flavour and texture and enjoy unenjoyable meals....

It’s dangerous though! If you’re on a hospital ward after having some sort of major procedure, you need to eat as part of your recovery. Even if the food isn’t good, you need to eat something. Otherwise you’re likely to become very ill and pass out. If you were taken to hospital unexpectedly you won’t have food with you so they need to feed you! I don’t understand how they are allowed to just shrug and say “we have no food for you”.

As a type 1 diabetic NHS hospitals prevent you managing your diabetes, they then try to force you to have insulin, refuse to tell you the units and you’re sat there with no idea what food you’re about to be serve. When you ask the nurse attempting to give insulin what food you’re about to be served they also have no idea, despite the food your about to eat being the thing that determines how much insulin you need. Don’t get me started on the NHS being completely incapable of managing food allergies.

Someone on Twitter just posted a picture of a family members lunch- I kid you not it was a small plain jacket potato plonked on top of a small puddle of watery looking beans and a few chips at the side- yum !!!

If you are going to do jackets and beans which is a cheap and relatively healthy meal- at least make it a good sized healthy looking crispy jacket with a nice pile of quality baked beans actually on the potato and some grated cheddar on the side.

Should have said NHS ward lunch!!