What's your worst restaurant experience?

[RainbowsAndCrystals]

Had one where I was with two friends having breakfast and coffees ... they kept asking friends if they wanted another drink and ignored me every single time.

there's been worse and places I would never go back to.

the80sweregreat I'm a restaurant manager for a chain (not mentioned so far, thankfully ) and there are more and more labour pressures in the current climate unfortunately. We do have to work every area in the restaurant and station in the kitchen on a regular basis but I enjoy my job and how busy it keeps me. Less so when I was pregnant however!

Went to a highly recommended local restaurant. Husband went to pay the bill. Gone so long I went to check and found him holding hands with the owner!!

unihorn, i take my hat off to you. I did assume that the manager was there to look after the staff, do rotas, order in the food/ drinks and just , generally , manage. However, this wasnt the case at all and the women in charge really had to do everything from cleaning, the cooking and then everything else - they were always short staffed and how they did it all i dont know. Crazy hours too!

DustySparrow! Randomly I also once went to Cafe Rouge in Tenterden, the food was ok but the waitress held our plates out to us and sort of shook them at us rather than putting them on the table - we realised she wanted us to take them from her and she was a bit rude!

User 413, oh no!! what did you do?

Ahh Cafe Rouge where their waiters seem to have a problem hearing women's voices. More than once my order has been completely ignored, despite repeating myself. DH's food comes, but mine does not because it's not on the order sent to the kitchen. It's not like I have a quiet voice, I've had a lot of drama training and taught in some noisy classrooms for years. Funnily enough, it's never the female waiting staff who fail to hear me.

DH and I went to a restaurant with MIL in Worcestershire about 12 years ago. Every meal on the menu we asked for bar one was off. We were half expecting Basil Fawlty to come to our table and tell us that the one meal they could do for us was off as well.

Most Cafe Rouge;s that i was aware of have shut down in recent years.

The tea shop in a tea-shoppy area that had run out of tea. Actual tea. They could've run to the corner shop and bought a box of PG tips. They didn't.

user148 what was going on?!

The80sweregreat.

Completely agree RE Zante.
Not one of my better holiday ideas.

Remembered another one. Not a restaurant, but a breakfast in a hotel that we stayed in. We had booked and paid for the breakfast separately when we booked the room.
Breakfast consisted of 1 small rasher of bacon, 1 cocktail size sausage, 1 egg, 1 half of small tomato and 1 slice of bread that had been waved in the general direction of the toaster. Washed down with 1 small cup of tea. We didn't even get a teapot of tea, just a small cup that the waitress poured.
A bloody tenner each!!!

I was always being sent out to the shops,or another restaurant that is owned by the same company, to fetch more cheese or bread or olives!
Archery, that is incredible. Tea keeps so well, so you think they would have cupboards of it!
Goes to show how hard it is for some places to gage what they need.

Cafe/ hotel in Majorca that served tuna sandwiches but didn’t have any mayo.

They had garlic mayo but no normal one and didn’t think to tell us before we ordered.

i actually shuddered when i flew over Zante on the way to another Greek island. People love it there though..

This one was a decade or two ago, a Chinese in Acton that doesn't exist any more (if it ever really was a restaurant and not a front for something else, but that's another discussion). And it was not our choice. It was a friend's birthday meal and DH and I were going as part of a large group. It was pre-booked and we had a large (rather tatty looking) room, and the whole restaurant, to ourselves. We all ordered. And waited. And waited...About an hour and a half later, the occasional starter trickled in. Two hours on, about half of it had turned up. DH's veggie dish which came last of all was....broccoli and carrots.

Really, DH and I should have left after an hour, but we were too polite. What seems odd to me is that nobody else came to the restaurant, and I never smelt any cooking. When the smells don't match up, it feels weird, creepy even, because you know something's wrong but can't instantly pin it down. I think it wasn't really a restaurant and they were frantically ringing the local takeaways out back.

Can't remember the payment arrangements.

I went to 222 for my birthday.

It was crammed, the owner and friends were sitting at a table of 4 during the dinner rush.

So we sat down and were told we'll need to move if we haven't finished by a certain time.

Waitress came over after 20 minutes to take our order.

30 minutes later she said she forgot to put the order through - OK, these things happen. But did we get bumped up the list? Like hell. Another 30 minutes for the starter, we were starving.

Then another half hour for the main course.

As it was my birthday I thought we'd have a slice of cake, because how hard can that be, right? Well, they took 25 minutes to bring it out ffs.

And then the bill took 15 minutes to arrive.

I was furious that my birthday was basically ruined. It was a weekday and I had to go home to bed instead of out for a drink as planned. The waitress was incredibly self-absorbed and kept telling us she was new because money was tight and she had to look after her kids and so had taken on the waitress job. Not a single question about why we were out, not that it would have made a difference. No offer of a discount or anything.

The worst part was that the food was bland as well - I'd gone there under recommendation of a friend, not sure if I'll ever trust his judgement again.

An independent restaurant opened up in town not that long ago. Had some good local reviews and seemed to be doing well. One day it just shut and when you walk past you can still the glasses and napkins, cutlery etc on the tables and coats hanging on the hook at the front desk, its like our very own Marie Celeste!

A restaurant in Mexico (Patzcuaro to be precise) where despite DH having limited to non existing Spanish, the waiter refused to hear a word I said. We ended up with me telling DH what to say (whilst the waiter stood there) and him repeating it and then the waiter writing it down.

If it hadn't been late and we were hungry from a day of horse riding, I would have walked out. The food when it arrived was delicious though.

The worse food I've ever had was in a Marriott hotel. It was a big family meal and virtually everything was inedible even by DH who can eat most things. Even worse the manager (a little rat like man) came and sat down and started trying bits and saying it was fine. I haven't been in a Marriott since.

About 2 weeks later they had a massive fire which destroyed the whole place.

Insurance job?

I was at a restaurant once and the guy next to us had some sort of seizure, and stopped breathing. They called for help, no one else offered so I did. While manoeuvring him he threw up everywhere including on me, and started breathing again. I didn't even get a thank you from the staff... at the time I didn't really think about it, but it would have been nice to have been offered a drink or something...

I forgot the restaurant where a cockroach kep climbing onto the tablecloth. We kept on knocking it off, it kept on doggedly coming back. I don't know why we didn't scream and run.

The90sweregreat I know! I would never run out of tea in my own home, never mind in a shop! And you'd think it would be something you'd notice as the stocks got low.

Hello 80's. Not enough really! Glared at both of them and told him to rejoin our friends. Said to the woman that she could whistle for her money. Not a good ending to the whole marriage as I was yet to realise that he was controlling in every way. If he hadn't been so sozzled on this particular evening I wouldn't have attempted to approach them. Still am on my own, now. Hurray!!

I was hit by a door once out shopping - it sent me flying. The lovely manager of a restaurant nearby came out and let me sit on one of their chairs, brought me some water and got in touch with security to tell them what had happened! the security people thought it was funny and were no help at all, but the lady that helped me was so kind. We went back there and had a burger a few weeks later and it was really nice and i finally got to say a proper thank you! greathat, thats terrible, they could have waived the bill for you or free drinks!

user413, he sounds awful. well done to you for being so restrained and finally getting shot of him!!
does anyone find that christmas dinners/ meals are always disappointing too? I have also given up on them.

Hello Annie, he was always one for the ladies, so to speak. He hadn't met her before that evening so must have left for a tete a tete. Don't know if they met up afterwards. It was a horrible marriage. Fine at the beginning but after I had our daughter he controlled my life completely. It was so slowly and skilfully done, however, that I didn't realise what was happening. I know that sounds silly but this sort of abuse is insidious. Only now, some years after his death am I becoming more the person I used to be. Thank you for asking.