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.

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.

Why should they have a jar of Hellmans? 😂

A pub in Leeds, already famous amongst us for its questionable service. One of the waiters had a particularly miserable disposition, and seemed to hate every minute of his job. Never saw him smile over the course of a whole year.

One evening I'd ordered something that came with chips. What arrived were chips so undercooked that the inside was still frozen.

I very politely pointed this out to Mr. Grouch. He looked at me with utter disdain and barked: "they're CHIPS! they're not meant to be CRISPY". then he stormed off. Still makes me chuckle.

Restaurant in London's Chinatown. Then boyfriend and me watched a cockroach climb up the wall.

Letters, Soho. Packed restaurant - mouse ran right across the middle of the dining room!

I worked at a pub/restaurant where the chef who had the squirs dipped Yorkshire puddings in the gravy vat and are the Yorkshire pudding over it.

Don’t understand that at all bigfatbumfreak

covered, that was terrible. I bet you have avoided chinese food ever since.

Just after we got married we visited the Tower of London and had lunch in one of the horrid chain restaurants at St Catherine's Dock. It was rammed. We were served, ate, all was fine but then we waited for the bill... and waited. And waited. It had been half an hour since we finished eating and still no bill despite asking loads of times. In the end my husband told the waitress that we were leaving in five minutes regardless, so they could either bring it and we would pay, or not and we wouldn't. Manageress came over and threatened to call the police as that would be stealing - funnily enough the bill arrived and we were finally able to leave.

Oh, and the time there was a blue plaster in my stew... pretty sure the whole point of those is to stop that happening, but I guess that requires looking at what you're serving

I have so enjoyed this thread, and have a few of my own:

Two different locations of well known Italian chain have waited 45 minutes between collecting mains plates and asking if we wanted anything else.

Another Italian chain had left a massive barnacle in my seafood linguine which I then bit down on. Still feel a bit sick thinking about it.

Had a weird experience with a waitress at another place. Went there with DD (who was about 5 at the time) and we placed a drinks order. I ordered orange juice and she kept on at me to order alcohol. I said I was driving and wouldn't drink with DD there anyway and still she kept on. She said "What, are you a child too?" She then hassled me when I ordered a pizza, trying to get me to have other things. When we'd finished our mains she took DD's dessert order whilst asking if I wanted to see the dessert menu (thought this was odd in itself). She then brought DD's dessert, dessert menu for me and disappeared for half an hour, by which time DD had long since finished and was very restless. She came back to ask what I wanted and seemed most affronted when I said I wouldn't have one.

Another place DD found chunks of plastic in her ice cream. They were very apologetic and took that off the bill (I should think so!).

Most recent one was in a dessert/ice cream parlour where I overheard an argument between horrible man and the manager. Basically, horrible man's wife had ordered the wrong thing for him, which had then been served. He wanted the difference in price deducted from the bill, which they were unwilling to do. He was just so shouty and his kids were in tears. His wife was trying to say it was her fault and he kept telling her to shut up. He then made racist comments to the manager along the lines of going back to his own country, despite the fact that the manager was clearly from Birmingham. Just awful to hear, and the language!

New tiny local restaurant and a rare night out alone with dh. All very cosy by a log fire etc, placed our order and waited with our drinks. We heard shouting from the kitchen and doors banging. Our starters were plonked down in front of us by a man who introduced himself as the manager He said he was on his own because the waitress had walked out. He was doing all the cooking so we better hadn't want anything else. As he stalked off a lightbulb shattered above our heads. He shouted, in very Basil Fawlty tones "Good God what now" came back with a new bulb and jumped on the table to change the bulb. We left.

I went a month or two ago with a friend and her two under-eighteen daughters. Sat down, ordered, got told that there was a half-hour wait, all good. Then a very brusque lady (who I assume was the manager) came up to our table and said loudly "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

While we stammered our confusion, she cut across us and said "I need you to move to the other side of the restaurant. This is for over-eighteens only." Nowhere in the restaurant did it say that. At all.

Then she shoved a box of sauces at one of the kids and said "Here, make yourself useful." Not only that, but this box was bloody heavy and the kid had just had a back operation!! We were then frogmarched to the other side of the restaurant and almost shoved onto the seats.

The food was amazing and great value, but that waitress and the fact that she said "You'd better eat that now!" when she delivered our food and then told us some random story about a drunk bloke who'd just lost his wife has made us not want to go there again!

I ordered a tomato and mozzarella salad starter once.
I got tomato and cold mashed potato on a plate.
They'd run out of mozzarella and didn't think I'd notice....
They didn't stay in business long!

I took DC to frankie&benny's in the school holidays because I had a 50% discount voucher so couldn't say no.

We all had pizza. They didn't come cut into slices nor did they offer a pizza cutter so I spent literally 20 minutes cutting them all with a steak knife, I was miffed to say the least. The waiter brought the bill over without me even asking whilst my DC were still eating their desserts and the silly clout had to get a new bill anyway because I had a voucher! I wasn't impressed, I won't be returning.

Took the dds to the Rainforest Cafe in London as a treat on holiday. Despite booking we had a really long wait for a table, then when we sat down a woman from a nearby table sent her dd to sit with us to make friends. I sent her back to her family. The woman then started screaming at me and threating to hit me, obviously scaring my kids, saying I had ruined her meal by sending her dd back. The staff watched from a distance. She thankfully then left but it really put a dampened on the evening.

Oh, the Rainforest Cafe. We went there. It was ok, but not really worth it. And you feel all squashed in, and it was ruddy hot in there. Kids loved it though, which I suppose is the point. But never again. I have had better food in an Asda Cafe.

Love the substitution of potato for mozzarella

We stayed in a B and B with a basil fawlty owner, slamming plates down at breakfast and scowling and snapping at his terrified guests. Was very funny (in hindsight)

Hospitality is hard work - i can see why people are not always happy and smiling and they do expect the staff to do so much - as well as the dreadful 'upselling' which is also a curse in retail too. A lot of places also have ' mystery shoppers or diners' so the staff can be on edge - someone i know as marked down because the card machine wasnt working,not her fault at all and if its short staffed, this adds to the problems with waiting times. I am not condoning bad service, i always try to see it from their point of view ( unless they are really rude or couldnt care less etc) as well as my own. I rarely eat out anymore now anyway, but everyone should work for a while in a restaurant just to see how difficult it can be at times!

I've posted before about the amazing X-men power dh and I have in restaurants, the one where we seem cause amnesia in waiting staff.

I thought it had finally faded as last night we were put on a wait list, taken to table (without one of us having to check if we've been forgotten about as later arrivals get seated), ordered/served/bill arrived all within about 15 minutes of each other not 45 - 60 min waits.

When mentioned my amazement this morning dh pointed out that when we sat down I was going to shuffle round table so I could hear him and he moved round instead but left his serviette where it was on opposite side to me (just didn't think of moving it.)

The waitress rocked up and placed cutlery for dh on serviette on side of table where he was originally.

Yes he could have moved serviette but forgot, but as a waitress wouldn't you just move serviette and place cutlery with the guest?!?

He has now decided that our X-Men powers have increased so much that he doesn't exist in the minds of waiters/waitresses anymore.

I've told him to be careful otherwise he'll go all non-corporeal by lunch and he needs to fit the shed door.
this afternoon.

@the80sweregreat I waitresses throughout a-levels/ year out/degree and I think it's made me a bit less tolerant of certain kinds of bad service!

To clarify, long waits or incompetent service where someone is clearly doing their best don't actually bug me. Someone drops stuff, I don't mind. Terrible food, I complain or just chalk it up to better luck next time.

But terrible, surly, deliberately unhelpful service really bugs me! Also inefficient systems that slow down speed of service make my eye twitch (why are you both making coffees? One of you make the coffee, one of you take the money! Or the classic, did you know very slow server that you are allowed to take more than one order and complete it at a time?). If the kitchen is having a melt down, communicate with me and do your best to manage the situation. Or you always do a check back to ensure everyone is happy with their meal so you can fix problems before they escalate (this also gives you some backing if you check back, customer says meal is nice, eats entire meal then demands refund because they didn't enjoy it....) So in some ways I have less patience because being pleasant and responsive isn't hard.

Myself and a friend went to a pub/restaurant called Cocoon in Dublin years ago. We ordered lunch and a glass of wine each. The wine came out and we waited and waited and waited, enquiring a couple of times and being told our food would be coming shortly. Eventually we explained to the waitress that we were on our lunch break and couldn't wait much longer at which point she told us if we weren't happy with the service we could go somewhere else.

We did, not bothering to pay for our wine.