WORST, unedible dish(es) you've had at restaurant / party

Pretty much anything on the rubber chicken circuit... meaning any event that's at a convention centre or any kind of hall. I swear the kitchen people botch the food on purpose and leave any kind of imagination or inspiration at the door. Boring, poorly cooked, poorly presented and just bland. I hate events at conference centres and halls.

We were in our soon to be new home town (yeah we finally found a house) and tried out a well reviewed Indian restaurant...... The only flavour to my butter chicken was an overpowering taste of fennel and husbands chicken curry tasted like gravy!!! Kinda nervous for dining out options if this was considered good food!!!!!

Crab at one of the seafood restaurants along the gulf coast. I have a love affair with crab but it tasted like it was cooked in old dishwater. Couldn't take more than a bite.

And chicken fried quail at a boutique restaurant in Fredricksburg, Tx. I am so glad it was located in an old converted home and nobody was in the room with us because without even thinking I spit it out on the plate. It was awful.

And we had some wonderful foie gras at Picaso's in Las Vegas, the first time we had tried it. Ever since then we have tried it at various restaurants and some of it has been bad. Without fail only froufrou restaurants have gotten it right.

I ordered my favorite dish (sauerbraten) from a local German restaurant and when it came, it was almost the consistency of beef jerky and tasted like pure dry red wine - I had one bite and didn't touch the rest - our waitress never even bothered to ask how everything was. Haven't been back to that place since.

I went to a conference one time that was the absolute shocking opposite of this. I ordered the vegetarian meal and got a fried polenta with marinara sauce with fresh roasted vegetables that was so good every one at my table with their rubber chicken was jealous. It was such a surprise. I think I used up my one time shot at good conference food though-likely it will never happen again.

Beyond that, I have to admit that I am the family joke. Not so much because what I order is bad but because what ever I order is ALWAYS wrong. ALWAYS. And not because I order weird stuff-even if I order straight off the menu I will get something else. Want a baked potato? I will get pickles. Want chicken? I will get beef. Want a turkey burger with no tomatoes? I will get a black bean burger with extra tomatoes. It doesn't even phase me any more and I am always the last person eating at the table because I have to wait for my meal to come back a second time. I would say this happens to me probably four times out of five. 

DH was excited to try a new Southern cooking restaurant in the city. It was horrible. Everything tasted like salt and only salt. The place closed down a few months later. We were nervous about the food when we walked in on a Friday night and the place was empty. Guess the locals had already learned our lesson.

When I was 16, my boyfriend at the time saved up money to take me out to a fancy dinner on Valentine's day.
I ordered chicken breast because it was the only thing on the menu that I recognized at the time lol.
When I got it, it was raw in the middle. I didn't discover this until I had eaten a good portion of it.

I ordered filet mignon from a popular local place, ordered medium rare as I always do, and it came out cold and purple in the center. I had to send it back, and I never do that. People rave about this place so I tried it again another time, that (pasta) entree sucked too. Now I stick to beer when I'm there, no food.

Friends and I went out for drinks and appetizers. One of the apps we ordered was deep fried cheese curds. Order came and they were frozen in the middle, although perfectly hot and golden brown on the outside. We sent them back and the waitress brought out a new order. The new ones were frozen in the middle too!!

There is a local restaurant in my city that is always packed, and has weird hours (so the first time we tried to go, it was not open that day which was a Tuesday or Wednesday).

I think the reason it is popular because the portions are HUGE not because the food is good. I have something (can't even remember what it was possibly hash) and it was in there under about 2 lbs of flavorless gravy. DH's food was awful too. Blech. We have not gone back but when we drive by the place is still open and packed... I don't get it.

1. A long time ago, we were invited to a dinner party at the home of one of my staff to celebrate another staff member's retirement. She had made something like a calzone (but not really a calzone) that she said was her grandmother's recipe. She talked up this food for weeks, raving about it, how we were all going to love it and be jealous, but she'd never share the recipe. All made from scratch including the dough. She served it to us with great pride and we all dug in.

Or tried to. The dough exterior was so hard that you honestly could not get your fork to go into it. Seriously. The tines could not pierce or even dent the dough. Then people tried sawing at it with a knife. Even a pointy-tipped serrated knife could not break the shell. The woman left the dining room and we are all staring at each other, wondering wth we're going to do. So some guy tried to break it apart with his hands. Could not. We all left the hockey pucks on our plate and ate the vegetables and bread. She never said a word and neither did we.  No one asked for the recipe.  To this day, I wonder what she did to make the dough so impenetrable.

more recently:

2. Went to a new Italian restaurant that had been getting rave reviews. I ordered a specific linguine dish that had gotten good reviews. I received it and it looked like a bowl of brown sludge with strings in it. Tasted about the same. I gave up after three bites.

3. Just ate at a new brewhouse in the area that specializes in Mexican food. Ordered a basic enchilada meal. Absolutely tasteless. My dh had another meal that he thought was great, so he wondered if my allergies/sinus were impeding my taste and tried my dish. He said the same thing -- no taste at all. (He was joking that it made him nostalgic for his mother's cooking -- she was infamous for the fact that she used no seasonings or anything that could give a flavor to anything. So if she made chicken -- it was just baked chicken with no seasonings, fat, etc. Just dried out chicken breast.)

I have a couple:
1. We took a cruise on Norwegian Cruiselines and hubby decided to eat the shrimp salad on the buffet (big mistake)...the shrimp was "squishy" and after eating some decided maybe he should not have. He got violently ill with food poisoning and they wanted $119 to be seen at their infirmary

2. My daughter is a very picky eater....there was always some reason or another why should couldn't eat something. She was complaining about "bugs" in her ice cream cone...I dismissed her until I looked closer and yep...bugs were baked into her ice cream cone and the rest of the cones in the box at the restaurant.

At a restaurant, I once went to the mountains with a friend, and the only restaurant in town (Banner Elk) that wasn't $$$ and still open had a new chef/management. I got the chicken with goat cheese. I love good goat cheese, especially with chicken. This goat cheese smelled and tasted like vomit. My friend tried it and thought the same. There are just some cheeses you shouldn't bake. (you'd think the chef would figure that out when the kitchen started smelling like mildewed dirty socks x100)

I got a chicken sandwich at Hardee's one time that was raw in the middle. It was freshly fried, so I didn't notice the temperature change--hard when you're doing that heh, heh, heh it's hot but I'm so hungry eating. Ewww. 

Grinningcat, I agree with you about the rubber chicken circuit. I was very particular about the food at my wedding reception. Dh and I went to eat at the hotel restaurant to make sure that everything was good--especially since we were paying for seafood! (we had heavy hors d'oeuvres and had waitstaff serve miniature crab cakes--people thought it was cool and so fancy, but the waiter was cheaper than paying for three times the crab cakes that people would scarf down at the buffet!) 

My SIL is super cheap. She got married at a really nice mansion in her hometown. Her mom paid for it, so it wasn't like she was spending her own money. She paid for the chicken. There were 16 people total, so it wasn't like paying for beef for 100. The chickens were those cornish game hens. Roasted and stuffed--literally because they hadn't been trussed and looked like they were at their GYN. The people at our table were biting our tongues and trying not to laugh--BIL/SIL kept looking at us (dh and me and their two sets of friends) wondering what was so funny. We never told them. One couple was already pissed at them because every man at the wedding had a boutonniere but dh. (dh wasn't surprised)

I've had some BAD seafood. I am super, super, picky about where and when I eat my seafood. (middle of the week and Monday are bad nights--when do they get their deliveries--usually in time for the weekend, so anything at the beginning of the week is going to be left over unless they get new deliveries because of high turnover (Bonefish has a high turnover) Fish of the day is usually what's going bad) 

Dh uses me as the "is this bad?" taster. He likes stronger tasting fish than I do, and sometimes he can't tell if it's just strong or bad. I'm also a supertaster. I can taste the ammonia smell of fish going bad. 

Ihavetoomuchstuff--I was wondering about the buffets on the cruises. My mom went on a Norweigian cruise and loved the food. She's not a big eater of much of a gourmet--you should have seen some of the stuff she cooked us when I was a kid. I finally traded with her --she did the cleaning, and I did the cooking) 

She once made chicken nuggets from chicken that was bad. I refused to eat them, and she got mad. I made her taste one. I can still taste it. 

The weirdest was at Outback. Dh and I were enjoying ourselves. He had lamb chops, and I had prime rib. Then these two girls came in dressed as cows (I kid you not) and made a huge fuss about how "meat was murder". We were sitting in the bar area because it was crowded, there was no smoking, and we liked the tall stools. One of the girls grabbed dh's plate (I was surprised that he didn't stab her hand...) She waved it around and asked him how he could eat a defenseless cow. To the amusement of all the meat eaters, he deadpanned. 

"It's not cow, it's tasty lamb! 

The girls slunk out, the manager gave us a gift card and remade dh's lamb because the girl got her fingers all over it. 

I've had that experience pretty often actually. It's like they're like chicken, chicken, chicken, steak, steak, oh...wait.... Gluten free vegan, let's find something fun!

I'm not completely vegan right now but I always order the gf/veggie option and it's great.

I got a seafood risotto that was phenomenal last week. I think I checked gf seafood as my option. Ive dreamt about it since.