Worst restaurant experiences you have had

[nelsonmuntz]

The service at Vito's by the Park in Hartford was terrible, but the food was pretty good so I put up with it. It has been 8 or so years since I have been there. There was one incident that resulted in me spending almost an hour there to pick up a pizza, and after multiple problems with the order, they handed me a pizza with anchovies and the woman behind the counter smirked as she did it. Freaking anchovies? They literally made an anchovies pizza just to spite me. That is committing to terrible service.

Dry Dock in Norwalk was similar, although I haven't been there in a few years. Terrible service, excellent food. I would only go with someone who knew the wait staff, because if you were not a regular, they would ignore you.



Two times where a bad situation was turned around by good management:

I have gotten served uncooked chicken in a restaurant 3 times in my life, twice at two high end italian places and once at McDonalds. Both Italian places gave me a hard time about the situation, while the manager at McDonalds took the chicken mcnuggets, threw them in the garbage, opened the register, handed me a twenty, and asked if I wanted anything else because it would be on him.

I saw a dead mouse on the floor in one of my favorite places once. I told the owner quietly without making a scene, and I got free desserts every time i went there for the next 3-4 months. I actually asked him to stop because it was just too much food.

 

[8893]

The service at Vito's by the Park in Hartford was terrible, but the food was pretty good so I put up with it. It has been 8 or so years since I have been there. There was one incident that resulted in me spending almost an hour there to pick up a pizza, and after multiple problems with the order, they handed me a pizza with anchovies and the woman behind the counter smirked as she did it. Freaking anchovies? They literally made an anchovies pizza just to spite me. That is committing to terrible service.

That's pretty brilliant imo.

 

[upstater]

Nice expensive restaurant on a date. She ordered veal. The waiter brought it then criticized and guilted us. Dinner sucked. Why the hell are you working at a restaurant that sells veal?! Don't blame us. Here's your $0 tip for you. Should have walked out entirely.

 

[storrsroars]

My worst (or I should say my wife's) experience was in one of the great food cities: Bologna. You'd think you'd have your choice of great food anywhere in town, but not on late Sunday afternoon. Most places don't open till 6ish on Sundays. We had to catch a train to the airport and wanted to eat first, but the only option was a trattoria that was open, but empty, a block from the station.

Nobody in the place spoke English, which was very odd. The waiter puts down antipastos in front of each of us, then pours wine. As he pours my wife's wine, he hits the bottle on the rim, breaking the glass and getting wine all over. Instead of moving us to any of the infinite number of empty tables, he proceeds to try and mop up the wine with napkins, dancing all around my wife as he does so. Then he cuts himself on a shard of glass and drips blood on my wife's plate. She's freaking out as she's a bit of a germophobe. He then tries to wipe it off instead of immediately removing the plate.

Somebody in charge comes out, takes the plate, scolds the waiter, who disappears behind this other guy and heads back to the kitchen. Less than a minute later the waiter returns with what appears to be the same food, disheveled and put on another plate, which he's now holding with his bleeding finger wrapped in a scrap of paper towel. He notices a streak of blood on the edge of this plate and uses his sleeve to try and wipe it off.

We get up to leave, and the owner wants us to pay our check, saying what I believed to be something like, "It's all fixed, everything is fine, sit down and eat." To which I told him in my best "Spantalian" there was no possibility of that happening. So we left with him saying what I imagine to be not nice things about Americans at our backs.

We still had about 35 minutes for our train, and by this time a couple of places were just starting to open. We hopped into one, thankfully our waiter spoke English. We asked what the fastest possible meal was, to which he said "steak". So we both ordered steak, it came out 10 minutes later and we were done eating 5 minutes after that. I could not tell you if it was any good, but I'm guessing it was better than the airplane dinner.