Going out to a restaurant is generally a treat. Sometimes after a long week all we want to do is not worry about cooking or dishes, just sit back, and enjoy a nice meal. Unfortunately it doesn't always pan out like that. The folks in these stories share why they'll never go to these restaurants ever again.
Being A Health Inspector Will Ruin Your Favorite Restaurants
“Used to be a health inspector.
In my first year a lot of my old favorite restaurants were ruined for me, but none so bad as the discount sushi place my college bestie and I used to frequent.
They had roaches BAD. In my time at the health department I never saw them worse than in that kitchen. We got calls about the roaches at least twice a month, and every time we went they were back with a vengeance. They were closed to clear them out multiple times, but just never kept up with the pest control and cleaning necessary to get rid of them completely.
They were also dying tilapia red and selling it as red snapper on their menu. This is pretty common around here, but it’s super illegal because it’s literal false advertising. Fun fact: some people are allergic to tilapia. Not sure I want to be around when that restaurant owner finds that out.
They had hundreds of cardboard boxes stacked outside their back door, plus a bunch of old equipment they weren’t using. This added to the roach problem and any day it could turn into a rodent problem. One time I drove by and they had animal cages back there, too. I don’t wanna know that story…
Add to that: I’m pretty sure the employees are all indentured servants or victims of human trafficking. They all show up in the same beat up white van every day and work a 12+ hour shift. The owner is unkind to them and they don’t respect him. He says he can trust them to do their jobs, but was sketchy when we said to fire them and hire employees who will. We never had proof, but it was always upsetting and struck me as off.
He tried to bribe me and my coworkers multiple times, too. I’m not a health inspector anymore, but he still tries to give me free food or money when he sees me. He opened a new restaurant and I didn’t know it was his, so and friend and I went to go check it out. I was told that appetizers were free for me only. Then I saw him in the back. We had to leave.
Never again. It’s too sketchy and too likely to get me sick.”
Technical Foul
“A few years ago, I was meeting my boyfriend’s childhood friends for the first time. I was really nervous and wanted nothing more than to impress them with my wit and charm. The guys ended up picking to go to the new Buffalo Wild Wings in town and it just so happened it was game day… We had no idea until Sea Hawks fans came barreling into the restaurant. Any way, we were sitting there for a long time and suddenly we saw the light at the end of the tunnel; our server with a huge tray walking to our table. I was so excited to eat, but fate had other plans; as if it were in slow motion right as our server was approaching our tables something AMAZING happened in the game and this gentleman jumped straight out of his seat AND PUNCHED THE TRAY the server was carrying and dumped hot wings, ranch, bleu cheese, and garnishes all over me. As I mentioned, I was trying to impress my boyfriend’s friends and so I just kind of laughed and awkwardly started to clean my date clothes. I didn’t complain, cause a ruckus, or even say a sound. The server turns to me and says ‘Well this will obviously take longer now so be patient.’ I am not saying it was her fault, and I usually wouldn’t expect anything, but we just lost our meal that we had been waiting on, I got food spilled all over me, and stained all my clothing. It would have been a nice gesture to offer a free appetizer, a dessert, or maybe even a discount on our meal since we were so understanding. But this lady CHARGED US FOR BOTH ROUNDS OF CHICKEN WINGS AND PROCEEDED TO GET MAD AT US for ‘making our order confusing’. Needless to say, I have never gone back and will never go back to Buffalo Wild Wings.”
Chicken Isn’t Served Rare?
“Went to Chili’s for lunch after a doctor’s appointment with my husband.
The place is empty. We are finally seated after a ten-minute wait. Waiter arrives, takes our drink order (unsweet tea and Dr. Pepper) and app (chips and skillet queso).
He never comes back. More customers arrive, maybe four tables, and he goes and sits with what we assume are friends of his. We flag down another waiter, who practically throws our drinks at us. He takes our entrĂ©e order (BBQ chicken and a burger), throws those at us when they’re done.
I realize we have no silverware. After trying to flag four people, my husband gets our silverware himself. I cut the chicken and am surprised it didn’t cluck and jump off my plate, it was so raw.
Original waiter comes over and I show him the still-pulsing bird and he rolls his eyes and says, ‘Its rare. You want me to microwave it for you?’ I explain I want it cooked through, not heated, and poultry isn’t served rare. He snatches the plate and leaves.
I never got my food back.
Meanwhile, my husband is waiting on me (he’s too polite) to eat. I finally tell him to go ahead, at which point he opens the bun and finds a fake fingernail.
We attempt to get someones attention so we can pay and leave, but 15 minutes later we just got up and left. I’ve never gone to another Chili s.”
Waitress Freakout
“Once when I was younger I went out to dinner with friends but didn’t have a debit card at the time. We went to a mid range place, my total was $22 and some change. I pay $30 in cash.
Waitress comes back after doing the bills for everyone and asks if anyone else needs anything.
I’m pulling three $1 bills out of my purse so I can tip $10 total along with my $7 and so in change, except the waitress never brought it out. I politely ask her about my change, and she asks me if I’m ‘really going to gripe over $7?’
I’m stunned. I really don’t know what to say.
‘Uh, yeah, you don’t get to just keep it.’
(Keep in mind, I have money out to tip, and at this time in my life I’m a WAITRESS MYSELF and I’ve never, ever, ever refused to give someone their rightful change, even if it’s .10 cents.)
‘Oh, okay, that’s just how I make my freaking living.’ Then this banshee reaches into her apron, and throws a handful of money at the table, with such force coins splatter everywhere, hitting some of us at the table in the face. She then storms off.
We’re stunned, gather our things, and leave. Two other tables (one a very elderly couple, another younger with a toddler) slowly get up (neither of them have food yet), and also leave. Mom of the toddler assures me outside she’s never seen anything like that, and it’s unacceptable.
Bonus was instead of throwing down $7, like my actual change, that I was going to leave on the table, she threw down like $15 worth. So, she ended up in the negative on my tab for her freak out.”
Nice And “Toasted”
“I will never eat at Arby’s again.
Once upon a time, at a Treasure Coast Florida Arby’s, I decide I’m hungry and snag myself a nice, messy Arby-Q sandwich. Every time I ate them, I always lamented how they’d be better with a slightly toasted bun.
Well, I make my order, pay, sit down and take a bite. My feverish hunger is rewarded by a resounding crunch! They toasted my bun! While still chewing, I pull my burger away and look it over. There is not a slight bit of tanning in bun and now that I hold it and analyze it, it doesn’t feel remotely stiff like a toasted bun would.
As I sat there, food still in my mouth, a wave of horror came over me and prompted me to uncap the bun.
I saw the largest cockroach I’d seen in quite some time… or half of it at least.
Now, I’m a good person, at least I feel I can be more often than not. But at that moment of mind-bending mixed in with a serving of disgust and a side of ‘why me?’, I snapped. I rushed towards the cashier stations and winged the burger at the closest wall/barrier I could see, spat the food all over their floors and cussed them up one side and down the other.
I’ve not set foot in an Arby’s since then and I now have a vicious hatred for any kind of ‘wet bread’ texture that has ruined quite a few meal types for me (I can’t even dunk cookies in milk!!!)
Never again.”
Nothing Goes With Pizza Like Puke
“This happened like 30 years ago and it still haunts me. My first (and last) time I ever had Chicago style pizza. We were in a fairly dead restaurant since it was way after lunch. Only a few tables had people at them. A couple tables over from us was a rather large family consisting of Mom, Dad and two kids in the 9-12 age range. Our pizza comes and we get all set to dig in when the older kid at the other table just starts fountaining puke everywhere. No reaction from the parents. They just moved out of the way and kept eating. At this point every other diner in the place was moving en masse to pay/get their money back/leave. My family made it to the back of that line so I got to watch these people stand up, move away from the table, and continue to eat AROUND the staff that was cleaning up the puke. My last sight of them was the father putting his hand on the shoulder of this poor server so he could lean over and snag something off the table to munch on.
So now Chicago style pizza and puke is forever intertwined in my mind.”
Cold Shoulder And Cold Food
“This happened last summer in Portland, Maine. My boyfriend is recovering from a pneumonia diagnosis on our trip to Acadia, so we are taking it easy. We go to this place in old port and get sat by the hostess. We wait about twenty minutes with no contact with a server or anyone at all. I go up to the hostess and she goes ‘Oh I guess I’ll just take your order.’ Meanwhile there are at least 4 servers outside that just blatantly ignored us. It’s not even super busy. So the hostess takes our order and brings us water. We wait another 45 minutes for an appetizer to come out, meanwhile the tables that had sat around the time we did are already done eating their entrĂ©es and are getting their checks. My boyfriend just looks sick and miserable, but we’re already this far in and the food has to be coming soon, right? But no, now people that sat half an hour after us are getting their entrĂ©es when we had ordered the same thing. Still no sign of our food, plus no water refills or any contact with anyone since the hostess took our order. We were completely ignored by all wait staff. I guess everyone thought we were handled by someone else? But wouldn’t you come over and ask when we had nothing on our table but empty water glasses?
Fed up I go to just ask the hostess for our check and she charges us for everything we never got. Bill was about $60 when all we got was an appetizer an hour and a half ago. The manager had to get involved and all the wait staff claimed to never see us and didn’t even know we were sat. We were outside in plain view…”
This Is Just Downright Creepy
“I was eating with a female friend at a reasonably nice restaurant. Not posh, but expensive. Before we were seated we grabbed a drink at the bar, whilst there she signed up to some sort of newsletter at the bar. To be fair it was stuff like this that made me apprehensive to call the place ‘posh.’
Anyways, we sit down and the girl I’m with gets a text telling her how beautiful she looks. She ignores it and another one comes through asking her what she’s doing later. She hasn’t got a clue who it is and ignores it.
We’re finishing up our meal and a 3rd text comes through saying she shouldn’t be with a guy like me and asking if she wanted dessert with a ‘real man.’
Now it’s clear someone in the restaurant has her number and we clocked that she had put it down on the application form for the newsletter. Considering the newsletters went into a box behind the bar it was a member of staff. After getting the manager down and him calling the number and pegging what member of staff it was it turned out one of the waiters had taken her number and address off this form, written it in his phone and had spent the evening taking pictures of her from behind the bar. The police ended up involved.”
Not The Restaurant’s Fault But They’re Still Not Coming Back
“This wasn’t the restaurant’s fault, but it was the worst dining experience my husband and I have every had.
We decided to go to a very nice steak house on a whim. Valet park the car and go in. Place our order, apps come out and are great. We see the manager and the seating host going to every table, but they look very concerned; not the typical ‘How’s your meal?’ The manager gets out our table and he asks if we valet parked the car and we said yes. He then asks if it was a red Nissan. We said it was and I got a bad feeling when he said ‘was.’ He then asks us to follow him out front.
We get outside and there’s a cop car. I’m thinking someone hit my car or something. NOPE! Two kids hopped in my car and took off! Right from the valet. I was in total shock as this had never happened to me before and it was a lousy 2004 Nissan!
The manager and head valet were falling over themselves apologizing. We got a free meal and they offered to pay for a cab.
My husband goes inside to fill out some paperwork and I’m sitting outside in shock. The cop pulls back up and said ‘We got ’em!’ We got to ride in the back of a cop car to pick up mine in the middle of the hood. Felt like the movie ‘Date Night’ for a while. At least we got a free meal and a good story out of it.
Still haven’t been back to the restaurant though.”
Just a $500 Tab And A See You Later!
“Last fall my wife and I went on a European vacation. I’m a big cooking and food guy and will splurge on a really fancy meal about once a year. I’ve been to several Michelin starred restaurants and have never walked away disappointed. When you expect to spend $500+ on a meal for two you should never be disappointed.
We went for afternoon tea at Sketch in London. First of all, we had to wait in a small hallway for a table. This, by itself, is pretty unacceptable. We showed up precisely at our reservation time. After about 15 minutes we were told it would still be a little longer, and were asked to wait at a table in another dining room. The tables were tightly packed and I had to essentially shove myself into a few diners’ faces to take my seat. I guess that’s part of the haute cuisine experience? We waited about 30 minutes before we were summoned. During that time we were not offered a glass of water, let alone a mixed drink or anything.
After we arrived at our table we waited about another 30 minutes for a server. The room was pretty tightly packed, and pretty much everyone there was just taking selfies. Service remained slow the entire time. For afternoon tea you get a platter of finger sandwiches and a platter of desserts. Everyone gets the same thing, it’s not like they even had to take orders. The whole ordeal lasted about 3 hours.
When I received the check I was very eager to get out of there. I decided to time how long it would take by the time we received the check until we left. 45 minutes. 45 flipping minutes for them to take my payment. After we had already been sitting around, obviously bored and having been made to wait the entire time. I actually left a little hungry since the time between lunch and when I left was so long.
No apologies, no nothing. Just a $500 tab and a ‘See ya later!’ Completely unacceptable. The decor is great, I guess that’s enough to get 2 Michelin stars?
The food was ok. I mean, it was finger sandwiches. I guess they were the best finger sandwiches I’ve had? The desserts weren’t anything to write home about. They were great, but I’ve had a lot better. But for that price tag we won’t ever be coming back.”
Food So Bad Even The Waiter Warned Them
“We were on a trip and arrived in Savannah, Georgia hungry as can be. We’d driven from Richmond VA and decided to drive all the way to Savannah to eat there instead of stopping at a McDonald’s or something along the way. We decided on a place called Anna’s that had a really nice patio area, but we decided to sit inside because it was hot. First mistake. We were sat next to three empty kegs and electrical wires coming out of the walls. There were open bottles on other tables with no one sitting at them. The stucco walls were a smoke stained yellow. Hanging on the wall next to our table was a word document printed review of the restaurant that sounded like it was written by a 9-year-old that was a paragraph long talking about how great their spaghetti sauce tasted. We open the menu and it literally has over 200 items on it. I order a Budweiser and my wife orders a white Moscato. The Moscato has something floating in it and the bottle of Budweiser tastes extremely stale. We ask the waiter for any recommendations and he laughs and says ‘I would get nothing on this menu.’ After an uncomfortably long pause in which we thought he must have been joking, (but looking back he must have been trying to communicate for us to get out of there) he suggests the stuffed shells. We uncomfortably laugh, and I order a cup crab soup because I am ravenously hungry. I forget what entrĂ©es we ordered, we never got that far. The crab soup came out and its literally chicken broth with parsley in it – there is nothing else in the soup. I laugh, as does my wife as I eat 2 spoonfuls of the chicken water. My wife insists that we leave. Part of me wanted to stay to see how this could end up getting worse for our entertainment, but we leave a $20 on the table for the drinks and awful soup and figured the waiter could just keep the rest for trying to warn us. I frequently check yelp and Trip Advisor to read other guests comments about this abomination of a restaurant.”
Dickey’s Brings Couples Together
“I went to Dickeys Barbecue pit, their food isn’t amazing but I was craving southern food and my suburban town in California doesn’t have many options. So me and my girlfriend buy some sandwiches and have them for dinner, they’re cold and taste like salty sweat. The next day I have uncontrollably liquid diarrhea and vomiting multiple times an hour. If I was alone I would have gone to the emergency room but my dad’s a nurse and was there. I vomited something like 20 times in the whole day and kept dry heaving afterwards. The diarrhea came so fast and uncontrolled that it ruined multiple pairs of underwear and a rug that was by the toilet (why my dad has rugs in the bathroom I don’t know but I pooped on it when bent over the toilet). It took only a day for me to feel better and I was already eating heavy foods again, but lo and behold guess who comes over to see me well again and poops herself in my bathroom? My girlfriend, the only other person who ate at Dickeys. So I spent the rest of the day, after having just vomited myself to death, helping my girlfriend when she had diarrhea and vomiting. I think we’re closer to each other after that experience.”
I Wouldn’t Come Back Either
“Went to an Asian ‘fusion’ restaurant with my family where they offered yummy delectable dishes as beef teriyaki with these delicious mozzarella sticks and other culinary abortions such as tonkatsu with french fries. They really ‘fusioned’ that stuff up. After we finish eating, I head to the bathroom. One of the chefs is in there peeing, wearing his apron and hat. While I’m peeing, he zips up and walks straight out. Doesn’t even wash his hands. What the heck.
My mom sees that I’m upset and I tell her. She waves the manager over and I tell him that I saw a chef use the bathroom and not wash his hands. Then he just stares at me, grinning with his goofy teeth, not saying anything. It was weird. We got up and left. We never went back.”
The End Of A Late Night Tradition
“My friends and I all used to go to the only 24-hour restaurant in town, an IHOP, to hang out after we all got off work (second shift retail, so like 11pm), often until the early morning hours. It was like a once-a-week ritual.
We tipped well, we were polite to staff, and we were easy to keep happy. So, all in all, the waitstaff never minded that we ate up a table for hours at a time during the graveyard shift.
Eventually it got to the point where we knew basically every waitress there by name. One even tried to contact me over social media, which was an awkward but unrelated affair.
But then they hired someone new. And she wasn’t a particularly great waitress. In fact, the first time she was assigned our table, it took her legitimately over an hour to even take our drink order, and another hour to bring the drinks out. She didn’t take our orders when she dropped off the drinks. In fact, she never took our orders. I eventually walked back to the kitchen myself and asked for food because I was starving and impatient.
We finally got food, we ate and chatted until about 4 am (5 hours after arriving) and never got a single refill on drinks. I don’t think I have to say that our waitress never bothered to bring us our checks. I had to, again, get up and track someone down to do that.
Only time in my life I’ve ever not tipped, and the last time I ever went to that IHOP.”