Worst restaurant meal ever?

[Alice Levitt]

I'm sure everyone has a funny horrible restaurant story to share. When I was reporting this story in July, I decided to try a diner in Chelsea. When they finally deigned to acknowledge us outsiders after about half an hour, we were seated and ignored again until I walked back to the kitchen to beg for help. When I listed them in Seven Nights, they told me that they made great from-scratch chicken fingers, so that's what I hoped to try. It wasn't on the menu. They said they would make them for me anyway. What I got was a plastic basket with four chicken fingers and three pats of butter inside. That's it. No sides. When I asked for sides, they seemed confused and they took forever. I guess their regular clientèle considers butter an acceptable accompaniment to a meal.
What's your story?

[VTFoodlvr]

When I was in college, my dad took me out for dinner to an Applebees. It was around 5:30 so it wasn't terribly busy, but the service was ridiculously slow. It took them 15 minutes before they even acknowledged our table. When they finally did take our order it took another 15-20 min. to get us our drinks. Over an hour later, we had still not received our food so we stopped a waitress and had them check on it. Apparently they had lost our order somewhere in the kitchen. So, they rushed out our dinners as fast as they could and surprisingly enough, they were still mediocre at best, looking like they threw my dad's burger on his plate from across the kitchen. I had ordered ribs and while they were hot, the flavor was pretty tame. The one good thing about the dinner was that they gave it to us for free because of the wait. I will never go to another Applebees again.

[Undead Molly]

My boyfriend and I had a truly gross, oil slick of a meal at a local Vietnamese place. But the owner was there and he was so sweet and eager that we haven't had the heart to spread the story. We decided we'd give it another shot some time in the future.

[tonyo]

A few years ago, I had a client in the St. Albans/Sheldon area that I decided to take to lunch.  As I was not familiar with the area, I asked for my client to pick a place.  He chose The Abbey.  We sat down and ordered.  I can't fully recall what we ordered, but both choices came with coleslaw.  I took a bit and thought, wow, that tastes odd.  When my client ate his , I noticed a strange look on his face.  I asked Kevin if he thought it tasted weird and he said yes.  I called the waitress over and told her, to which she replied, "we have a new cook" and left.  We stopped eating it when the waitress returned and said, and I quote, "it is actually rancid", and left.  No apology, no attempt to remove/replace the coleslaw, and when the check was brought, no adjustment.  I have never returned to The Abbey but hope they have new staff in place if they are still open.