Great Description
I took my girlfriend to a newly opened Szechuan place that I'd heard good things about. She liked the look of the pork hotpot but the menu wasn't very descriptive so asked our waitress what was in it. The reply was just superb:

"It inside of pig!"
(andymurd, Tue 2 May 2006, 16:56, Reply)

Beware of the Shellfish
Thankfully I found out about this before I tried it.

Now the Lobster is a shellfish that scavenges on the bottom of the ocean. In South Africa they put the juveniles in the bottom of a 'long drop'. This is in fact a deep hole in the ground into which people pee and poo.

The Lobster gets nice and fat on all this waste, when ready it is pulled out, cooked and served to guests.

Delicious I'm sure but I'll have the Chicken
(ElGatodeBarco, Tue 2 May 2006, 16:36, Reply)

"Viril"
An all-dayer started badly in Guadalajara, Mexico. I'm pretty well accustomed to Mexican food but I wasn't prepared for the plate of viril that came free with my first tequila and sol in the cantina. I asked my mate what exactly viril was and he calmly stated "It's marinated sliced bull's penis". Yeah, right, as if they'd serve that at 9am to foreign tourists. I tried a slice and it tasted of lime and chile, like most Mexican bar snacks and while chewing I asked what it really was as the full enormity of the situation started to dawn on me. He calmly repeated what it was and I spat it out, but this time it seemed all too believable, especially. It's impossible to tell if the 24hr puking marathon was caused by the barely cooked bull's knob or the litres of tequila imbibed, but I can't say I'd recommend the dish.

Innocent looking photo here...
(mofles, Tue 2 May 2006, 16:06, Reply)

You are darker than she is
I went for a Chinese meal in the Oval a few years back with a few friends.

We ordered a wide variety of dishes from the menu, so would normally have been rather surprised and inclined to complain when our meal turned up and consisted of nothing but one gigantic platter of spare ribs piled a foot high.

However by this time we were much more interested to stay silent, eat up and watch the events unfolding at the next table.

A fat sweaty drunken Russian man in a bad wig had spent the past ten minutes or so sat alone singing along (rather poorly) to the music - Whitney/Maria/Celine/Christina type mush - then after each song he would turn to the girls at the table next to us, look longingly at them and say "this song is so beautiful" with a wistful tear in his eye.

After a few repetitions he got a bit bolder so pulled his chair up next to them. One was a very foxy black girl, the other a tall blonde Scandinavian type. He leant over to the former and said "in Russia I have a girlfriend. She is very beautiful like you. But you are different. You are darker than she is."

The reply was "fuck off you fat cunt or I'll stab you in the fucking eyes with these fucking chopsticks". He sat there for a second in confused silence - then burst into tears.

And stayed there. The girls did nothing, we did nothing (except look at each other in disbelief) - and everybody just carried on eating as if he wasn't there.

He was still sobbing when we left half an hour later.
.
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Tue 2 May 2006, 16:01, Reply)

Oi! Calgus! NO!!
from your message you are quite French/ like the French a little too much. I used to go to France every other weekend as my ex was French and lived just outside Rouen. We would frequently eat out as she couldn't cook and if I offered she took it as an insult. My observations are 1) The French wouldn't know good service if it was rammed down their throats which would improve the stench of their breath. 2) Hygiene is an alien concept to both restaurants and waiting staff. 3) food is usually hideously over priced and not cooked as per requirements I like my steak blue, lots of blood and not burned to a crisp. 4) it's makes no difference who ordered me or the ex the quality is the same CRAP! so it's nothing to do with nationality or ability to speak French.
I can only suppose that any instructions not shouted in German are to deemed to be unimportant, as for the French not putting up with any shit, Nein Mein Heir! Je suis un collaborator
I will agree the wine is good but New World wines are better and cheaper.
my opinion of the French is on the same lines as Grounds Keeper Willie
(the tartful splodger, Tue 2 May 2006, 15:56, Reply)

Paralysed mussels...
Covent Garden 1987 - my wife and I ate at a small restaurant and I had a mussels and other sea creatures dish, my wife had pasta (she doesn't like seafood.)
Several hours later I noticed a strange odour which appeared to be coming from my increasing levels of sweat. Then the stomach cramps began.
Then an actually pleasant all over tingling sensation started - followed closely by a swollen tongue nearly blocking my airway and then a terrifying full body paralysis.

Initially I didn't make the connection with the seafood and I truly thought I had some dormant disease that was now going to render me a quadraplegic for life.
The paramedics arrived and gave me adrenaline, salbutamol and phenergan - most likely saving my life.
An unforgettable meal indeed, but one which did eventually lead to me changing careers to become a paramedic.

edit: Not allergic to seafood.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Tue 2 May 2006, 15:51, Reply)

Sea France - bad food
Had taken the yellowcar to Germany for the Nurburgring. We did a bit of a tour through Austria, France, Belgium. Lots of hotels lots of good food.

Ferry back home via Sea France, wasn't expecting much. It's French the food should be ok. I'll have a cheese toastie, they can't bollocks that up can they...

Oh yes they can. If you put it in cling film and microwave it, it's bloody horrid...
(Yellow Car is now red, Tue 2 May 2006, 15:32, Reply)

France
If you're ever given a bad meal in France it's because you're British and they know A) you won't complain and B) you know nothing about good food and will eat any old shit.

If you're ever given a bad meal in France, behave like the French do in these situations. Complain bitterly and loudly. That's why French food is infinitely better than British food: the French don't tolerate any shit.

Oh and in any country ordering from the "tourist" or "British" menu is code for: "Pray, rake through the dog basket for my meal and poo potato peelings onto my plate. Then massively overcharge me for the pleasure of drinking urine."
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Tue 2 May 2006, 14:59, Reply)

Crap Meals Out
The food was really nice. It was the cockroach that floated belly up at the in our soy sauce after we had been dipping our food in for the entire meal that made it a bit crap.

And they blocked the door when we refused to pay.
(beelee, Tue 2 May 2006, 14:43, Reply)

School Trip
The hotel on our school trip to Germany featured a waitress who managed to fit the stereotype of having a moustache and more hair under her arms than Brian May has on his head.

The soup for the starters always corresponded to whatever had been in the main meal the night before. They served carrots with the meal one night, the next night we'd have carrot soup. We had chinese one night, next night we got chicken and noodle soup.

Dessert consisted of a Mini Milk ice cream thing. Every night.

I never complained about the food our school canteen gave us again.
(daylightroddery, Tue 2 May 2006, 14:27, Reply)

Foreign Horrors
I travel a lot for work to developing countries so I have many many bad food / losing three stone in two days-type stories. Here are the highlights:
1. Eating a whole leg of something (including foot and cack still lodged between it's toes) in a souk in Egypt whilst being felt up by a leper's stump. I gave him the leg in the end to make him go away
2. Being served up floppy white shit in Thailand
3. Ordering a soup in Malaysia and being given a bowl of warm, slightly tasty water with whole chilli peppers floating in it
4. Eating some stringy meat in Palestine and later being told "yes, it was that raw camel hanging up in the street that we saw earlier"
5. Being a guest of honour at a banquet on the cambodian border and being eyeballed at 10feet away by 200 children who came to see the "strange coloured person" (I'm blonde and they'd never seen a european?!)
6. Eating ONLY bloody white boiled rice and beans in Cuba for 10 days. That was fun when you tried to do a Richard the III.

I have no choice, the natives make me do it!!! Still - got some good stories for the young 'uns.
I don't think the chinese were impressed though when they mentioned "101 Dalmations" and I asked them if that was the menu. muhahahahah.
(The Apeface Cherub is not a cunty-uber-cunt, Tue 2 May 2006, 14:27, Reply)

Meal Time for Torch Head
I think the scariest meal-out experience I had was in New York last year - and it didnt even involve a meal. The food in New York was generally amazing, and the portions were American sized obviously - but one place really put me off eating for quite a while....

It was opposite our hotel in Queens - a place promising Thai Food, Steaks, Cocktails...all of my favourite things. So me and the missus went in - to what can only be described as some small, gloomy warehouse with a bar. The only other people in there was some malnourished looking thai family sat at a table at the back. Not that it was easy to see them, with the whole place being in near darkness and lit only by about 2 candles. Before we could scarper, a waitress had appeared, sat us down and handed us the menus. We then sat there, trying to read the menus in the dark with the light from our mobile phones. I was about to try and leave with the excuse being that we couldnt even read the menu, when out of the darkness suddenly appeared a wizened old Thai man with an eyepatch, who grinned like a maniac and handed us a small torch. That was the final straw, and we made our excuses and left.
I expect there's a similarly themed restaurant being opened up in London as we speak, and it will cost a small fortune to eat there.
(eds209 invites you to a HousepartyofthedDead.com, Tue 2 May 2006, 14:26, Reply)

vegas
I am astonished by the negative comments about Vegas buffets. I never found another place in the world where I could have my breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and condiments all piled up on one plate until I visited the Fat Duck restaurant.

And all you can eat for $20. Take note, Mr Blumenthal!
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 2 May 2006, 14:09, Reply)

Wet, microwaved, bread.
All afficionados of wet, microwaved bread might like to note that, contrary to poular belief, the delicacy is not extinct on these shores, but is alive and well, like the oyster carefully enveloping such pearls as 'bacon cheese burger' or 'chicken fillet and bacon'.
Examples of this once commonplace quisine were believed to have been driven from our shores by the rise of the 'Gastropub' in the 1990s, although it was hoped that a pocket of resistance clung to life in a third rate factory staff canteen in the east midlands. For some time now though, the management of "The Britannia" in the cosmopolitan, forward-thinking Oxford suburb of Headington have been keeping a secret, and it's a very dark one.
Actually, it's a white secret, and, like that other albino rarity the white truffle, it's location, even it's existence has been hidden by a few sworn initiates. Until now.
Yes, for the first time in a decade, I can reveal to you that the "badly microwaved on a plate" burger is back in town. Indeed, it may never have been away.
So, for those of you unlucky enough not to have this culinary mecca as your local, what does the much sought-after WMB delicacy tase like? Nothing. Disappointingly, most of it had returned to it's pre-baked, doughy state, (and had adhered to the plate before continuting to cook,leaving rough scales of wheat paste on the crockery,) although some of the deeper layers of permafrost within the white fluffy 'bun' had only thawed sufficiently to allow the bread to dribble through my fingers when I picked the burger up.
Yes, the bread was bland, nay, tasteless, utterly devoid of susbstance and nutritional value and uninspiring. As a special treat, it appears that I had been recognised by the serving staff as the acclaimed critic of crap tucker that I am, and they had treated me to the wrong burger. Yes, I was presented with the chicken variety rather than the beef and cheese I had foolishly anticipated.
Yes, my work in Headington was done, gold had been struck, and I could go back to my humdrum existence with the memory of this day forever circled in silly gold marker in the mental calendar inside my brain... Indeed, I was so bowled over by the standards I'd encountered that it was several hours before I was calm enough to write any of this down.
The Britannia, London Road, Headington. Burgers about a fiver. Beer available to wash the clag away. Booking NOT advised.

I'm not sorry for length, girth or anything else. God MADE me do it!
(doctor sideburns, Tue 2 May 2006, 14:08, Reply)

It's bloody true...
Was living in the US at the time, and had some friends from Blighty over to visit. Being close to Vegas we decided to visit to sample all the local delights. It seems like every casino has a buffet, so we do as the Vegans do, and join the buffet at Circvs Maximvs or some similar hellhole. Buffet consisted of lots of different types of meat (carvery), wilted salad, dry pasta and those deserts that have a really high shine to them. All was fine until I just get outside the casino, when I get the most heinous stomach cramps. Cue a rabid sprint to the toilet (and if you've been to Vegas you'll know things are deliberately NOT signposted very well) where I just about make it to unload my large intestine at a speed approaching MACH2. The smell was so bad, it felt like it was the end of the world.

Still, I was somewhat tickled to hear my chum dash in about 30 seconds later, and suffer the familiar groan, splash, groan "urgh" pattern. Every time I go to any sort of buffet now, my bowels do a little flip and I automatically check out where the nearest loo is.

Oh, I also had an apple from a supermarket in Los Angeles which I didn't wash very well. That knocked me out for 24hours.

And they have the nerve to call our food shit.
(juvey note to self, Tue 2 May 2006, 13:34, Reply)

When I was a nipper
On a youth orchestra tour in Venice, myself and a few fellow musicians went on a jaunt to a Chinese restaurant. Don't ask me why we were eating Chinese in Venice, it wasn't my idea. Anyway, we were halfway through our meal when someone became slightly peturbed at the black thing in the sweet and sour sauce. Further inspection revealed a dead cockroach.

We beckoned the waitress over. Far from being apologetic/mortified/getting the manager to grovel and give us a free meal, she simply looked slightly annoyed, took it back to the kitchen and brought us another one.

I reckon she'd just fished the cockroach out and brought the same sauce back to the table.

At least it wasn't alive.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Tue 2 May 2006, 13:23, Reply)

Not a crap meal..
Not sure if I have posted this, but can't find it, so..

In Greenwich (again), a group of us went to the local thai food restaurant.

Very good food and drink, served promptly by the waiter. The background music was OK (bit irritating, but what the hey). At least it wasn't as bad as another restaurant we went to, where, ironically, the Background music was Mel C's "Never be the same again" played repeatedly.

So, we all sat there, having a laugh, and finished our meals. All of a sudden, the background music went a bit wobbly (like a tape that had warped). 30 seconds later, the fire alarm went off and the waiter evacuated us all. As it happens, the HiFi playing the background music had caught fire and set fire to the kitchen.

So, we did what any decent blokes would do, and scarpered without paying. Apart from one guy who insisted (briefly at least) that he would stay and pay for the meal.
(Ok, I'll get me coat, Tue 2 May 2006, 13:13, Reply)

This only happened last week
Sat in a British restaurant in Spain my wife and I were enjoying the company of friends. My pals partner has only just learnt English and it probably wasn't the best idea for my mate to be teaching her (National Anthem 'who ate all the pies ....etc).

Having finished the large meal and eaten her fill she asked my friend how to explain how she felt. 'Blowted' he said.

'What eez zees?' she shouts out 'you want a blowjob?' she screemed much to our amusement and a good few diners embarressment.
(ElGatodeBarco, Tue 2 May 2006, 13:06, Reply)

sexkitten...
if this is a real story - probably not the best place to post it, given that this board is devoted to being crude and amusing rather than soul-bearing / getting support. And half of the stuff on here is made up, and the username 'sexkitten' doesn't give the impression that it's meant to be taken seriously.

if you thought it was funny - it wasn't.

if it was a sexual fantasy - no one wants to hear your fantasies unless they're funny ones about Transformers.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 2 May 2006, 12:58, Reply)

We cook steaks differently
Went out for dinner at a place called Le Quecumbar in Battersea (Quecumtoilet more like). Ordered the 10oz steak, medium rare. It was medium rare, but it looked like it had been cooked in a saucepan with water, not a griddle or even a frying pan. Ate two bites and complained...owner comes out, talks to me for a bit about how her chef likes to cook steaks then asks where my accent is from. NZ I say, which she replies, "Oh - so you obviously cook steaks differently there, this is the way we do them..." I have been living in the UK for 8 years....got free whiskey and a threesome later on which was unrelated...
(essbeenz there done that, Tue 2 May 2006, 12:48, Reply)

Not my bad meal story
... but it happened in a restaurant, involved embarrassment and made me laugh.

I was eating with the family in a tiny place in Brittany called [insert pun here] the Kumquat. Among the others present were an English family comprising a mum, a dad and two boys, aged about seven and four. Halfway through the meal the seven year-old got up to go to the toilet. Two minutes later he rushed back in and stood in the middle of the room yelling,
"Mummy! Mummy! My willy's gone all stiff!"

The parents stared up at him like rabbits caught in the headlights, and every single other English person in the place spent the rest of the evening giggling into their food. Unfortunately the parents spent a lot of time talking quietly after that, so I didn't hear their explanation of this strange phenomenon.
(T. S. Bundy, Tue 2 May 2006, 12:35, Reply)

Planet Hollywood London
I was in there for a mate's bird's mate's birthday at 17, I went there in case the girl in question had any drunk mates with a great rack.

I turned up pissed, and then kept drinking before ordering food. The food still hadn't arrived 90 minutes later, so well drunk by now and figuring the girls weren't biting I went over to the Piano and playes a plink plink tune with my bollocks. The waiter who seemed to have forgotten about me then remembered and threw me out, and gave me a bill for the food that after 2hrs still hadn't arrived. The good news is that everyone else left within minutes and I pulled one of the birds because of my penis piano playing.

Great Meal, but no food
She ate though! haha
(wifebeater Funkier than a BinBag of Affro's, Tue 2 May 2006, 12:27, Reply)

kebab canibalism
possibly just an urban legend, but i was told it was in the papers a few months ago that a kebab shop owner had murdered someone then served her up as kebab. I think it was in brighton, and in all liklihood a load of rubbish.
A friend of mine did have an impressively bad takeaway that managed to put him in hospital for a week, although in fairness only because the food poisoning managed to agravate a prior condition. Oh, and on an unrelated note do not go to flames in leeds, and if you do, dont eat anything with meat in it, apparantly the chips are safe......
(skankgirl, Tue 2 May 2006, 12:18, Reply)

Meat and greet
My parents and my fiancées parents had decided to meet as my mum and dad live abroad and it would be the only time they could meet before we are getting married.

Anyway, my dear parents turn up late, which is fairly normal, after quaffing a few G&T’s on the train. So we head up to the restaurant to do the big meet and great.



My fiancées parents are salt of the earth left wing Londoners and they love to swear. My mar and par are decidedly not, so both sides including Ben and myself were a bit worried about general chit chat.



As we walked in we arrived into a restaurant in chaos with the future in-laws at the centre of that whirlwind. There was blood, there were broken chairs and there was a lot of swearing going on.



I can only imagine the in-laws had got a bit nervous, anyway… Mrs C had shuffled in her chair and in doing so caught her finger in between the leg and the seat, ripping off the top of her index finger in the process. I can only imagine the following events, but apparently as her screams were echoing round the room, Mr C leant over to check out her finger, moved his seat forward and as he did so gouged a huge hole out of his middle finger in exactly the same manner.



We arrived as the manager of the restaurant was trying to subdue the situation asking Mrs C to shut the fuck up and stop making a fuss. That didn’t’ go down too well. Eeeeek. Introductions were eventually made but were a bit tricky due to the blood spurting out of hands wrapped in whole loo rolls.



But hell it broke the ice, and we got a free bottle of Champagne for it.



I can confirm I have never been back to that restaurant since.
(Labella77, Tue 2 May 2006, 11:56, Reply)

They make you eat with your hands and you have to supply your own after dinner mints.

It was like I was in the third-world, in actual fact it was McDonalds.

It'll never get a Michelin star I tell thee....
(blackfacedfightinggibbon, Tue 2 May 2006, 10:48, Reply)

Whale it was whale!
This was a fairly shocking meal thing.
It was my sixth anniversary with my true love, to show his high regard for me he didn't buy me a token of love or even a card. No he decided the way to treat a lady is to take her to his mother's house for the weekend. So no sex on our anniversary either as she has a habit of "just walking in to get something". I was quite miffed when it came to the afternoon and I was told that we weren't going out for food as mummy dearest had made something special.
I can only thank the lord that mummy's other little soldier blurted "Oh fuck you're not going to give them that fucking whale are you mother?".
Whale casserole to be precise. As in endangered species casserole smuggled illegally in by said mother from Norway. And made into a casserole. I ask you.
Now I am a bit of a hippy but am not vegetarian but I couldn't bring myself to try it.
It was our anniversary and I get whale casserole. Vile. Other half didn't want to offend his mum (!!!!) so tried some, tastes like dog food apparently (though how he'd know...) so there you go Joel Veitch, you don't want to eat whale really.
I got a necklace the next week but I knew my place in the food chain by then.
After six and a half years me and he broke up and never again will I spend a day that should be about love with his endangered species baking freako mother.
(Bezmina, Tue 2 May 2006, 10:26, Reply)

Tiger Tiger
Went with Mrs Oaf to Tiger Tiger in the Printworks in Manchester a couple of weeks ago. It was toss! Fucking toss! everything took ages, my pasta was hard an dmy sauce was really watery. Her Steak salad had a sliver of steak on, and was pretty poor over all. Not inpressed.

BUT she gets summat like a 30% discount from everywhere in The Printworks so it wasn't a complete loss...

We had a GOOD meal in H J Beams in teh Printworks recently... big discount, nice portions, tasty grub... and they didn't put our numerous drinks on teh bill!
(The Splendid Oaf, Tue 2 May 2006, 10:19, Reply)

still makes me retch even now
1986, Fulham.
I go to select my luncheon from the local deli, Euro something. (Some big chain, do they still exist in London? There was another on Oxford Street near the Tottenham Court Road corner).
I choose a slice of game pie.
I get back to the office, and being a fast eater, had wolfed down half of it before i realized there was white fuzzy mold, hairy white mold growing on the meat.
( i am genuinley retching as i write this 20 years later).
What followed then was me drinking huge amounts of water very quickly and seriously projectile vomiting in the office bog.
This went on for the best part of an hour.
Somehow, i managed to drag my periodically barfing self back to the deli, showed them the remnants of the pie (i had the receipt), got a refund, insisted that i keep said remnants, and made my way to Fulham and Chelsea Town Hall, where i introduced myself to the food hygiene inspectors.
I also introduced them to the pie, and they introduced me to their bog, as an emergency barf was imminent.
Collective opinion of Fulham and Chelsea Town Hall food hygiene inspectors of the remains of the slice of game pie was:
"Eeeewwwwwwwwww"
I asked one inspector if i could catch anything from consuming said item.
His response was" well, we will send it for tests, but you are going to find out before we will".
I liked his laconic style.
End result:
Deli was charged and prosecuted, they pleaded guilty, were banned from selling 'fresh' produce for three months, fined 500 quid, and had by law to display a letter prominently in their window from the courts explaining why they were banned for selling food "unfit for human consumption".

Nearly, very nearly, put me off meat pies for life.
(Man in Japan, Tue 2 May 2006, 10:03, Reply)

the pho story...
much hungover and still drunk from the night before, my friends decide to go for breakfast at a Pho restraurant.

Being the idiot I usually am in this state, I order the 'special' dish written only in Chinese. The waiter asks me politely several times if that is really what I want. Of course I say yes.

So the food comes and I look down at this plate of gooey mystery meat in a soup. Ok, it can't be too bad. I have several spoonfuls...

It took a while for my taste buds to send a message to my brain that this was not what the body needed. Cheeks puff out, everyone moves away, the waiter points to the back of the restaurant - I understand this message - and I go running to toilet and spew everywhere.

I sit down, I order a glass of water and the mean continued without incident.

And yes, I learned a lesson that time.
( Art101 You all have an unhealthy and morbid fascination, Tue 2 May 2006, 9:59, Reply)

I eat children
I was visiting my Pa who lives in HongKong back when I were 15ish. After a long walk, we stopped off at a small place to grab something to eat.

My Dad attempted to point out t the waiter that I was a vegetarian. However, due to the complex tonal nature of Cantonese, he instead told the poor chap that I eat children.

The look of horror on his face was amazing before he twigged what my Dad was on about.

The meal was nice though, and I don't think it had any children in it.
(teasus likes tea, Tue 2 May 2006, 9:21, Reply)