I had just turned 19 and was with my then boyfriend for close to a year. He was a Marine and wasn’t home a lot so we did the long distance thing for awhile.

His parents were non-denominational Christian, Anglo Americans and I was raised Catholic. They were very vocal about their distaste for me, an outspoken Italian-Catholic girl who they felt was taking up too much of their adult son’s off time. It was wild.

It was Veteran’s Day weekend so he came home and we had both our time to ourselves (which was limited) and with family. His family didn't want me included on family time because I was a ‘distraction’. I felt like I was in a relationship with them too, it was all really inappropriate for a 19- and 25-year-old.

We decided to go (or they decided to go) to Olive Garden for dinner. They were doing a Veteran’s Day special. As an Italian, I don’t usually eat there because its not great food, but I do love those breadsticks…

So we go. We get a huge table. The dad is in an unusually good mood and we’re having a good time even though they would all have rather me not be there.

Mind you — I didn’t really do anything that would have warranted their dislike of me besides being who I was and wanting to spend time with my boyfriend. We genuinely loved each other and were happy. I got so frustrated at their insane demands I did once kind of mouth off, I was at my wit’s end with them. They wanted me to tell them every time I go see him so they can decide whether or not they want to come or are OK with me going. In-f**cking-sane.

So we’re at the Olive Garden. They know I’m Italian. My boyfriend and I would always joke about how to pronounce the food. He’d say “mozt uh rella” and I’d say “mootzadel” (the correct way, ahem.) So his brother who’s a loose cannon and generally an angry person says mozzarella the American way. I jokingly correct him and I think we’re having a funny back and forth bickering session but we’re not, as it turns out because he’s serious. He then goes “shut the fuck up you inbred swine piece of Italian shit. My brother has the WORST taste in women — you’re a fucking piece of garbage!”

So that was obviously the last straw. I got up and went to the bathroom. I’m very resourceful and am at this point feeling like I’m on my own. I’m plotting. I don’t have my phone coat or purse so I can’t just leave. I try not to cry. I remember that they’re both hanging on the coat rack and if I move fast enough I can get them both and leave quick, and maybe get a cab.

I run back, their dad hands me my stuff and we both go outside. I yell, “I am so good to your son! I make time for him and our relationship even though I’m in college and we love each other and this is how your family treats me?” I went off. The dad surprisingly apologizes.

The brothers start shoving each other. I’m standing there in awe crying, dad breaks it up. Me, mom, dad, and boyfriend go to another restaurant, I can barely eat, but we have a decent conversation.

Later, they will have blamed me for not breaking up the argument between the brothers and for not encouraging my boyfriend to make peace.

Because the whole thing was my fault, somehow.

After another about a year of this nonsense, we broke up.

I found a guy who was raised to say mozzarella properly and whose parents’ house is a home away from home and who would never willingly go to an Olive Garden. Italian guy from the Bronx…heaven.

And that’s the story of the most disappointing meal I’ve ever eaten, or didn’t get to eat, rather. With a racist asshole and boyfriend who was torn between what’s normal and what his family thinks is normal.

It was my tenth wedding anniversary. My husband had booked our very first overnight trip away from the kids together since we’d had our oldest child seven years earlier. We went to a nice resort along the California coast, an area that we loved to visit with our kids. He hadn’t told me where we were going, just told me to pack a swimsuit and one nice outfit. On the way down the coast, we stopped off at the wharf and had a fun lunch at an oceanside diner, walked to the end of the pier and bought little souvenirs and a couple of giant chocolate strawberries.

I was nervous, but pleasantly so. I was filled with hope and longing. It had been a really, really long time since we’d had some time to ourselves, and the last year had been incredibly difficult. You see, days before our ninth anniversary, I had found out that my husband had been having a two year long intense affair with a coworker of his. In that timeframe, I’d gotten pregnant and given birth to our fourth (and final) child. We’d moved into our own home and started renovating it and building what I thought would be our home for the next ten or twenty years. And we’d started to have problems. He’d been distant, increasingly so. He’d told me he had fallen out of love with me. He’d told me I wasn’t lovable. He’d told me he had no desire for me or to be with me. And after I’d discovered the affair, I’d fought with wild abandon, trying desperately to save our marriage and convince him that we were worth fighting for, that our family, our history together, our four young children, were worth it. He’d halfheartedly agreed, promised to end the affair, and work on us.

The year after that had been filled with many, many lapses where he kept seeing her, kept putting me off, kept gaslighting me and telling me I was crazy to suspect him. He’d told me many things about me that he found off-putting, that he felt barred him from falling back in love with me. I tried to fix all of them. I spent so many nights crying, feeling unloved, unwanted, and horribly unsure of what to do.

I’m not a quitter. And when I give a promise to someone, invest in them, care for them, I mean it. I did not want to leave him. I did not want to give up on us, on the future we’d built. We’d known each other since we were young, been very good friends since we were fourteen, and dated since we were eighteen. We had four young children together, had braved four years in North Dakota, far from friends and family for his four years of medical school, we were nearing the end of his residency period, and we were finally at the point that we’d both worked hard for. I knew that kids plus med school/residency would be tough for him, and I’d tried to bear the brunt of the hard work and effort and support him in any way I could, but I was so looking forward to this time now, when he’d begin his “real” job and have actual work-life balance again to spend with the kids and with me.

Then I’d found that phone, that extra phone, filled with all the text messages that would spell out to me a cruel story with two people who knew the pain I was going through and complained that I was being too dense or stubborn to understand I wasn’t wanted and give up.

All of that had happened the year before our tenth anniversary. By this time, now almost exactly a year after I’d found out about the affair, I had hoped things would have been fixed. He’d told me that he wanted to fix things, that he also believed that our best bet for happiness in the future was together, with the life we’d worked to create together.

And this was our tenth anniversary away. He’d splurged and rented a huge suite at the resort. It was beautiful - I could have moved in. The California coast was especially beautiful this weekend in late July, and in my head, I truly believed this would be the turning point for us, where we’d close the chapter on this hurt and ugliness and work together to rebuild, stronger and better.

That night, our anniversary night, we had dinner at the restaurant near the top of the cliff overlooking the sea.

We ordered drinks, something I almost never do, and indulgent meals. We talked through appetizers and I felt so hopeful. I was more nervous than I’d ever been on any date, any dinner before in my life. I wanted so badly to be charming, funny, and likable enough that he’d remember why we married, why he liked to be with me, and why a future with me would be a good thing. Midway through our appetizers, he said he was feeling chilly and wanted to run back to our room to grab another jacket. I smiled and agreed, and he hurried off down the path.

Fifteen minutes passed — a long fifteen minutes when you’re seated alone at a table for two watching a beautiful summer sunset. Our food arrived. I remember feeling a little concerned, but mostly just full of hope. I took a picture of his food and sent it to him so he’d know it had arrived.

Five minutes later or so, he got back to the table. I remember briefly asking if everything was okay, and he said something about the walk back to the room being longer than he’d thought. I dismissed it. We went through the rest of our dinner, making small talk that felt forced, both of us clearly playing a part. I thought maybe he was just nervous after everything that happened, and I went out of my way to reassure him in every way I could that I was hopeful, affectionate, still cared, and was moving on and past this. I didn’t mention anything bad once. I told him some of the stories about our kids, some of my coworkers, etc that I’d been saving up for this. I asked him about his work, his hopes, thoughts about the “next ten” etc. He was disengaged and smiled frequently, but it never reached his eyes. I hoped that he’d warm up, but he didn’t.

After our meal, we walked to the edge of the cliff and had a couple nearby take our picture. Again, looking back, I can see how strained his smile was and nothing close to his usual laughing grin.

The rest of our weekend was much the same. He went through the motions, was more affectionate than he’d been in years, but it again felt empty somehow. I put on a brave face, thanked him profusely (I was still so grateful for the effort, the semblance). I went home and posted the requisite joyful Facebook post that had become this horrible shell I’d created in the year previous to cover what felt like my own personal shame at our failing marriage and the affair.

It was disappointing that night even as it was unfolding, but I’d find out a year later how acutely disappointing it actually had been. The time he’d spent in the room looking for his jacket, he’d used to call his affair partner to reassure her that he cared for her, that he was just going through the motions with me, that he would not cross “lines” that she’d set (for him, with me). I’d asked him later how he could have said and done all the things that weekend with me, as if he was in fact falling in love again, desiring me/us, etc. He told me he’d used a thing I’d suggested to him when I’d first found out — imagined that I might die in two weeks and see how he felt about that. He said that had given him the empathy to give me this tenth anniversary weekend that I’d wanted. Clearly that was limited.

Thinking back on it now, I remember how incredibly hopeful I’d felt, how willing to try, how much I thought was my fault, and how crestfallen I’d felt at not being “enough” throughout the dinner or the weekend to somehow wake him back up to the feelings we’d shared for so many years before.

Now, I’m not sure when I remember this meal who I’m more disappointed in, him, or this horribly pathetic shell of a person I was, clinging desperately and hoping life would right itself, willing to change whatever I could to try to convince someone else that I was, in fact, enough.

The food, the setting, the drinks … they were all perfect. But this was the most disappointing meal of my life.

One time my Dad decided to have a turkey dinner in the summer for the two of us. Dad had bought a turkey around the holidays when they were on sale and kept it in his freezer. It was time to use it up.

At the time my Dad was in his late 80’s and did all his own cooking. He wasn’t the greatest cook, but everything was edible and many of his dishes were pretty good. I loved his meatloaf.

Anyway, this turkey dinner was accompanied by instant mashed potatoes from a box and Stovetop stuffing.

Although my father had devised some kind of trickery to make instant mashed potatoes taste pretty good and how far wrong can you go with turkey?, I realize that these ingredients sound bad to start with and I’ll admit we didn’t have great expectations.

So the question arises “How can you be disappointed in a meal when you don’t have high expectations in the first place?” Well, you can. The whole meal was almost completely tasteless. Both of us were sitting there sort of poking the food around on our plates and finally turned to each other and said “this is awful.” Then we scooped everything up and put it outside for the raccoons.

My adorable sister in law made a casserole for thanksgiving. She brought a gelatin mold in, flipped it upside down on a platter, and there shook a tri -colored blob -- orange, green and white. It was ground up turnips, Brussels sprouts and carrots, out in clear gelatin. It was meant to mimic the Irish flag, as they were going to Ireland. . My niece and nephew were 4 and 6 and my nephew started to gag. My husband was a garbage disposal, but he looked horrified by the blob shaking.

I saw my sis in law tear up, so I cut a big slice and started to spoon it in. Boy, i LOVE veggies, and i thanked her for having more than just corn and green beans. My brother in law tried to do the same, but it was really jiggly. I took one for the team!

Guesses what I got for my birthday dinner?

I had always wanted to dine at a three star Michelin restaurant, and so months in advance to a trip to France in 2001, booked Louis XV in Monaco, Alain Ducasse’s famous three star restaurant. We had wonderful food in France, and especially enjoyed the meal at the Marriott Champs de Elysee (the Chef had just been voted best young chef). We anxiously looked forward to our three star meal.

The room was amazingly beautiful, the service attentive but somewhat condescending. The food was very pretty to look at, and there were many fancy flourishes (cutting fresh herbs, things like that). The food was…. nothing special. If you had eaten food of that quality in a local restaurant, you’d be impressed, but for that much money and with three stars,…. just so-so. The Marriott meal was far better, as was a locals Italian restaurant in Monaco. The desert in first class on Air France was better than the Louis XV desert.

The cab driver who took us back to our hotel in Cap D Ail, when we told him of our experience, told us we were unsophisticated Americans who didn’t understand good food.

We felt vindicated when later that year, Louis XV lost it’s third star, with the reviewer saying “I know three star cooking, and that is not three star cooking “ (or something like that).

I was tempted to go find that cab driver just to show him!

Personally, I'd almost never complained about any food that could be eaten. Well, it's changed after I had this weird food culture shock.

I had a meal in a cafeteria of a university in Seattle. The menu for that time of the day is this

No, I'm not complaining about the pasta. It was good enough.

The one I want to highlight is the tofu. I'm from Indonesia, where tofu basically is everywhere and I have eaten it since childhood. But this particular tofu was so bland, hard to chew, and not even edible for me. It's like trying to eat a cooked cardboard.

No wonder Americans have a hard time eating healthful foods if all veggies and good protein sources like this are cooked this way.

Well a couple items that come to mind immediately, both were while being held as a prisoner of the war on drugs. At a federal correction institute in Florence Co we were fed this fish chowder that was a decent soup really but it had mystery fish that had skin on that was very fishy!!I later worked in warehouse and the boxes of “pollock” had not for human consumption…use as baitfish!!! I dry heave a bit to this day thinking of it.

The other time was in Pennington Co.,SD jail waiting for feds to get me thru their deal down road. It was spaghetti that would have made ketchup and water look like fine cuisine.

2yrs back..

My dad’s CEO visited Bangalore and invited me and my brother to meet him with Dad.

He was staying at Taj Vivanta. He was a privileged customer of TAJ as he used to stay there whenever he visited Bangalore.

We were from middle class family. For us, Five star hotel was like heaven. Had never visited. When Dad told about this meet, I jumped with all excitement. I was waiting for that day as if it was my Marriage day.

Finally the day came..

I got all ready and we booked a cab and went in. The way we were welcomed was awesome. At the entrance itself he welcomed us and took us to Brunch.

To be frank, I was not excited to meet him. All I wanted was to have nice food free of cost. Lol

He took our introduction and admired us a lot. Later came the menu. He gave us all the privilege to order whatever we want. I too knew the fact that he will get reimbursement of the bill from company. So, with all the zeal i looked into the menu and damn.. I had never heard the items in menu and I never knew what they are and how would they taste. But then I decided to have those cuisines which I dont eat often. So i ordered those items whose name sounded new and whose cost was highest thinking that they will be tasty.

It took more than half an hour for the food to come to our table.

My reaction was

Did I order thissss????

It was completely like bread item and the icecream I ordered was not icecream. Instead it was Whip cream. My Bill was 2400Rs. What did I just do!

For have ordered these, I had to eat them forcefully. That too alone.. :(

And I did

-Champ

Hands down it was an Indian version of candy. I worked in a place that had a lot of ethnic people. On potluck days, people liked to bring in dishes from their homeland, which was great. I was pretty friendly with one Indian lady who brought in different stuff from time to time. One time she came over to my desk and showed me some Indian “candy” which is apparently some kind of tradition there. She gave me a piece. Now i’m the kind of guy who can try just about anything once. If I dont’ particularly like it,, I just won’t have it again. I popped this ‘candy’ in my mouth,, and I gagged. I don’t know what it was , but it was the worst tasting piece of crap ever. It was absolutely horrible. I seriously gagged. I wasn’t trying to be rude,, but it was horrible. She had a good laugh though.

The worst food I’ve ever had is this:

This isn’t tofu or jello or anything, it’s coagulated pig’s blood (血豆腐 - Literally blood tofu in Mandarin, or 猪红 - Pig’s Red in Cantonese), commonly known as blood pudding. It’s a popular delicacy in Southern China, where I’m from.

One day when I was six or seven, I was eating at a restaurant with my family when this dish gets brought to the table (some of my family like it). I, being the young, innocent child that I was, ate a chunk of it thinking it was some form of tofu or meat. Immediately, I could tell that I fucked up. I promptly got out of my chair, ran to the bathroom, and threw up. That’s how bad it tasted. Being blood, it tastes really unnaturally metallic in your mouth, and the sauce and spices that are added to it don’t make the taste any better.

Later, when I found out that it was pig’s blood, I felt even more disgusted that I actually ate it. I mean, I understand that my Chinese ancestors had to take as much food as possible from their animals, but seriously? You ate the blood? Why?!?

I’ve eaten it again a few more times since then to see if it tasted any better, but every time I get that disgusting metallic taste that makes me want to throw up. I understand that many people actually like blood curds, but personally, I hate both the concept and taste of it.

*sob* I make the makanai or employee meal for our club. I have a large leeway in what to make and experiment constantly. So one day using chuck roll beef, I tried a teriyaki/kalbi marinade. Unfortunately, I used kiwi fruit and pineapple or papaya. (I've blocked what I did in my mind it was so horrible).

The result was mushy, inedible slices of blah. Everyone asked what type of meat I used. Most thought it was badly cooked venison. Yeah it tasted gamey and was mush.

So to my embarrassment, the worst tasting dish was one of my own making. Don't mix recipes or ingredients if you haven't experimented first! Good results may happen, but most times you'll get an epic failure. Thx.

My husband is normally an excellent cook - he watches lots of cooking shows, does cooking method and recipe research, buys quality, fresh ingredients, etc. He invents delicious dishes, tweaks existing recipes to improve them and generally keeps us all happy where food is concerned.

BUT (hey, you knew it was coming!) … he made some soup that he loved from his childhood for us, once. The protein was beef (neckbones stewed for a long time and all the meat picked off the bones), and it included lentils, split peas, carrots and green beans … at least those were the ingredients I could identify. He was so excited … it turned out perfect, he exclaimed, just like his mom used to make. He happily ladled it up for me and our four kids. We sat down to eat it. I think all of us (except him) took one bite … and.just.stopped. That was it … one bite and done. He said we could eat it or go hungry. We went hungry. We henceforth dubbed this item “Eat or Go Hungry Soup”. My husband has made “Eat or Go Hungry Soup” a few other times since. It has not improved.

Well the worst MEAT = Goat. I’ve heard Jamaicans know best how to cook Goat (Curry) - I’ve tried it at Jamaican restaurants here in the USA, still doesn’t cover up the awfulness of the meat, with all those nasty bone & gristle pieces. Maybe I need to travel to Jamaica. I love all kinds of food from all around the world & at one time lived in West Virginia with a crew of hunters/ fishermen, so in addition to other exotic foods/meats I’ve eaten all kinds of game meats. I still consider Goat the Worst. If I was inventing my own religion, I’d ban Goat meat, as it’s so awful who would want to eat it anyway? I’d never ban an animal as Delicious as Pig.

A meal I had in the UK once made me almost homicidally angry.*

My wife and I had flown in through Heathrow on our honeymoon. It had been a really long trip. I seem to recall that we were routed through JFK International. We were hungry and tired. Food first, since you can be sleepy while you eat, but you can’t eat while asleep. We could have eaten at the airport, but didn’t want airport food. We found some little restaurant. My wife ordered something forgettable. I perused the menu for a while until I found it.

A mushroom burger.

I love hamburgers. I wouldn’t say that I’m addicted to them. They aren’t actually my favorite food… but they’re pretty perfect overall. I excel in making them myself. A mushroom burger is going to be great pretty much anywhere. Sauteed mushrooms on a slice of swiss melting on a tasty patty. That’s mighty fine food!

When my burger arrived, I was disappointed, but being polite, I chose not to bring up the problem. My burger didn’t have the promised mushrooms on it. I wasn’t going to complain. I mean… it was food and I was hungry to the point of turning into a zombie. I saw some HP sauce (I love that stuff!) and put a bit on. Then I took a bite.

And froze.

I looked down in horror. My wife was looking at me strangely. I put the burger down and grabbed a fork to claw at the inside of the burger.

It wasn’t a “burger.” Somehow, someone, for some reason that defies logic… had taken mushrooms, chopped them up, and formed them into some kind of patty and cooked it. It was a “burger” made out of a mushroom. Forgetting about the fact that it wasn’t the beef burger I expected, it was awful It was crispy on the outside and sort of… wet on the inside. Not moist. Sludgy?

We can blame the lack of sleep or maybe the gnawing hunger, but I went from zero to outraged in 3.2 seconds. I growled at the waiter, “I need a box for my wife’s meal. Pronto.” We threw her food in a box, I dropped money on the table, and we were out of there. I cursed the entire way to the hotel and ate some crap out of a vending machine there.

People are welcome to take me to task here. I’m sure this is some kind of cultural misunderstanding. Still, if you list it with other beef burgers and don’t have a description, especially near an airport, you should assume that you’re going to be misleading people.

For those who believe that a mushroom burger is just a morass of fungus in the form of a patty, that isn’t so here:

Look at the “Pub Burger”

Sauteed 'shroom Burger

Check Page 6 for the California Burger

Mushroom Swiss GrillBurger

Bacon Mushroom Swiss Burger

And that’s fine. It was still a damned disappointing meal that I would never order again.

*And “homicidally angry” is an example of “hyperbole.” Calm down.

I grow up watching keith floyd cooking recipes from around the world. I remember one of the episodes he eat something in brazil - it was brown like a big falafel with dried shrimps. Years i wanted to try it.

When i traveled to brazil i looked for it all over, i didn’t know how it was called just how to describe in portuguese. After few months i arrived el salvador and the second i stepped down from the bus i saw a lady selling exactly that. With tears of joy i ordered myself one.

Acarajé.

Man 18 years later i still remember face the lady did when i almost puked it on the floor…

I’m an adventurous eater, but these three foods are banned from my bill of fare.

Duck’s Blood Soup. Look up the recipe and you will understand.

Pickled Eggs. Something that pink should not taste tangy.

Tofu. I cannot tolerate the texture no matter if it is silken or firm.

I've had memorably bad meals cooked for me by other people, but most of them had redeeming features, and they were often done for me by people doing their best under trying circumstances, or ignorance. I also tend not to have complete bad meals, because I'll either leave or try to change what I'm eating to "safer" things. Sometimes it's my fault for ordering the foodie bait, or the picky non-core diner's dish (What dishes do chefs wish their customers would order more often?)

For the very worst meal I've eaten, I'm going to tell tales on myself.

I was a not quite starving college student, and I was absolutely watching my pennies, but I did have some dried herbs and spices to add variety to my food. I made a pot of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (Kraft Dinner to you Canadians) and then added something that my memory has thankfully blurred the details of. It might have been okay, but I accidentally dumped in a huge amount...and then I attempted to scoop some out, but stirred a lot of it in. It was hideous, but then I tried to see if *more* would help. The ending result was a scary shade of green, and the salty funk of Kraft powdered cheese clashed badly with the musty dried herb.

I choked it down anyway.

On the plus side, I've learned to measure out dried herbs into my palm first.

For me, its definitely Durian. I don’t really get why people like it. It smells like garbage and smell is a huge factor for taste.

You know, Chinese food list is very long. There are a lot of strange things.

Because of the poverty age in Chinese history, we ate a lot of things that other countries did not dare to eat. For example - cicada

Actually, it tastes good. But for many people, putting it in your mouth is a huge challenge.

Steak and onion potato chips.

They were supposed to taste like this

but instead they tasted like this

Not the yummy sandwich, but the leftover greasy remains.

Horrible

Passover seder, many years ago, and my stepmom can’t cook to save her life. We had potato kugel. It was awful, grey, gloppy, and unpalatable. Everyone at the table took some, but as soon as she left the room, we would scrape it back in the pan. I think she ended up with more “leftovers” than she made.

YEARS later, I was at a diner and smelled something wonderful. I asked what it was. The waitress said they were experimenting with making potato kugel. I spent years avoiding that stuff because of my stepmom. I love her dearly, but if you want to experience the suffering of the Jews, try her kugel.

You’ll want to spend 40 years wandering in the desert, believe me.

Addendum: I have another answer somewhere on Quora where I describe a friend of mine tricking me into eating raw jellyfish. THAT was much better than my stepmom’s kugel.

Gizzards

That’s the chicken’s dentures. They eat rocks, store them in this tough muscular section of their digestive tract and use them to grind their food. Some folks think this part of the chicken is edible. I disagree.

It is in a restaurant called Pathankot

It was in TIDEL park chennai , I think it is not there now