Every once in a while, a nice dinner at a restaurant turns into a terrible experience. Between crappy service, pests and food poisoning, there are so many ways a restaurant can mess up your meal (and your body). And when they do, you probably want never to go back.
On AskReddit, users shared the one restaurant that they refuse to eat at — and trust us, they have good reasons!
1. Chili’s.
“Chili’s. I went a few years ago with my mom and made the horrible decision to get a side of chili lime rice. I ate maybe three bites because it didn’t taste good. Those three bites didn’t seem to get along well with my body AT ALL. Unfortunately, Chili’s was the first stop before hitting the store to do our weekly grocery shopping. At the store, I had to make a run for the bathroom twice. After we finally checked out, my mom made a suggestion that maybe I should make another stop there before we drove home since it would take at least 20 minutes. I declined even though my stomach was turning, thinking I could make it home (and would rather use that toilet than a public one). BIG MISTAKE.
About five minutes into the drive home, I realized that I needed to get to a toilet or I would ruin my mom’s car forever. After telling her this, she tells me there’s nowhere to stop yet since we were in a residential area. I ask if we can stop at a family friend’s house which is close by, and she agrees. She tells me to give them a call so they can unlock the door and save me a few seconds. I explain to her that if I move to grab my phone from my pocket, her car interior would be ruined. The five minute drive there feels like forever and I’m clenching my ass for dear life. We finally get there and I bolt up the porch stairs to knock on their door. No answer. At this point, I’m desperate. I knock again and finally hear someone coming. Right as the door opens, my ass muscles give out. The friends stare as me as I spew liquid shit all over their porch. I’m just standing there still making a mess everywhere and the husband grabs a hose to start spraying me and his porch down.
A few minutes later, my mom emerges from the car, crying laughing, with a roll of paper towels in hand like that’s going to help now. Eventually, I’m able to make it to the friends bathroom (which I somehow managed to clog after shitting on their porch) and wash up. They ended up giving me some clothes to change into and I was able to get home and shower the shit off. Unfortunately, you can’t shower off embarrassment and shame. So, I will never step foot in a Chili’s again because I don’t fancy shitting on a family friend’s porch again.”
2. Buffalo Wild Wings.
“I actually cant go to any Buffalo Wild Wings for a similar reason. I ate a burger there and decided to sleep over at my newly boyfriend’s home ( and his 2 male roommates.) I felt a little funny but ignored it and went to bed a few hours after eating.
Within 2 hours, I had to get up and use their restroom since it was basically coming out of both ends. Worst part was, both the boyfriend and I were going back and forward using the restroom since we both got sick. I was embarrassed the next day since the roommate didn’t get much sleep (restroom was next to his room) due to hearing us all night.”
3. Self-service buffets.
“Any self serve buffet. Kids are nasty and not all parents watch their kids. Saw a kid lick a serving spoon and put it back. Glad I caught it but imagine how often it isn’t caught.
4. Bubba Gump Shrimp.
“Seven or eight years ago, I was at a big medical trade show in Anaheim, CA and after a day of hanging out in the vendor booth, I decided to have dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp. About 4 or 5 hours after eating there, I came down with the nastiest case of food poisoning I have ever experienced. Alone in a hotel room after hours of throwing up, I called an ambulance, which I couldn’t afford but was desperate for help. The doctor at the hospital thought shellfish fit the profile. For some reason can still eat shrimp, but never again at Bubba Gump.”
5. Golden Corral.
“Golden Corral. We’ve got a family joke where if someone recommends a restaurant we wait until later in the conversation and ask if they like Golden Corral. If they say yes we never try the place they recommended.”
“I’ve eaten at Golden Corral on two occasions. Years apart. Different states. Both times I saw a cockroach.”
6. Denny’s.
“Was on the road from the airport to our lodgings in Jacksonville area. Wife wanted to eat, so we saw a Denny’s and stopped. I went into the bathroom to freshen up. While doing my business, I noticed the 2 stalls were occupied. No big deal, I finish up just as the one guy leaves. In the mirror I see him. With a cook’s apron on. Didn’t stop to wash his hands. I got out and immediately got my wife to leave with me.”
7. Any sushi place.
“I’ll preface this by saying I absolutely love sushi. Or loved, for a time. Over a year ago now, I went out for sushi with my SO and some friends one Friday night at a local place we just discovered and thought wow, this place ain’t bad! Might be a regular place to go to now.
In the 12 hours that followed were the most harrowing my bowels had ever experienced. I was being punched out of my butt, then proceeded to puke for about 20 minutes straight. Between this diarrhea-fueled anger my body was going through and the exorcist vomiting that followed, I had the maddest chills and could not stop shaking. Once the demon was expelled from me, my SO went through the exact same thing. She knew what I had just gone through was exactly what she was going to go through, and her clock was ticking. So our Friday night was us both agonizingly punishing our toilet until daylight, and the rest of that weekend was spent eating nothing but crackers and toast and drinking water in our housecoats.
The friends we were with went through the exact same thing that weekend, so it wasn’t a 1-off or anything like that. Last I checked, the place is now closed, no doubt from other patrons going through what we all did.
So yeah, that place. I still, to this day, cannot eat sushi. It sucks.”
8. The shady place with no one in it.
“There is a local Mediterranean all-you-can-eat place that I have never eaten at, and refuse to try, but not for the reason you probably think. It was in a weirdly dingy, broken-down building that never has anybody parked out front and has almost never had anybody in it. This place is surrounded on all sides by significantly nicer restaurants and businesses, which just makes it stand out even more.
Here’s the real kicker for why I don’t go in: this place is near where I work so I have literally seen it every day. In the seven years I’ve known of its existence, almost every restaurant around it has folded and gone out of business at least once before coming back as something else. Yet this place has somehow survived despite having no obvious signs of doing business; I believe it’s a money laundering front. My suspicions have doubled since last year when the building they were in got a suddenly an upgrade and renovated the building to be much nicer than every building around it; again, this is at a place where I think I have maybe seen a dozen people parked outside of, ever.”
“Yeah… around here, it’s the Chinese restaurant.
Completely surrounded by vacant buildings, empty parking lot, but still there.
Someone new to the town ate there once.
Said the food wasn’t that good, and that they had the feeling that the staff wanted them out of the restaurant as soon as possible, and not in the “I don’t wanna do any work” sorta way.”
9. Applebee’s.
“Applebee’s. My grandparents used to force our whole family to go there at every family get together. It’s just over priced tv dinners. Half the menu isn’t even edible, a quesadilla burger makes no sense, you can’t even hold it!”
10. Arby’s.
“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 fervorous 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 open uncap the bun.
I saw the largest Palmetto Bug 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-fuckery 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 fucking cookies in milk!!!)”
11. Carl’s Jr.
“Mom and I were doing errands all day, passport, vaccines, shopping (planning a trip). My mom never liked fast food, we would always have home made food, but we were out and about and I convinced her to get a burger and fries.
Burger was good, but then when it came to the fries. Picked up a golden stick and half a dozen baby roaches scurried away into the box of fries.
Its been close to 25 years and I have not set foot inside another Carl’s Jr since.”
12. Tim Hortons.
“Tim Hortons. Every single time I went it was a letdown. The food quality has been declining for years and their coffee tastes like it’s been pumped right out of the sewers.
Also, they treat their employees like absolute shit and their franchise owners have been known to throw childish tantrums over the slightest wage increases.”
13. Red Lobster.
“Red Lobster. Used to love it as a kid and I was able to convince my husband to go for shrimp fest. We order all sorts of shrimp dishes and when the food came out, we both laughed out loud. It was the worst looking shrimp I had ever seen. The popcorn shrimp was balls of breading with a shrimp the size of my pinky nail on a plate. That’s it. 10 tiny fried balls on a plate. The shrimp scampi was melted butter with equally tiny shrimp floating in it. Nothing had any flavor at all. The waiter asked us if we wanted seconds of anything. We didn’t even eat what we had. Never again.”
14. Ruby Tuesday.
“Ruby Tuesday. We used to go to one near our home pretty regularly, but they started getting our orders more wrong than right. And when they returned with the correct order it was usually inedible from too much salt or it was a charcoal brick. The last time we went and those shenanigans happened they gave us a free dessert as an apology. But that free desert was “fresh” from the back of the freezer with a side of freezer burn.”
15. Panera.
“Duuuude, fuck that place. The food is sub par, it’s all obviously frozen. It’s comically overpriced for what you get, and it’s absolutely not healthy. You can get a better tasting, healthier, and cheaper meal at McDonalds. Then they have the gall to ask me to clean my own dishes, after paying real restaurant prices? Fuck that. You want to pretend to be a real restaurant and not fast food, then you clean the tables.”