Disastrous Restaurant Experiences
May 06, 2003

"im back from italy....worst dining experience??99.999% of restaurants in America"
Luigi - Italian transplant residing in Sacramento

"The waitress brought out the bottle and went through the tasting
part ok, but when she poured it she filled the glasses almost up to the
brim. Needless to say we were shocked. We debated on calling her over and
having her put all the wine in a decanter so we could put a smaller amount
in our glasses, but didn't. Just as the level of the wine in our glasses
was getting to what I would consider acceptable for drinking, the waitress
came back and (before we could react) filled the glasses up to their brims
again finishing off the bottle. She then said "Would you like another?", as
if she had just served us a beer."

CK

"I was sharing an early dinner with a girlfriend - we both ordered "big
salads." Shortly after our meals were served, as we were munching away, I
noticed something big, black and MOVING on her fork. I grabbed her wrist
just in time to stop her from inserting a disgustingly large "live"
cockroach into her mouth! She screamed and jumped up, spilling her glass of
white zinfandel (I told you it was the 80's) and scared the crap out of all
of the patrons sitting near us. As our waiter neared the table, but before
he had the opportunity to hear and see what all the fuss was about, another
large black cockroach crawled out from her lovely, glass salad bowl!"

JM - Fair Oaks

"They had six different escalopos entrees! We hit the jackpot! Different ecalopos dinners were prepared with unusal ingredients such as eggs, or tomatoes and cheese, potatoes, etc. Just the way they did it in Chile, we thought!
We decided to stay with our original craving and proceeded to order escalopos prepared the simple "American way"; sauteed in butter and wine with lemon squeezed on top. Finally after numerous glasses of wine our scallops were done and out came the chef carrying two of the plates and the waitress carrying the other two plates. Both of them with proud grins across their faces. We were dying of starvation. Our mouths watering for those scallops we had been fantasizing about for what seemed like years. I had never wanted a dish so bad. As they approached we could see the size of these monsters. But they were flat and about 8 inches long and they appeared to be brown in color. I commented that the scallops down here must be brown but didn't know why they were so flat and long. Jim, the vegetarian guide sitting next to me, said that was because they cut them lengthwise in Chile... Have you ever seen four drunks trying to describe a scallop with their hands and body language? They still didn't understand, which made us laugh even more. We felt terrible about the whole thing and decided it was better to leave rather than try to order something else than breaded tough flank steak sauteed in wine and butter with lemon on top of it.....We told the owner of the local white water company what had happened and he laughed that scallop in Spanish is venera."

DE - Bon Vivant/Ugly American

"Our worst one was at a very nice English style restaurant in Osaka. Susan and I went to the restaurant and ordered a nice dinner. As is often the case in Japan, they server each dinner when it is ready, even at the nicest restaurants costing $100 or more per person they don't make any attempt to bring the meals out together. Susan received her dinner and started eating and I was still waiting. Several times we tried to flag down a waitress but were completely ignored. It seemed like we did not exist. About the time she was finished I still had not received my dinner and we finally asked where it was. A few minutes later a manager brought the bill to our table and I explained that I still had not received my dinner. He said very curtly, "The bill is correct". I looked at it and for sure, it just had Susan's dinner on it. Obviously they were not going to serve me. We had no choice but to pay the bill and I left without being served. It seemed they would serve Susan but they decided I guess that they would not serve me."

GH - Rocklin


"Anytime I ate at Koya's and you weren't there."

BB - Renton, Washington

Thank you BB!