What is your worst dining experience? Here's mine...

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ps99472

ps99472

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We were in the area late, no kid, and wanted some decent food I can't get in Irvine.  Saw this:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/monja-taike-rowland-heights-2

and wanted some Taiwanese street food, but unfortunately they close at 9:30 M-W.  So what to do, hungry, getting late, tired, not the best combo frame of mind when making dining decisions when the restaurant you had your sight on has already closed.  The HK cafe across the way looks dead, the Little Sheep clone looks interesting but we have a long drive home and my tummy don't do well with that weird herbal broth.  So who do we pick?  The worst Japanese restaurant ran by mainland Chinese folks...  check out their yelps, some reviews are hilarious
http://www.yelp.com/biz/aji-sushi-industry

Their menu on the outside wall, looks promising, they have skewers and sushi.  So we sat down and looked over the menu.. standard Japanese fare.  Ordering was fun as the waitress has limited English skills.  I tried to order a Heineken twice and both times got a sheepish grin and smile.. Who doesn't understand Heineken?  It's on the menu!  So we got some skewers and a seafood udon.  Skewers arrived fast, the sauce/glaze wasn't bad but the food wasn't hot enough.. and the beef tasted weird, like not fresh weird... No smokiness at all, just a splash of sauce and room temperature food.  Next came the fried chicken wings.. had a 5 spice taste to it.. at least it was hot.  The worst dish of all was the seafood udon.  Tiny bowl, hot soup on bottom, udon, and piled way to high on top with veggies and unfrozen seafood that was not hot enough because it is actually not in the soup.  Never had a bowl of noodles where the soup didn't touch the ingredients because it was stacked so high.  A bigger bowl would've helped.  We made the mistake of not reading the yelp reviews before we walked in.  And we made the second mistake of reading the yelp reviews after being seated.  My wife whispered across to me, "Only order the cooked food" :)

$30 down the drain, but we got a good laugh out of it..  It will definitely be a memorable night due to horrible food. 

So what's your worst restaurant?  And is it still open?
 
o.O;;

JJ's bakery & cafe is in same plaza, and there's Jazz Cat around the back.

If you want Japanese go to Ojiya on Gale, or Foo Foo Tei for torikara ramen.
 
Yes, it was definitely one of the worst dining choices ever..  We even passed on the Kogi Truck that was parked outside.. what were we thinking?
 
Worst dining experiences:

#1 - Orange County Mining Co. Went with Mr. SoCal for one of our wedding anniversaries. Every time I've gone there, I've noticed they use chipped dishes. I took two bites. I chomped down on a shard of ceramic. Another shard slid down my throat with the food. It cut my gums. My mouth was bleeding and my throat was sore from swallowing some! There was broken ceramic inside my Shrimp Scampi. I thought I may have broken my tooth because of the blood and pain. We called the waitress over and told her about the problem. She was sorry, took the plate away (it was almost entirely untouched), and asked what she could do. I requested they remove my meal from the check. She said NO!... but offered us a free dessert! Yeah, right! I did not want to eat anything else from them, so I turned it down. I was very unhappy that they wouldn't take it off the bill. Our anniversary dinner was ruined but it's not like we asked them to take his off, just mine. If I wasn't in a lot of pain in my mouth and throat, I would have spoken to the manager but we just decided to get out of there and go home.

Next time we went there was for a family member's wedding reception, so it wasn't really like we "decided" to eat there, just didn't have much choice. They served our food -- and you guessed it! -- our plates were chipped, with pieces of ceramic missing. This place needs to get it together! It's a big NO-NO to serve compromised dishware anywhere - restaurant or home.

I'd rather go anywhere else but this place.

#2: Pasta Bravo in Anaheim Hills. This was a long time ago. I was a perfectly normal weight with a cute figure, mind you. Not petite, but not fat either. The girl taking my order was a very petite, skinny b****. I ordered an Alfredo pasta. She looked at me and said, "Are you sure?" I thought she didn't hear me so I repeated my order. She said, "Are you sure? Alfredo has a lot of calories" as she looked me up and down.  :o Excuuuuse me!?  :o  >:D She made it quite clear what she was saying. I was honestly shocked. It's not like I was some kind of behemoth, in fact, people always said I was cute. Even if the customer IS a lardo - who are they to give diet advice. They are just there to take the order. Geez! I've never forgotten this. And I've never ordered another alfredo.  :(
 
Three come to mind:

1)  Sumo Sushi Buffet on Culver.  Wife likes sushi and the place looked busy.  Went in when the place opened up for dinner (5:45 or so) and saw the price was about $26 a person.  The place looked nice but the food was horrible.  The sushi rice was hard and chewy.  All of the hot foods tasted like they had been left over from lunch.  Just a horrible food experience overall.  Not surprised to see the place close a few months later (now a Buffalo Wild Wing)

2)  House of Shabu Shabu on Jeffrey/Walnut.  Wife and I were looking for a new place to eat and the place looked interesting.  Again, seemed busy and walked in.  A bit of sticker shock with each meal being about $25 a person.  We figured we're already here and maybe it's high quality.  We get a dish of veggies and a small plate of meat.  The soup looked and tasted extremely bland (basically water) and we had to ask the server to get us some dashi sauce to add flavor to the "broth".  $60 later, both my wife and I were still hungry. 

3)  Latest trip to Roy's at Newport Beach.  This is a sad mention because we loved Roy's previously.  Wife took me there for my birthday along with the munchkin.  Place was pretty empty on a Monday night and we got there around 7 p.m.  I ordered the prix-fix meal (as usual) and she got the Roy's Trio.  Food took a while to get to us.  Appetizers were okay but the entrees were extremely oversauced and salty.  My wife asked the server to remake one of the entrees because it was so salty.  They remade the dish and it was better.  Then we waited...and waited...and waited for our chocolate souffle.  The server then told us that she was sorry it took so long because she waited to put in the order for our souffle when we asked to remake the entree.  In all, the dinner took 2 hours and thankfully my daughter was not too antsy. 
 
I don't know if I constitute this as my worst- but here is one of my most recent bad experiences-
My kids wanted sushi with the revolving gimmick thing.
We went to Gaten? Sushi near UCI.  It was HORRIBLE.  Really gross sushi.  Even my kids thought it was bad.
 
Kula is a little better than Gatten. If you want to dine at Gatten sushi go to the one in Cerritos across from Cerritos mall or Gardena.  Kaizen Kaiten in Santa Ana is also good.
 
My worst was at an Indian eatery. It's open, and our friends still visit after knowing about our experience. We never ate in any other Indian eatery after that though. This is attached to India sweets and spices at Duarte. We went to get groceries, and ordered Indian bread. Finished half, and my older one who was a toddler wanted to use the restroom. There was only one restroom in the store, unisex and it had NO toilet paper. The cook used the same restroom as well :(

We left the food, the manager said the roll must have finished just then, but the state of affairs there said a different story. Came home, I got sick based on what I had seen, kid got sick, and had high fever for four days, had to be tested for a few things. Yuck-est experience of my life!
 
Relayed from my better half, Soylent Red.

I discovered three words that shouldn't be spoken together: Fast Chinese Food. The place was close to our home in RSM, always smelled great passing by. Went ahead and bought a couple of this, a few things of that, and eventually had what seemed like nice meal. Within 2 hours, Soylent Red was reaching for a wakizashi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakizashi because seppuku was preferred to one more moment of living.  To this day if I dare speak those three words together in that order, Soylent Red will blanch.

That restaurant stayed in business for 10 more years. We had to drive the longer way home just to avoid the smell from the kitchen as we passed by. It's since closed.
 
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