You know you're in the wrong place to eat when...

[srhcb]

When you hear:

MEOW!

THUD

.... emanate from the kitchen.

SB

[Teri Everitt]

A friend and I were wandering on Robson Street in Vancouver looking for someplace to have lunch.  Neither of us knew of a good place to go as I had just moved from Banff and he was visiting from Victoria.  We were standing outside of an Indian restaurant, looking at the menu, when we noticed movement in the window.  A nice-looking family of four were waving to get our attention.  When we looked their way, they made subtle but very clear motions that we should keep on moving.  Sort of a wry grimace with a slight 'no' shake of the head.  I'm sure that restaurant had one of their slowest afternoons that day.

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Gold!

I once got hungry doing some errands and stopped at a small restaurant that was on my way from work/the bank etc. and I was the only person in the place. Looking around at the dirty windows, layer of dust on the pictures on the wall etc. I decided not to take chances and ordered a chicken burger...I mean how hard is it to take a frozen breaded chicken burger and deep-fry it? Anyway, after about a 5 minute wait I hear a "beep" from the kitchen and think "god I hope that isn't my chicken burger." It was.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

When you hear:

MEOW!

THUD

.... emanate from the kitchen.

SB 

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Brings something to mind -- an Asian restaurant, back when I was reviewing for a city magazine. We pulled into the parking lot and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. The inside vibe was just as weird. Friendly, but weird. Every dish we ordered had lots of onions and the same sort of 'meat' -- gray, stringy, and strong-tasting (though not rotten, to be fair.) My husband and I had horrible stomachaches and headaches all night long; I called my editor the next day (she was Asian) and told her. She said, "dog." I'm shuddering.

Anyway, sometime the best way to know you're in the wrong place is to trust the hairs on the back of your neck.

[nikkib]

I was once in a (now thankfully closed) restaurant in Londonwhen jjust after ordering our drinks we noticed a mouse running along the floor and under a door in the back of the room... Not quite sure we had really witnessed this we carried on looking at the menu when another two or three mice scurried along too. I beckoned over the waitress and told her they had mice to which she replied "yeah i know.." as we stood up and made our way to the door, declining the drinks which had by this point arrived only to see the door at the back open behind which was the kitchen where all the mice had been heading!!!! Seriously we couldn't get out of there quickly enough UUURRGGHHHH!

[MissAmy]

Any place that is overly precious sends off all sorts of alarm bells. So do places where I can't smell any food, that are empty during peak times, and places where you notice many unbussed tables around. There's also the "ethnic" restaurants with no one of that ethnicity around, places that smell of old grease, and places that charge more than $9 for a burger. Glossy, laminated menus with giant pictures also tend to be pretty bad.

[Lilija]

We knew we walked into the wrong place, one Friday evening in autumn, when they had to turn on the lights, for us.

An Indian resturaunt, fairly new to the area, we decided to give it a try. 7 pm, on a Friday night, we walked in, and the 3 host/waiter/cooks came jogging across the frigidly cold, incredibly empty, very dark (I mean not one friggin FOH light, pitch black.) to flick some switches in one small section. They lit up a 4 table block for us, and were SO happy to see us, they practically sat with us. We kept asking, are you open? I mean, we're not here during some Indian holiday? You -are- open right? Not one other patron, from the time we sat down, till the time we left. It was kind of creepy. The waiters/cooks/whatevers chatted happily with us for the whole meal. The place warmed up some, too, but what a bizarre experience.

The food was overpriced, and meh. Not horrifying, but definitely not good. They closed down about 6 months after they opened. Shame, too, it was an enormous space, and we're in desperate need of some good ethnic food in this area.

[chow guy]

I knew I was in the wrong place when we arrived and discovered, we were the only table in the whole place... on a Friday at peak lunch time. I was concerned when I saw the "art" on the walls. It looked like it had been bought at a dollar store (very kitchy" Italian" (small i), street scenes and "Dellarobia-esque" still lifes with fruit. Musak stlye Italian opera favorites came blaring through the sound system. My wife took issue, when I told her the food was going to be awful. If they didn't pay attention to the aforementioned details, why would they pay attention to the food?

After about 8 minutes, the oversized menu was brought to the table. It was all over the place with chef salads, Southern Italian main stays, meat loaf with mashed potatoes and hamburgers. Descriptions were heavy on ajectives, and the prices made no sense. Shrimp Diavolo and Pasta Putanesca were both $15.95. The bread was dreadful and the "butter" was in tiny plastic tubs. I opted for a chefs salad. It was tolerable, but the dressing wasn't good. My wife's pasta dish was awful. There were so many things that screamed out "wrong place", but we had four more hours of driving, and were starving. It may seem like nit picking but I firmly believe, "the devil is in the details".

[Kent D]

Let's see, there was a collection of restaurants in Wichita's Old Town area that were clustered around a central kitchen. I forget the names of most of them, but one Saturday afternoon we (I, the wife and daughters) decided to try out "Rita's Cantina" (We had a BO-GO coupon). It was a nice day, maybe 1:30 in the afternoon, and the indicated entrance we walked in went past the dishwasher. We couldn't find a host station, even after looking into a couple of the various restaurant rooms. There were no customers apparent in these rooms, either.

We finally ran into a waitress who told us to just pick a table and she'd be right with us. Evidently, you could order off any of the various menus regardless of where you were sitting. We selected a table in the room towards the front of the building, where the only other person was a possibly homeless person reading the paper by the window. I never detected any odor of food while we were in there, saw no evidence food was even served there, so I can't really speak to the quality of the cuisine. After about 10 minutes with no further sign of waitress, menu, or service, and feeling more uncomfortable by the minute, we got up and walked out the way we came in, nodding to the dishwasher on the way out.

Evidently, the restaurant complex was owned/managed by a married couple in the throes of a pending divorce action, and it closed a week or two later.

Oh, and the wife and I were in our favorite Chinese buffet restaurant in January while the health department inspector spent a good hour in there pointing out what was wrong to the manager, and I noted later on the state health department inspection site that it had received several "critical" infractions, but I thought the food was just fine, and nobody got hurt.

[Oyster Guy]

I went into a Chinese food place and when I looked at the menu, the sauce with sweet and sour chicken balls was described as "red sauce."

When a place has to describe a sauce by color rather than flavor, run like hell!!!!!!

Just a helpful hint.

Keep on shucking

Oyster Guy

[rconnelly]

Or the Mexican place in a town with the best Mexican, that calls itself "different" and as you're eating a really bad meal, you watch the server run - really run - through the restaurant, while the manger spends his time straightening his tie. Add live music so loud and unending that your teeth rattle.

The place has since closed.....

[Kouign Aman]

The favorite after-work hangout, with the great margaritas and the C health rating in the window.

[dianem]

Went out for lunch with a large group of friends from work and decided to try the Indian buffet place that had opened down the street. As we picked up our plates we saw a mouse. A very, very sick mouse. It staggered the length of the table, fell off the end, and vanished.

Were they poisoning the mice? Did the mouse have a terrible, possibly contagious, illness? Or was this behaviour simply the result of nibbling on the buffet? We did not know. We did not care. We left.

d.

[evongvisith]

When it's a "barbecue" place that has no smell of smoke or cooking meat, nor a chimney with any smoke coming out of it, where you hear a microwave go "ding" the second you walk in (actually went to this place in Oklahoma years ago.)

[Basildog]

When the queue of people waiting for a restaurant to open at just before 7pm are the staff.

[The Blissful Glutton]

There are three men in yellow jumpsuits with tanks and sprayers leaving the kitchen when your meal is just arriving. I got it to-go and trashed it immediately.

[tim]

The wedding rehearsal dinner was in "the finest Italian restaurant in central Illinois." The groom said "the food is so good that people drive down from Chicago."

The salad was iceberg lettuce with green peppers and that red bottled dressing. The wine was pink zinfandel.

I decided to go to the bar and buy a nice bottle of chianti. "Red wine? Do we have any red wine?" There was not a basket bottle in the house. They did have some chablis or "Chablee Blank" as they called it.

The Italian dinner included fried chicken, fried ravioli and Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti. Spumoni ice cream, of course. And, SANKA!

The marriage was even more disastrous than the meal. She deserved better and is now living her dream.

Tim

[Carrot Top]

The salad was iceberg lettuce with green peppers and that red bottled dressing.  The wine was pink zinfandel.

I decided to go to the bar and buy a nice bottle of chianti.  "Red wine?  Do we have any red wine?"  There was not a basket bottle in the house.  They did have some chablis or "Chablee Blank" as they called it.

The Italian dinner included fried chicken, fried ravioli and Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti.  Spumoni ice cream, of course.  And, SANKA!

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Wow. That's really wierd. I'm having deja-vu.

Do you know that you just succinctly described like . . .the best meal my mother ever made?

Delightful. I'm glad to know that people will drive hundreds of miles for this.

[insomniac]

when you ask if they have wine and you are informed they have white ..............and black

[onedaylingers]

........ I learned something from this....don't even walk into a restaurant if it doesn't smell good on the outside.

Jen

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when people ask what I look for in a restaurant, I always say that I look for a place that smells good!

Marlena

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*nods head vigorously* restaurants that reek of stale oil are the worst!

[CarolineLD]

I've never brought myself to eat in the local buffet restaurant whose window promises "Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and others".

It's the vague "others" that really does it...

Caroline

[Pan]

when you ask if they have wine and you are informed they have white ..............and black

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Unless you're in Tuscany and speaking Toscana. "Vino nero" is a local term for red wine, I do believe.

[insomniac]

hehehe not quite...it was a Denny's in Torrance at 0230 am