What is the worst dish you ever had?

[Pontormo]

Gruel.

--Oliver

[jsolomon]

Flambe`d sweet corn and brussels sprouts salad.

Flambe`d brussels sprouts are gigantic mistake. Especially when using cheap tequila.

What's even more unfortunate is that I had to grow back eyebrows after that episode, too. Much cooking-fu was lost in that.

[Jenny McClure]

I was served spaghetti with baked beans (the UK kind, Heinz with tomato sauce) at my best friends house. That was a struggle.

Another was in a restaurant. It was the only place open, it was raining, we were starving, so in we went. I ordered the only thing that sounded kind of appealing, which was Chicken with a mustard sauce. Well, even to look at it you knew it was bad (I don't know how the waitress even served it. Basically it was an overcooked, rubbery chicken breast with that yellow mustard that they put on tables at burger joints. Not only that, it had been sitting for so long that the top of the mustard had formed this nasty brown skin on top. Needless to say , we went hungry that night.

[M.X.Hassett]

Took a big bite out of a bagle one time. I felt something fuzzy on my tongue and looked at the bottom of the bagel and found a very happy colony(realy a large country) of mold. Henceforth it has been known as "the blue cheese bagel incident".

[prasantrin]

Spaghetti seems to be a recurring theme here, so allow me to add another spaghetti story...

About 20 years ago, my mother and I dropped by the house of a family friend to meet a local politician who would be dropping by to chat. We (including the local politician) were offered some spaghetti, and we all accepted, except my mother, who I think must have known something...

It was spaghetti with corned beef sauce--canned corned beef mixed with tomato sauce. Actually, I think it might have been some kind of ketchup-based tomato sauce. After that, I stopped eating spaghetti and the houses of Filipinos. Except my own, of course.

More recently I had some wedding cake that made my taste buds revolt. It was so bad that my mother, who will finish anything sweet, took one bite and refused to eat any more. I don't know how one can go wrong with a simple yellow cake, but the woman who made it either used cheap-assed artificial flavourings, stale or spoiled ingredients, or all of the above. Even boxed cake mix slathered with Duncan Hines Frosting would have been more desirable. But the bride took one bite, made a facial expression as though she were in ecstasy, and gave a very emphatic thumbs up to the cake maker. There were a lot of leftovers, I heard...

[jamiemaw]

My parents travelled a fair bit when we were children. A rotation of housekeepers moved through the house with stunning alacrity: caretaking the five of us was not for the faint of heart; on a good day it looked like out-takes from The Little Rascals.

Mrs. Kerr, a stern Scotswoman of rigid discipline was the least evil but notoriously thrifty (Junket for dessert, then tapioca, then jello with tinned mandarin orange segments; repeat cycle).

But the worst by far was a Teutonic Brunhilda who dressed in nurses' whites. We called her Frau Diesel, but only to her considerable backside. It was the first time I'd seen leg hair under nylons. We were pretty sure she'd been a tractor mechanic before joining the ranks of child-minding professionals.

One morning we awoke to a witheringly putrid, gag-inducing smell that spread through the house like flatulence after a Rotary convention. A Rotary convention, let it be said, featuring a smorgasbord of fermented seal meat confitted in cod liver oil.

Mystified, we appeared at the breakfast table, which was at the very ground zero of the horrendous odour. Our eyes watered as Frau Diesel placed bowls of Norwegian Fish Balls on the table, neatly ladled over toast.

'Eat!' Diesel declared. I looked at my brothers. Peter managed to choke one down. But my sister Elizabeth didn't make it quite that far. In an impressive fit of projectile vomiting that would have made Linda Blair proud, the ball of fetid cod hurled across the breakfast table and rolled toward the dog.

He wisely ran away.

Edited November 5, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)