Hey Pandas, Describe Your Worst High-End Restaurant Experiences (Closed)

Sometimes you hear a lot about a restaurant, but when you actually visit, it doesn't stand up to its hype. What were your worst experiences on the matter?

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Extremely expensive Thai restaurant. My in laws decided to treat us to a night out. It's a lovely place and packed. We order and I chose the green papaya salad. Well everyone else's meals arrive and they wait for mine. After 20 minutes we gain the server's attention and ask where my meal is. He disappears and returns saying it'll be a few more minutes. I tell everyone to eat while it's hot. Well another 30 minutes go by and still my food has not appeared and everyone else is finishing up. We get the server again and he presents the check with the green papaya salad on it. We politely remind him that the salad was never delivered. He looks at the table to argue but realizes my place setting is still empty. He goes out to the kitchen and returns to inform us they are out of green papaya and have been the entire night. Still don't know what that was about. They grudgingly remove it from the bill and send us on our way.

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Final score:

10points

Lila Allen

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Philly Bob Squires 10 months ago (edited)

Red Lobster (not high end, I know) did that to my Daughter when we took her out for her birthday dinner. She never got her meal and even the manager was snippy when I told him about it. SOBs. Fortunately, they are a chain so I called corporate. It must have been a thing because I was told (asked) to go back and talk to the NEW manager and they comped us 4 meals. New guy was great. The old guy was an a*****e!

1point

Just getting portions so insultingly small that you need fast food after you leave the restaurant.

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Final score:

6points

Panda Boi

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Philly Bob Squires 10 months ago

"Sir, how did you find your steak?" Me: "I moved over a couple of peas and there the little bastard was!"

1point

My wife and I were t a decent restaurant. Very typical meal; very typical server. Nothing unusual happened. Near the end of our meal a different server stopped by to take our desert order. She said "I'm sorry I'm a different person, but your server was just fired."

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Final score:

6points

Richard Graham

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Barong 10 months ago

Unusual yes, but was it the worst experience?

0points

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This was about 20 ya, so not recent. While dining with my then fiancee at the city's top restaurant (probably!). The place was classy. Waiters would flick the napkin onto your lap, push in your chair, carve the meat for you, never argue about changes to the dish, etc. Yet! And YET! the last time I went, they had a f*****g angle grinder and were adjusting a railing on a raised dais. Huge noise. While customers were there. I called the manager, told them to stop, and he actually argued with me that the builders had to work during work hours. I said this is totally not on for a restaurant, close the place for the day if you want to do this. I never went back.

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Final score:

5points

censorshipsucks

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For my life and budget one of Gordon Ramsay's ventures: "Ramsay Kitchen" or something like that is at the top. Spent about $100 per person and the food was just mediocre. The signature "beef wellington" dish was hyped-up specifically and I just thought it was a flop. It's still a steak I had to cut up accordingly but that action just dislodged the pastry wrapper on it. There is a mushroom mixture in between too which actually aided the wrapper in falling off. What I was left with is a small filet steak and a pile of pastry wrapping on the side for $70 (entree only). Give me some greasy thai food or indian gravies for a tiny fraction of that place any day. In fact, I'll just make the gravies myself and spend the $15 on beer while I cook. 🤣

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Final score:

5points

Austzn

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we stopped by a newly-opened Russian-themed restaurant. We were the only ones there. The server barley spoke any English - we had to pantomime and point at the menu. She got our drinks wrong. Then we sat and sat, nothing happened. Gradually the restaurant began to fill with loud, boisterous Russians. Here the entire restaurant had been fully booked for a family reunion, and there were no signs or any indication that the place was closed for a private event. We sat for over an hour in the middle of someone else's family-reunion party, a party were no one spoke English. We couldn't leave because we had placed an order. (Finally our food came - it was c**p.) We paid and left fast.

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Final score:

4points

Richard Graham

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Janissary35680 Premium 10 months ago

If you'd waited until they started chugging vodka shots you might have changed your minds...

1point

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My worst experience was the 7 years I worked in one when I was in my 20s. I'm now 54 and still have the occasional nightmare. It was the most stressful job I've ever had.

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Final score:

3points

FloralDangerNoodle

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The entrance looks like they are compensating for the meal sizes

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Final score:

2points

Iceicemabey

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Austin L 10 months ago

The meal experience has peaked already just by walking in, haha.

0points

Went to my local Texas Roadhouse with my family. It's always fun to go there, the baked potatoes there are fire🔥🔥🔥.

Anyways, the most recent time we went there, at the beginning of the visit things went pretty normal. This guy wrote down our drinks and went to get them. We waited. When the man returns with our napkins and straws for the drinks, he straight up THREW THEM AT THE TABLE LIKE HE LITERALLY SHURIKEN/NINJA STAR'ED THEM ACROSS THE TABLE. Oh yea, and he threw the napkins as well.

My dad, who takes no prisoners, if you know what I mean, caught notice of this, and got so mad he started yelling at him to treat his customers with respect, along with the occasional swear word. My dad's a friend with the manager, so she got called, he got fired, and the manager gave us the drinks for free.

Moral of the story: BAKED POTATOES AT YARD HOUSE ARE FIRE🔥🔥🔥.

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Final score:

2points

volcanic_larva3

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volcanic_larva3 (Submission author) 10 months ago

I MEANT BAKED POTATOES AT TEXAS ROAD HOUSE ARE FIRE

1point

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#10

I went to visit a five star restaurant recently. I had heard a lot about one of their dishes but due to certain reasons i could not eat the dish as is and when i asked for some alterations they outright refused me.I get that you can't change your dishes as per everyone's demands but if you are going to charge so much you can atleast accomodate some valid requests

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Final score:

0points

Shinobu

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Barong 10 months ago

Without knowing the dish and circumstances, it’s hard to know if this is justified. Some meals can’t be altered on a whim. Sometimes, it’s because they don’t want to set a precedent, and sometimes it’s busy and there is no time to prepare a one off meal.

3points

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#11

The entrance with big marble pillars compensating for the meal sizes.

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Final score:

0points

Iceicemabey

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#12

I went to a high end (didn't realise how expensive when booking) Italian place for a family member's birthday. We got there and my step sister is already there and annoyed because apparently there is a $8 per person/slice cake fee for bringing your own cake in. Never experienced this before, and with not warning/mention of it on their website! Anyway, we decide to just deal with it. The food was amazing, but as I said, cost a bit above what we would normally go for, and this extra cake fee hanging over our heads. When they took our orders, they counted so they could add our cake fee to the bill, and we made sure to mention two of us couldn't eat the cake because it wasn't gluten free. They assure us we wouldn't be charged for two orders of cake. Went to pay the bill and find the fee is still on there, which we got sorted out easily enough, but did take more time, so was annoying. Now we check when booking for events that there is no fee for bringing a cake- why charge for literally just storing the cake in a fridge and then cutting it at the appointed time? No cheaper restaurant seems to feel entitled to such a cost!

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Final score:

0points

Huddo's sister

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Pandapoo 10 months ago

This isn’t unusual, although $8 is a bit steep. You took away from what was on their own dessert menu and dirtied their plates and silverware. Some places that allow you to bring your own bottle of wine also charge a cork/pour fee. Same type of thing.

1point