People Describe The Worst Meal They've Ever Eaten

The Worst Burger On Earth

"In the Dominican Republic, there is a mountain in Puerto Plata called Isabel de Torres. On that mountain there is a restaurant."

"That restaurant sells the worst goddamn burgers you will ever eat in your life."

"Would just like to say, don't be discouraged from visiting the Dominican Republic. The people, culture, scenery, and food there are all amazing!"

"Take it from me, I lived there for six years. 9/10, would recommend. Just seriously - AVOID THIS BURGER."

"They were so bad I almost puked after the first bite and our entire party left. The patty (if you could even call it that) was burnt to a crisp."

"The patty itself looked and tasted like a mix if rice, eggplant, and beef. It also had way too much 'sauce,' which was just a mix of the cheapest available ketchup and those like liquid cheeses that come in a bottle at fast food places."

"Other than that, the burger had tomato, arugula, and burnt cheddar cheese. I really, REALLY, cannot overstate how bad it was."

"The worst thing is that this wasn't a one off with the restaurant. We were a group of five and we all ordered a burger (there were like three things on the menu), and they all came out the same. We left."

- JoshPoshTheGreat

When Mom Was Out

"There was a week where my mom was out so my dad had to cook for my brother and I. His first day he made chili."

"By chili I mean that he browned some beef, threw it in a pot with water and added one single packet of chili seasoning to the water and served it to us."

"We had frozen pizza the rest of the week."

-DrGingeyy

Moms Cooking

"My ex mother-in-laws meatloaf."

"She literally just pressed ground beef into a square baking pan and threw it in the oven. Zero spices. Zero anything but hot ground beef."

"She also made 'baked spaghetti' which was her take on baked ziti. It was cooked spaghetti noodles with plain tomato sauce in a pan and baked."

"She was so terrified of the 'negative health effects' of salt that she grew to fear ALL spices. Her cabinets and fridge were filled with everything reduced sodium, fat free, sugar free, etc."

"Her cooking made me realize why I had to twist my ex's arm to try REAL meatloaf and baked ziti the way it's supposed to be made. She had no idea what she was doing in the kitchen."

- SugarHooves

That French Flan

"I was in France and stopped by a place in Paris."

"I had been travelling for several months and missed Mexican food. When the owner found out I was Mexican, she insisted I try the flan she just made as a first attempt."

"The food was pretty alright, not like home but it hit the spot. She brought out the flan and stood there expectantly waiting for my response."

"It was absolutely the worst flan I had ever had in my life."

"Like it just tasted BAD. Like eggs that were off? Flan is a custard and the temperature line between custard and sweetened scrambled eggs is a fine one."

"I couldn't hide my reaction and she became visibly upset. I ate a little more to be polite but just couldn't anymore."

"I told her I'm just very picky and suggested a few things as I had worked in a bakery that had made some in the past (aside from family recipes). I gave her my contact info and a few weeks later got an email thanking me."

"A group of Mexican musicians came through and told her while it wasn't traditional, it was very tasty and had a good texture."

"She said any time I was back to please stop by for a meal on the house. Unfortunately, the next time I was back the place had closed down."

- Malignantrumor99

Wiggling Away...

"Jellied salad."

"Lots of my family still thinks aspics are a necessity for family dinners, so there'll usually be a variety of jellied salads. Tomato salad, shredded cabbage salad, usually some kind of weird olive and hard boiled egg combo for some reason."

"All sitting on their plates, perfectly rectangular, wiggling away..."

- LycheeEyeballs

"People in the 50s and 60s put EVERYTHING in gelatin. I’m pretty sure there’s a recipe out there for roast chicken jello."

- XxsquirrelxX

"Because way way back before gelatin came in a packet, it was really time consuming to extract it from bones. Aspic was seen as a kind of status symbol, as well as a creative and colourful thing to make for parties."

"And then when it did come in a packet in the 50s and 60s, there was a huge drive to try and market something which was essentially a biproduct of the meat industry as a food staple."

- Bribase

Spaghetti

"One of my ex girlfriend's grandmothers had the whole family over for dinner one night. She cooked spaghetti."

"My ex's mom pulled me aside and warned me that it would be terrible. Not just bad. Terrible."

"Boy, was she right."

"Her grandmother boiled water, put in the noodles, DID NOT DRAIN THE WATER, and then dumped some salt, pepper, and KETCHUP into the pot and served it. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom so I could dry heave over the toilet."

- Hollywood899

A Redemption Arc

"This one has a redemption arc."

"My then-girlfriend brought some leftover Ethiopian food and kept talking about how awesome it was and had me try some injera (like a giant sourdough pancake) after she reheated everything."

"It was absolutely revolting. Dry and brittle and weirdly grainy and the wrong side of chewy. Seriously the worst thing I had ever had in my life."

"Fast-forward about a month and we go to that restaurant. I wasn't excited, but whatever. I figure there has to be good stuff and I can avoid the injera bread pancake disaster, right?"

"The staff there tells me the injera is your UTENSIL. You're supposed to tear off bits and use it to pick up your food with."

"You're not supposed to eat it by itself, it's purposefully flavorless. They also say never put it in a fridge or microwave it; at which point my girlfriend stared at the table mournfully as she had served it like that."

"The order arrives and I take a breath, pick up some red lentils with the injera expecting that same dry brittle grainy weirdness ... and I discovered my death row meal, folks."

"It's the greatest food on the planet. The fresh injera tastes amazing and only highlights everything you pick up with it! Gored gored (beef pan roasted in berbere that's super spicy and amazing), injera, and red lentils are now the best food I've ever tasted in my life!"

"If you're ever in Memphis, go to Abyssinia on Poplar. Try the red lentils."

- DarthDregan

This Old Mans Recommendation

"My dad was finishing our basement in our old house, and he had an elderly man from our old church helping him out with hanging the drywall, electrical wiring, that kind of thing."

"Well, this old geezer knew my family liked beef heart (side note: beef heart is delicious, but you have to be ready for the ventricles - they can be a bit weird to chew on if you don't cut them out of the piece of meat that you're eating), so he says we are gonna love kidneys."

"My dad always loved liver, so he just assumed it would be something similar."

"NOT. EVEN. F*CKING. CLOSE."

"My dad did everything he could to spice this rancid meat up and make it not taste like pure, unadulterated sadness. Nothing worked - it smelled like piss, the house reeked of it for weeks after."

"My dad refused to even try it, my mom took a bite and spat it out, and then they made my brother and I eat a bite. I can still smell that stench..."

"So anyway, we end up ordering pizza and that old fart sat down and ate an entire pound of that acrid organ. Mind you, this is the same old man that would eat bulbs of garlic like they were f*cking apples in the middle of church, so I don't know why that wasn't a red flag right from the start to my parents."

- Potato-In-A-Jacket

That Last Sentence

"In High School I got pizza from the pizza shack in the lunch area. The pizza was soggy as hell from the grease. Upon taking a bite, it tasted like alcohol."

"The bread had fermented."

- Spiderbubble

"That last sentence was like a punch to the gut. Wtf"

- WhichButterscotch240

"I think I tasted this comment 🤢"

- SolBlackGuy

Turtle Tea

"I lived in China for a while. My employer took we to an extremely fancy restaurant once, one that was apparently listed as one of the 'eight treasures of Chinese cuisine' by the CCP."

"It specialized in accurate recipes from a period that, if I recall correctly, was about 700 years old. They were ... intense."

"They served a tea that was basically just a baby turtle boiled in water and served, turtle and all."

"Beyond the unpleasantness of opening your little cup and finding a whole boiled baby turtle, it tasted like week old gym socks."

- Oh_umms_cocktails

How Is Dressing A Solid?

"Oh, hands down, this is the absolute worst thing I ever tried. My ex-gf's family called it 'dressing' but it wasn't a liquid you pour over a salad or other food."

"It was a cake. A green colored cake."

"I saw them eating it, so figured 'it's cake. Can't go wrong with cake.' "

"Boy was I so very very wrong. It was split pea soup baked into a batter and allowed to harden. Or something."

"My body immediately tried rejecting it, I started retching uncontrollably."

"Worse still, I absolutely hate wasting food. So I tried to take another bite. But oh gods. I couldn't swallow it. Oh it was so very very bad."

"And they were eating it like nothing was wrong!"

"Some foods are an acquired taste, but I don't think I could ever acquire a taste for that stuff."

- Calthropstu

Belgian Beef

"Went to Belgium. Friend there took me to a carnival."

"I made the mistake of getting a burger. I figured you can't really screw up a burger."

"I was wrong."

"In Belgium, they don't generally serve beef burgers. What I bit into was absolutely disgusting. I learned later it was a mishmash of pork, chicken and beef byproduct."

"I learned to appreciate the USDA that day."

- [Reddit]

Why'd They Even Ask If They Were Going To Serve This Anyway?

"I was meeting my new step-mother’s family. They invited me to dinner and asked ahead of time if I had allergies."

"I warned them I had an intolerance to bananas as they make me violently vomit shortly after eating them. Even the smell makes me feel sick."

"Step-mother’s sister made the most horrendous thing I have ever seen:"
"Chicken breast, topped with bananas that had been cut in half length wise, and wrapped with a single slice of Turkey bacon."

"The smell alone made my stomach knots, but I choked it down because I didn’t want to insult them as they were super nice."

"I managed to keep from throwing up until I got home and ended up sick for several days with lots of praying to the Porcelain God. She later apologized to me and said she felt horrible for serving me something so vile because even her own family hated it!"

- PersephoneOnEarth

When God Abandons You

"Polish Jellied Pigs' Feet (Zimne Nogi or Studzienina)."

"I don't really feel any additional thoughts, pains or childhood traumas need to be added. The title stands on its own."

"Polish. Jellied. Pigs. Feet."

"Imagine the texture. Imagine the smell. Imagine the dread because this is a 'traditional' dish that was served up at holidays."

"Suffice it to say, God abandoned me in those times of need at our family Easter dinner."

- AldoRaineClone

Four Continents Worth Of Bad

"Oh, how I've been waiting for this question. Let me set the scene."

"I was unlucky enough to catch the 'rona back in 2020, long before vaccines were a thing. I lived in a house with four others, and it effectively meant I couldn't leave my room for twelve days."

"The sole exceptions were to pee or to go to the hospital if symptoms got bad enough. My housemates were kind enough to leave food outside my door for me to snatch like the gremlin that I am."

"On day 5, I felt beyond garbage and decided to order pizza from a local takeout called Planet Spice. Pepperoni passion with extra cheese, as the truest way to fill any void is by clogging arteries."

"It arrived just over half an hour later, and my housemate leaves it outside my door. I open it to find what appears to be a few sparse slices of Pepper-Mystery-Meat-oni buried under a light dusting of cheddar, swimming in its own infinity pool of oil."

"Imagine the greased up deaf guy from Family Guy, but a pizza."

"I was hungry, sick, and in no position to be picky, so I took a bite."

"Turns out you can deliver pizza really quickly if you just don't bother to cook it. They say the 'rona takes your sense of taste - how I wish that was so in my case."

"I tasted everything, up to and including all that old grease."

"It's been over a year, and I've complained to people in four different continents about that pizza. F*ck you, Planet Spice."

- hijinks2

Falafel Sand

"Serving in the military in the middle of deadass nowhere. There were snowstorms so we hadn't received a new shipment of food, so cooks were making do with what they had."

"The problem is that, being a small company in the middle of nowhere, we had only two cooks who switched each other every week: one knew hoe to cook but never wanted to, the other wanted to cook but never knew how."

"This week we were stuck with the latter, whose meals were terrible on a good day. We had not received a new shipment of food for quite a while. This was not a good day."

"Anyways, us being on skeleton crew, our guard shifts were a pretty tiring 8;8- 8 hour shift followed by 8 hour rest immediately followed by 8 hour shift. A bit tiring."

"So, I got off my shift starving mad, went all the way down to the kitchen just in time for food."

"There were only two dishes: eggs, which hadn't been properly cooked; they were liquid inside. They were also all cracked so houseflies infested them."

"And falafel. This base received shipments of this weird processed falafel; nothing like the actual falafel you can eat in a normal place, even if you followed the instructions to a T."

"Our unit had a thing against deep frying food, so the cook BAKED these not-falafels instead of following instructions that would lead to it being passable."

"Cook also burned them in the oven, so they were as dry and tasty as eating a handful of sand, and as coarse too."

"Tl;dr after an exhausting week of limited food due to supply shortages, we had for dinner liquid housefly eggs with a side of black clumps of sand that masqueraded (in name only) as falafel."

- xland44

So Bad It Had To Be A Money Laundering Operation

"My husband and I honeymooned in Quebec City, a place well known for its exquisite food scene."

"Unfortunately we were beyond broke at the time, and our only criteria for food was 'cheap.' I vividly remember walking down the road past expensive restaurant after expensive restaurant packed with happy diners, desperately trying to find somewhere we could eat without dine and dashing."

"Then I caught sight of the shawarma place."

"Now my husband and I love shawarma more than anyone should love any food, and shawarma is nice and affordable, so our day was made."

"We should perhaps have put some thought into why someone would open a shawarma shop on a touristy road, in a place where people only come to eat French food."

"Or why, unlike every restaurant on the strip, this one was completely deserted."

"The lack of meat cones did give us pause, as did the owner's unfeigned shock at having customers, but it was too late to retreat."

"I still don't know how you make shawarma that bad, but I viciously hope that some unwary CRA employee tries to eat lunch there one day, and audits the life out of that money laundering operation."

- Ok-Chain5315

Ammonia Biscuit

"Ammonia biscuits."

"What's an ammonia biscuit? What it sounds like, unfortunately. My brother, while still a baby, got into the kitchen while my mother was cooking and spilled floor cleaner everywhere."

"She made (USA southern style) biscuits anyway without checking to see if the flour had been contaminated."

"At dinner the two older kids (including me) tried the biscuits and spat them out saying they tasted weird. My parents -knowing full well that my younger brother had been spraying cleaner all over what was cooking - decided that we were just spoiled brats who were entitled and complaining because we didn't appreciate our mother."

"So, they forced us to eat them."

"After yelling, berating, and threatening us. We choked down biscuits but weren't interested in eating anything after that."

"My dad finally took a bite of one, spat it out, and said it tasted funny."

"Because HE said they tasted bad, they finally connected the two events and decided to take the biscuits away. No apologies were ever offered, though I did get yelled at for 'not telling them' before my dad tried one."

"Even though BOTH kids spoke up repeatedly."

- semiloki

Does Milk Really Do A Body Good?

"OK so there is this milk. Its made in Bretagne which is in north of France; I go there every year."

"Every year I hate this milk, yet I always try it because: 'hOw cOuLd i hAtE mIlK???' "

"Every single god damn time I want to vomit. Every single time I want more."

"oh btw it is like a half fermented milk, so like milk/yogurt."

- SuperCatoz

"Not a food, but a beverage. Fermented horse milk."

"Saw a bottle of white liquid at my grocery store with a picture of a horse on it and big Russian lettering. Bought it, tried it, and regretted it."

- Idoarchaeologystuff

The Flavor Of Heartbreak

"The single worst bite of food I ever had:"

"So this is the first year I realized that November 11th is also know as Pocky day in Japan."

"My husband loves Pocky, so on 11-11 I took a long lunch and went to my local Asian market to buy my Hubs a wide variety of Pocky and covered his computer desk with them."

"One of these was an innocent looking packet called 'sweet corn.' "

"That night, after the hugs and kisses and thank-yous, I tried a bite of the corn pocky. My body Has never ever rejected something so quickly."

"It was like my brain was flashing 'Danger! Get it out!' "

"I like corn. I really do. But it was like straight up licking the inside of an expired can of corn."

"And the after taste was like being punched in the teeth with fake butter and bile. It was the flavor of heartbreak."

- KaneOdamion

Alright, you've made it through Reddit's horror stories, it's your turn.

What have you eaten that you seriously wish you could un-eat? Do you actually like any of the things listed here?

Share your thoughts in the comments.