Hi Guys!

I know that everyone when they go to a restaurant and/or grocery market you expect the place to be clean and up to Heath Department Standards, right?

Well, have any of you seen and/or heard of truly attrocious conditions at a place of business that serves or sells food?

I have two:

Seen:  I saw this myself when I was 6 years old. My mother took me to a grocery market after a pool party to buy ice cream but when we got over to the freezer there was a HUGE cockroach stick backside out of a gallon of lime sherbert. (and it was still kicking!)Needless to say we've never been back there! LOL!

Heard: About 2 months ago, I was visiting my mom in the hospital and there was a group of women near me chatting and a lady said she had been to a restaraunt that served fried chicken and the place got shut down because they were sifting roaches out of the flour for the batter! I almost killed over when I heard it! LOL

Well, if you have a foodie horror story, please share.

;D

I once saw a mouse scattering around the floor at a grocery store when I was 5 or 6 years old....I never wanted to go back into that store again!  8-P

Over the years I've seen roaches at both grocery stores (usually in the produce section!) and restaurants, too. And I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've come across hair in my food at a restaurant......a sure fire appetite killer!  8-P

I once had some sort of creepy crawly deep fried with my kalamari.  8-P

I heard of a local Indian restaurant where the chef had TB and was coughing up and spitting around the kitchens.  Several staff also caught TB - I didn't eat there for another 20 years after hearing about this!

Oh my Gosh! That's awful!

I just thought of something? When you're in a place that makes meals and stuff, isn't the staff supposed to wear like plastic gloves or something?

My father and I were at a burger place yesterday and I noticed that the man making the burgers wasn't wearing gloves. They're supposed to wear gloves, right?

Oh my Gosh! That's awful!

I just thought of something? When you're in a place that makes meals and stuff, isn't the staff supposed to wear like plastic gloves or something?

My father and I were at a burger place yesterday and I noticed that the man making the burgers wasn't wearing gloves. They're supposed to wear gloves, right?


I don't think it's required, but they do have to keep their hands washed after handling every raw product.

I'm trying to remember if I ever ran across anything really disgusting in a restaurant. I don't think I have, but I heard about some restaurant down South that had a dead deer that they were skinning and cutting up in their kitchen whilst preparing food for customers. 8-P

once i was eating carryout spaghetti and picked a long, long (i assume human?) hair out of my teeth. sort of thing where you find it in between your teeth, pull on it and it's long enough it tickles the roof of your mouth on the way out.

didn't order from there again, in fact.

oh man this is right up my alley



1.  I was in McDonalds and watched the woman who was serving the food scratch her ass then hand someone their food....sure it was wrapped but still I got out of line but didn't leave I just used a different server.



2. Once in sandwich shop this guy wiped his nose with his hand and then rolled the sandwich (for the guy in front of me) he totally touched that guys sandwich... I walked out and have never eaten there again.



3. On day when I was working one of my officers issued a citation to a guy who was servicing himself in a car.... when the officer came back he told me that guy was in the parking lot of a chinese restaurant and was entertaining himself while on break....never eaten there again either.



4.  On a particularly hot day I went into Burger King... the assistant Manager was working the front of the house. I watched him touch someones fries so I got out of line and watched for a while.... the man had a habit of grabbing the fries by the container but stabilizing them by putting his bare hand on the top...to keep them from falling off...  At one point he wiped sweat off his brow. Put his sweatly palm onto of someones fries...they said they ordered onion rings so he put his sweaty hand back on top of the fries and walked them back to the bin and threw them in the bin with the other fries and mixed them up....

I walked out and then walked back in and asked for his boss' number.  I called the boss on the next business day... the boss offered me coupons for free food  ::) .  yeah I told him I didn't think I'd ever eat in his establishment again...its been a year and I still haven't set foot in there!

I was at a Chili's once and there was some sort of small screw in my broccoli.  I didn't have to pay for my meal but I've never gone to that particular Chili's again.


Another weird things that's happened didn't have to do with the people working there but it's a classic tale in my family now:  We were eating at a buffet and I went to get my 2nd or 3rd plate. On my way back to the table my little sister was coming up to get more food and told me one of the old ladies sitting at the table across from us took my fork.  Apparently she asked my sister if there were any extra forks at our table.  But even after my sis told her no, the lady proceeded to take my fork, look at it closely, and say "This one looks clean" and she was eating using that fork.  So I went back to the table with my older sister and asked her VERY LOUDLY if she knew where my fork was.  I said "How can I eat my food without a fork??!! I was EATING with that fork.  I sure hope nobody took it!"  I could see out of the corner of my eye the old ladies had a very disgusted look on their faces but it was her own fault.  LOL

Seen:

~About 15 years ago I went into the McDonalds near Busch Gardens, Williamsburg to eat. I thought the signs inside looked kinda funny... turned out some of the letters weren't letters, but either waterbugs or small cockroaches. Exit, stage right...

~Much more recently I worked at a hotel doing maintenance. I can't begin to say how many conditions in the kitchen would have been automatic fails from any reputable, not-blind or non-paid-off health inspector. They did renovate though, and all of those problems have since been fixed.

~Back in my teens I worked at two restaurants. In both, an employee dropped food on the floor and tried to rinse it off and serve it. One was, surprise, another McDonald's, and I quit there after it took an employee several minutes to convince a manager not to put a dropped slice of cheese on someone's sandwich. The other was the owner who dropped a marinated chicken breast on the floor and tried to rinse it off and grill it. He didn't, but he sweat so much that when he grilled anything else...well, people got some complimentary perspiration sauce with their meals.

~ I was in a Hooters once (well, more than once) with some friends. The bartender/drink server was obviously wasted out of his skull on cocaine, and he incessantly messed with his nose. Sinus slime on drinks>good looking, barely dressed women. We left within minutes of sitting down.

Heard of/somewhat verified:

~I seriously doubt there are too many walk-in coolers in existence that haven't seen some sort of hanky-panky take place inside. I've heard numerous stories of this type, two of which I consider personally verified.

Food for thought: ever notice how most places that serve food, if an employee has a small cut they are wearing a blue bandaid? Blue is high visibility. I wonder how many beige bandaids were lost in people's food before they made that change.

Ant

~ I was in a Hooters once (well, more than once) with some friends. The bartender/drink server was obviously wasted out of his skull on cocaine, and he incessantly messed with his nose. Sinus slime on drinks>good looking, barely dressed women. We left within minutes of sitting down.




and yet you went back to that Hooter's didn't you?


I worked in a grocery store and we always had to check the bread to make sure the rodents hadn't been sampling the merchandise.... Mice are quite prevalent in grocery stores because the back rooms are disgusting.


I have a friend who worked at Wendy's and he swears his coworker got pissed....and pissed in the pickles.... this is unconfirmed but usually when I am out I frequently ask them to hold the pickles...just in case! 


I never ever eat birthday cake....well not a cake that has held candles... something about a person blowing (ie spitting) all over the cake to put the candles out totally grosses me out....

Gosh guys! That's so much stuff!

@Jessica Rabbit: Well...I think I'll be pickier about the burger joints I go to from now on.  :)

Okay, I have 2 more little tidbits:

Seen: I was crusing with my friend today and he wanted some chicken (from a big name chain restaurant) so we go in. We waited like 30 minutes for him to get his chicken in the first place, and then it seemed like there was an entire army of flies floating around the restaurant. I still can't beleive he ate that. (I went to the Subway around the corner, it was so much more sanitary!) I'm currently waiting for my phone to ring and someone to tell me he is in the ER getting his stomach pumped.

Heard: I heard this from my father a while ago. A few deacades ago--before I was born--my father liked to drive around from town to town and eat out at the local places. So a few towns over, he had been a regular at a seafood shack and he LOVED the fried fish and butterfly shrimp from there. So he said the last time he went, which was seriously like 1978 or something, And he bought a plate and came home with it. He said when he opened it, all the food smelled like CLOROX and he threw it out. He said his pet dogs even would touch it. He never went to that place again.

Gosh guys! That's so much stuff!



I told you this was right up my alley  ;D


I got a hamburger from McDonald's (maybe I really should rethink my patronage there)  and I took the burger back to work.  I opened it....Thank God....to add more ketchup. 

I noticed a shiny blue metallic thing in the center of the patty .... It was a horse fly!  8-P    It took me a few years to eat at McD's again....


there was a Chinese restaurant I would go to in Stockton.  I ordered the shrimp and broccoli every time.  I always thought it smelled funny... one day - I wasn't eating anything at the time..... my dog farted. I realized the smell of the dog fart was identical to the smell of the shrimp and broccoli....there's no real connection it was just an observation that made me not want to eat there ever again.




One time I went to KFC and the chicken I got smelled like vomit (honest)  I ate it anyway...don't know why....yeah I got sick....

Oh My God Snoz! Please don't put me off McDonald's burgers! But the story about the dog farting made me laugh til I cried.

I very recently (I mean this past weekend) got sick from a bad hot link from a local barbecue place. I don't know what came over me to buy it. 6 months ago my father got a link from there and it made him sick, and then about a year before that, my mom got one and was sick. So bought it and ate half of it. That shoulda bene the first sign of bad things to come--I usually eat the whole link--a few  hours later, I was hugging the toilet, emptying my tummy into the bowl. I stayed sick the entire weekend. I don't know what they did to it, because it tasted the absolute same.  >:( *imitating Kelly Clarkson* NEVER AGAIN!

Oh My God Snoz! Please don't put me off McDonald's burgers! But the story about the dog farting made me laugh til I cried.




okay... here's one that was self inflicted.

I took some chicken out to thaw... I always thaw my meat in the package on the counter.. once it thawed I didnt want it anymore so the next morning I put it in the fridge.

A day later I took it out of the fridge and started to cook it while talking to my friend. I was making a curry dish that I like so it gets cooked on the stove top in a pan. I finished my conversation and realized it still wasn't cooked so I put it in the fridge I was tired and decided to finish cooking the next day.

The next day I took the chicken out of the fridge and cooked it the rest of the way...


not too long after that I went to work and my co worker said I looked green.  I barely made it to the bathroom to purge the foul fowl... I told her I think I ate something bad  ::)


yeah I was sick for two or three days after that!

;D


see this is why I eat out so much!

I remember about 10 years ago seeing an ad for some tv show on Fox where they showed hidden camera clips of restaurant cooks who would spit on the customer's food in the back kitchen area.  8-P >:(

Okay so I was in Subway the other day a guy cuts my bread and then asks a coworker to take over. The girl comes over puts on new plastic gloves, wipes her nose and then picks up the bread.  I looked at her and said you just wiped your nose. She looked at me like I was speaking some alien language.  I said you just wiped your nose and touched my bread.

The girl gives a loud hmph and throws down the bread then goes to the back.  another girl working the line came over to help me.  I said I would like a tuna sandwich but I want new bread. The girl got me a new loaf and started making my sandwich... in the meantime "Drippy" comes out and gives me the evil eye the whole time I'm in line...like the whole situation was my fault!!!  >:(

Okay so I was in Subway the other day a guy cuts my bread and then asks a coworker to take over. The girl comes over puts on new plastic gloves, wipes her nose and then picks up the bread.  I looked at her and said you just wiped your nose. She looked at me like I was speaking some alien language.  I said you just wiped your nose and touched my bread.

The girl gives a loud hmph and throws down the bread then goes to the back.  another girl working the line came over to help me.  I said I would like a tuna sandwich but I want new bread. The girl got me a new loaf and started making my sandwich... in the meantime "Drippy" comes out and gives me the evil eye the whole time I'm in line...like the whole situation was my fault!!!  >:(





Ewwwwww, YUCK!!!  8-P

I'm really glad that someone else made your sandwich instead of Drippy! If that was me I would've given her the evil eye right back.

Ewwwwww, YUCK!!!  8-P

I'm really glad that someone else made your sandwich instead of Drippy! If that was me I would've given her the evil eye right back.


oh believe me I did!  ;D

Across Canada, there is a fast food chain called Harveys.  They specialize in making your burger in front of you as you order it, so you can pick and choose what toppings you want on it.  Years ago, me and my dad went there, and the lady making the burgers had acne, and she was picking her pimples while she had her hands on the food

Across Canada, there is a fast food chain called Harveys.  They specialize in making your burger in front of you as you order it, so you can pick and choose what toppings you want on it.  Years ago, me and my dad went there, and the lady making the burgers had acne, and she was picking her pimples while she had her hands on the food


Pimple sauce.  8-P


Okay so I was in Subway the other day a guy cuts my bread and then asks a coworker to take over. The girl comes over puts on new plastic gloves, wipes her nose and then picks up the bread.  I looked at her and said you just wiped your nose. She looked at me like I was speaking some alien language.  I said you just wiped your nose and touched my bread.

The girl gives a loud hmph and throws down the bread then goes to the back.  another girl working the line came over to help me.  I said I would like a tuna sandwich but I want new bread. The girl got me a new loaf and started making my sandwich... in the meantime "Drippy" comes out and gives me the evil eye the whole time I'm in line...like the whole situation was my fault!!!  >:(


8-P

Subways seem to hire those who don't speak English too well and sometimes foreign exchange students whose "hygenic standards" aren't quite up to par with US health codes. My sister got a sub from there a few weeks ago, and the girl making her sub dropped the knife on the floor. She picks it up, gives it a quick rinse under cold water, and heads back to finish my sister's sub. Needless to say she didn't get to finish it.

Ant

Well I think I've learned my lesson about concession stand food.  A couple weeks ago my hubby, my sister, and I went to a local medieval festival.  My sister INSISTED that we split an indian taco and funnelcakes cuz you just can't go to a fair without indian tacos and funnelcakes.  Well I don't know which of the 2 did it but we were all feeling queasy that evening and...well....let's just say I hope to never see such colors in the toilet again.

This is a little off-topic but speaking of germs and such made me think of when I was in the ER a few weeks ago.  During the (literally) painfully long wait in the waiting room, they called one little girl- I guess she had cut he finger on something real bad. While she and her mom were walking away, she left huge drops of blood on the floor.  Someone else in the waiting room went to tell the guy that takes your name at the front desk when you come in.  So this guy looks at the blood on the floor, then I watch in horror as he comes back with a spray bottle of something, a cloth towel, and NO GLOVES!  He sprays the blood, then throws the towel on the floor and wipes BACK AND FORTH with his FOOT and then picks it up with his BARE HANDS!!!  I don't even wanna know what he did with the towel.  I mean I know it was just a little 5-yr-old girl's blood but I was like come on! This is a hospital!

I was at a Chili's once and there was some sort of small screw in my broccoli.  I didn't have to pay for my meal but I've never gone to that particular Chili's again.


Another weird things that's happened didn't have to do with the people working there but it's a classic tale in my family now:  We were eating at a buffet and I went to get my 2nd or 3rd plate. On my way back to the table my little sister was coming up to get more food and told me one of the old ladies sitting at the table across from us took my fork.  Apparently she asked my sister if there were any extra forks at our table.  But even after my sis told her no, the lady proceeded to take my fork, look at it closely, and say "This one looks clean" and she was eating using that fork.  So I went back to the table with my older sister and asked her VERY LOUDLY if she knew where my fork was.  I said "How can I eat my food without a fork??!! I was EATING with that fork.  I sure hope nobody took it!"  I could see out of the corner of my eye the old ladies had a very disgusted look on their faces but it was her own fault.  LOL


;D ;D :D :D :D :DLOL

Seen: Okay, I love watching the Travel Channel and two of my favorite shows are No Resevations with Anthony Bourdain and Bizarre Foods with Adnrew Zimmern. Watching them, i have two wicked foodie horror stories:

Anthony Bourdain: Now i've seen Tony eat some wacky stuff, but this one takes the cake: Tony was with some remote tribe on the Sarengetti in Africa and these people killed some type of animal for everyone to eat. I can't remember if it was a cow or a buffalo, but anyway, they didn't let any part of the animal go to waste, including te colon and the attatched (am I allowed to say this, if not, I apologize) rectum. And it wasn't cleamed. I mean you could see the "matter" still clinging to it. And Tony dove right in and ate it. Didn't flinch or nothing like he'd just popped a Lays potato chip. I nealry fainted on my couch.

Andrew Zimmern: I really love this guy. He'll travel to the ends of the earth for the freakiest eats, and I've seen him eat everything from chicken entrails to deep fried ENTIRE bats. So I'm used to seeing him injest crazy things. Today took the cake. He went to Iceland and there's a comfort food that he made with a local woman called "Slatur" and it's made from pigs' blood, pigs fat cut in chunks, spices and oatmeal that's poured into a pigs stomach and boiled. Kind of like an Icelandic spin on Haggis. It turned a crazy scab brown color and Andrew ate it. And he liked it! Yet another time when I needed smelling salts!

I'd like to be a travel foodie for a network, but send me to McDonalds. I'll tell you how good the McRib Sandwhich is!  ;)

Iceland does a worse food than that would-be-haggis.  I've forgotten the name of it but they do a dish involving shark meat after it has been buried for six months or so.

Some of my friends told me that on their field trip to Boston over the weekend, a whole busload of kids got food poisoning from eating bad eggs at the resturant they were at.

I worked in a well known hotel chain and the cook threw a dirty, bacteria ridden rag over to a kitchen counter but unfortunately it landed in the soup vat and he just fished it out and said oops!
I didn't have the soup that day for lunch.

I also found a plastic bread bag tie in a sandwich one time. I almost chocked on it!

Iceland does a worse food than that would-be-haggis.  I've forgotten the name of it but they do a dish involving shark meat after it has been buried for six months or so.


Ah, Surstromming.  With an umlaut over the "o".  Makes lutefisk seem delicious by comparison.

Most of the sanitary/code violations I'd probably overlook.  I'd probably even try that bunghole (the only really dangerous thing) described up there, so long as it had been cooked long enough to kill the bacteria in the feces (if eating it obviously doesn't kill the rest of the people who eat it, the local animal population probably isn't infected with any of the strains of e.coli that emit the particular toxins responsible for the worst forms of e.coli food poisoning). 

On the weird food front, I've eaten Durian, the most foul-smelling fruit to grace this benighted planet.  The smell is beyond foul, but the taste isn't half bad.  But even I drew the line after a whiff and a quarter-teaspoonful of Surstromming.  No, no, no, just a whole bulging tin of HOW ABOUT NO with a heaping spoonful of DO NOT WANT on top of it.  :)