We’ve all had our fair share of bad dining experiences, but there are some restaurant horror stories that will make you reconsider ever letting anyone else prepare your meals again. Between these stories and terrifying fast food facts, you might just give up food altogether by the end of this.
Bleached Wings at Hooters
If you’ve ever eaten at Hooters – and if you’re a man, of course you have – you’re not going to like this next story. Basically, their famous wings we all love so much while eating them but hate about an hour later aren’t necessa
rily made from the finest meat. In fact, sometimes they are made from chicken that is “green and nasty” and smells like a homeless dude who “rolled around in paprika.” But, if you throw them in a bucket of water with a little bleach, the problem is solved, according to some Hooters kitchen managers. This could help explain some recent food poisoning stories.
Indian Food With a Side of Corpse Stench
An Indian restaurateur, Jaswinder Singh, was caught by health officials with a dead body in his kitchen. The cafe owner was busy making kebabs while one of his employees was dead on the sofa in the kitchen. This is not to say the kebabs weren’t delicious, but after a number of previous health violations – including rodent infestation and spitting and smoking in the preparation area – Singh finally lost his business license for good. Dead bodies is where the line is drawn.
Applebee’s Gets Baby Drunk
In 2011, a Michigan Applebee’s was reported for serving an underage male. That seems pretty common, but the real surprise is that the minor, Dominic Dill-Reese, was only a 1-year-old and his sippy cup, which was supposed to be filled with apple juice, contained margarita mix from the restaurant. People became suspicious when the boy started laying his head on the table, just before waking up really happy like most kids their first time boozing in public. Dominic blew 0.014 at the hospital and was way over the legal limit to ride his Fisher-Price car home. His parents later sued Applebee’s.
Naked Sushi Gone Sideways
A young Asian girl told Vanity Fair about her experience as a naked sushi model. A man she was dating suggested she try it out, saying she
‘d be perfect, whatever that means. She went through the trouble of contacting Hirosaki Koko, the caterer of Ambassador Wines and Spirits, to request a job practicing the Japanese art of Nyotaimori, a fancy term for sushi servers lying naked on a table for nearly two hours while a crowd of strange men poke at and eat sushi off of her. Koko agreed and the young inexperienced girl held her toe cramps and lay poised for the entirety of the meal. A week later, the young girl shared the photos with the young man who suggested this in the first place. Come to find out, he hung them on the wall in his restaurant, just after admitting he had pleasured himself to them several times.
Stalker Server
A girl out to dinner at a nice restaurant with her boyfriend gets a random text at the beginning of her meal, telling her she looks nice. The texts continue throughout the meal and finally they decide someone is either playing a prank or being creepy, so they involve management. Come to find out, the young lady had previously applied to the restaurant and filled out an application, listing her information and phone number. One of the employees there had taken her number from the application and started texting her while she was at dinner with her boyfriend. Bold move, busboy.
Italian Snot Rocket
Returning restaurant patrons of a little family-owned neighborhood pizza spot had their usual conversation with the Italian restaurant owner, only this one particular time, the owner stopped mid-conversation to put her (yes, her) index finger to her left nostril and proceeded to blow her snot right onto the floor next to them. She wished them an enjoyable meal and then carried on back to her work. Well, at least she didn’t try to shake their hands.
Mexican Drug Lord Serves Memorable Experience
In 2009, Columbus, Ohio, was the center of a news story involving a local Mexican restaurant called El Cora that had a few dining faux pas, including clumps of hair in the salsa, a toothless homeless man bothering people for money at the register and a guy in the bathroom receiving oral. Later, patrons of the joint witnessed a bust by the DEA after a six-month heroin sting operation that resulted in 18 arrests, including the manager of the restaurant for distribution. So yeah, just get take-out next time.
Classy, Glassy Big Mac
Here’s a story that is as equally mysterious as it is horrifying, but it shows how vulnerable all of us are to strangers harmfully tampering with our food. In 2005, an officer of the New York Police Department bit into a Bic Mac full of glass at a McDonald’s. It was initially determined that one of the McDonald’s employees decided to put several shards of glass into the cop’s burger, causing him to severely cut his mouth and sue the fast food franchise. (The employee even confessed.) However, the employee’s defense team said the confession was a false one, and accused the cop of planting the glass in his burger himself to win a lawsuit against McDonald’s. The employee was eventually acquitted, but the cop did receive some money from a settlement.
Keep the Change, Ya Filthy Animal
A woman visited a Florida Hardee’s only to receive both bloody change and blood dripping from her soda cup. Perhaps this is the way people in Florida say “have a nice day” or “would you like fries with that?” Nope, just another way too real restaurant horror story. Needless to say, that Hardee’s was cited for the incident.
KFC Stands for “Kidney Failure Chicken”
A woman took her children to a KFC in Colorado, only to have her son catch a possibly deadly case of salmonella, which caused kidney failure and other illnesses in the small child. The boy managed to survive, but the furious mother reported the incident and filed a lawsuit, only to discover the KFC had been cited for several serious violations within the recent months. You just never know.
Deep Frying Oil Explosion
While all of the above stories have to do with horrors for the customers, we must keep in mind that restaurants can be a dangerous place for the cooks and kitchen staff, as well. For instance, if someone spills a can of tom
ato paste into a deep fryer and doesn’t tell anyone, the next morning when that fryer gets turned on, it will result in an unexpected explosion of hot oil that will leave scars on the staffs’ faces. Yikes. And if you think that’s bad, check out some more of these frightful kitchen tales.
Fancy New York Restaurant Will Facebook Stalk the Shit Out of You
We’ve all done it. You meet a new cute girl either at work or out at a bar. You get her name, and then go home to look her up on Facebook or Google her to find out everything you can. After a few minutes, you start to feel a little shameful and guilty. Well, such is not the case at Eleven Madison Park, one of Manhattan’s top restaurants. There, Googling and Facebooking all of their guests with reservations is part of their business practice – find out as much personal info as possible, and then cater to their assumed interests (i.e. if they are from Chicago, the restaurant will match them up with a server from Chicago). They think it evokes feelings of being “welcomed home,” but it all sounds like the premise for a future horror movie to us.
