So I went out for dinner tonight, picked a Portuguese place in the Ironbound district of Newark that seemed to have a lot of good reviews and an interesting menu.

The service was fine, but when the entrees came around I was extremely disappointed. I had ordered a paella and it came swimming in a puddle of unabsorbed broth. It tasted like someone had dumped a couple of packets of Lipton soup mix on top of supermarket boxed rice then tossed in some frozen bagged veggies and chicken hacked into hideous hunks. There were a couple of anemic looking shrimp of the ilk you might get in bad Chinese take out.
They topped the whole thing off with a mangled piece of beet, some shredded red cabbage and a half a radish.
Very strange and the whole dish just smacked of cheap corner cutting in the kitchen.

My mom seemed to enjoy her bacalao all right.

I hate to waste food so I had half of it packed up to go (don't ask me what will happen to it, I'm hoping someone else will eat it), but the smell of it in the car bugged me. It smelled like airplane food.

The dinner wasn't cheap and the bad food kinda ruined my night.
I'm a little distressed about the fact that I've gotten so picky that I'd let some subpar food get to me so badly.

The waitstaff seemed a little worried that I barely touched my food but I couldn't find it in myself to tell them that I thought the dish was absolutely wretched. The check came with a little comment card and I didn't fill it out. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying their food just fine.

What do you guys do when you get bad food? Bad service is one thing, but what if the food is just not to your taste? Do you say something or do you hold your tongue?