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From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

@bobo - something gave us food poisoning, we had to leave immediately. Enough said.

From Serious Eats: New York

Week in Reviews: Best Bites

Bobo was bad overall. A few friends and I went to bobo restaurant last night. I strongly advise not to go there, the food was terrible and the wine list was lifeless. I don't mind spending $12 for a glass of wine but only if it's eclectic and unique. You won't find these types of wines at bobo, you'll find expensive and overpriced wines by the glass or bottle. It really took the fun out of enjoying wine altogether. Their food was also pricey and lacking substance, it wasn't hit or miss ~ it was misses all the way. And we skipped their desserts, again, expensive and we lost our appetite at that point. Their style of service, nothing outstanding or exceptional about it. Everyone put on a fake smile but looked miserable? We didn't know who was waiting on us, even their bus boys kept asking us, "How is everything?" We're not high maintenance folks but what a terrible dining experience at a hefty price.

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From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

@bobo - something gave us food poisoning, we had to leave immediately. Enough said.

From Serious Eats: New York

Week in Reviews: Best Bites

Bobo was bad overall. A few friends and I went to bobo restaurant last night. I strongly advise not to go there, the food was terrible and the wine list was lifeless. I don't mind spending $12 for a glass of wine but only if it's eclectic and unique. You won't find these types of wines at bobo, you'll find expensive and overpriced wines by the glass or bottle. It really took the fun out of enjoying wine altogether. Their food was also pricey and lacking substance, it wasn't hit or miss ~ it was misses all the way. And we skipped their desserts, again, expensive and we lost our appetite at that point. Their style of service, nothing outstanding or exceptional about it. Everyone put on a fake smile but looked miserable? We didn't know who was waiting on us, even their bus boys kept asking us, "How is everything?" We're not high maintenance folks but what a terrible dining experience at a hefty price.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

This may not be the worst food I ever had but it's a good story. When I was a kid, my grandmother made Thanksgiving dinner. She always has been a very tidy housekeeper. She took extra care about making sure there was never a time when she did not have plenty of mothballs in all her closets. I love her but her house always smells of that awful mothball stench. (She'll be 90 next month!) Where did she stash the extra loaves of bread she bought a few days early for the stuffing? You guessed it. The hall closet. Ah, the aroma and taste of sage, onion and mothball............

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

How about defrosted dips and cheeseball and lil smokys frozen from a previous party. Oh my god served in the plastic bowl they were frozen in. These same people serve left over breakfast stuff at brunches,ever had leftover frozen omelet , um yummy!! gotta get rid of these penny pinchen people out of the group !!!!!!! Yeh Gads! can you believe

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

I tried sea urchin at a fancy French Tourist Agency party. The French chicks were going wild for it and I am up for trying anything. It is presented in it's spiny shell, cold, I am not sure it it was raw? Well it tastes like gelatin made with ocean water. Just a mouthful of cold slimy salt. Blech. At least I can say I tried it right? Mostly I hate when you go to a party and the host makes a point of telling you there will be tons of food and you get there and its a bag a stale Lays, soooooooo lame!

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

I wish creamcheese with a jar of salsa was the worst I've ever had at a party . I gotta think on the worst I've had there have been a few .

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

I am far from the best cook (but I have a few numbers of excellent catering services) but when my coworker invited us over for dinner, boy did I look like Julia Childs to my boyfriend. One of the worst meals we have ever had with under and overcooked foods. The thing I remember most was the coffee "flan". You either got one that was so hard it didn't jiggle or so soft and runny it was like the texture of egg whites. Her "princess" daughter had helped her make it and since the world revolves around her, we all had to try it. BARF!!! We went home and vowed NEVER TO EAT THERE AGAIN!!!

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

Absolute worst: at a "cocktail" party in the Midwest, ca. 1982

Fried Spam triangles with chopped canned fruit cocktail "chutney"
Tuna "spread" mixed with Miracle whip
Miracle Whip & packaged Onion Soup "dip"

Lost my cookies just at the sight of it. Ironically, the guests ate every single crumb, nothing left standing! (Oh, and someone brougt a solidified Cottage Cheese and Jello mold)

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

Roast beef au jus is something that I find suspect in the first place - but I saw my nieces making it - first they dissolved Lipton's Onion Soup in a crock and then they dumped store bought slices of roast beef in.

Needless to say, I did not try it. I will add that my best option at those parties usually turns out to be a "bagel" with store sliced cheese from Costco!

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

We went to Thanksgiving dinner several years back where the "dressing" was brought by someone from the East Texas piney woods country. They call it dressing because — unlike the turkey stuffing I was brought up with — it's not cooked in the bird, and so does not absorb any actual turkey flavor. It appeared to be cornbread croutons swimming in milk and had all the appeal of a bowl of Corn Chex that had been left sitting in the milk until they had become soggy! Awful! Even Stovetop would have been better! Ironically, some guests there raved about it and said it was almost as good as "Grandma" used to make! I don't who Grandma was, but she must have been an awful cook! This past Thanksgiving my wife and I tried Bell's stuffing (made by the makers of Bell's seasoning) and it was the best we ever had.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

Pickled herring at a friend's wedding near Amsterdam. I can usually hold down anything, but this offering was slimy, raw with a bad off-fish taste, and then you get that extra sour pickle taste just to top it off...(btw, I'm a sushi fan), but this took the cake. I nearly gagged, and had to spit it out....yuck!!

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

Christmas dinner at ex-MILs. Burned ham, cinders flying out of the oven, canned yams, nothing added just plopped into a pan, and seven--count 'em--seven kinds of Jell-O molds. Green Jell-O with shredded cabbage, red Jell-O with canned fruit cocktail, purple Jell-O with I-don't-know-what was in it. It was at that moment that I knew that I could not live in the midwest.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

Some people might take this as blasphemy since I read around here somewhere that the recipe was created by James Beard, but the absolutely worst food I ever had at a party was made for a post-wedding dinner thrown by one of my mother's friends for my husband and myself. White bread, cut into circles, doused with mayo, coated with raw onions (my most hated of any kind of food ever), stuck together, with more mayo on top, rolled in raw parsley. I know people say it to be funny, but I actually *literally* threw up in my mouth a little.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

Velveeta fudge -- the maker says, "you can't taste the Velveeta at all!" Um, maybe YOUR tastebuds are dead, but mine aren't, thanks.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

It's fair to expect to be fed when you're invited to a party, and I would hope for something more than salsa or PickaPeppa over cream cheese, but those would be preferred to peculiar, soggy, strange tasting recipes prepared by someone who never cooks. Truly, I'd rather have a big bowl of Chex Mix and domestic beer than something freaky and inedible, and I've had plent of that. It seems most likely at game-watching gatherings, too. In defense of these occasional cooks, I've seen equally freaky football snack recipes in those supermarket checkout magazines. Let's lay blame evenly over where it's due.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

I feel like, more and more, every party I go to features a Costco or Safeway or similar cheese and/or meat and/or veggie tray (not always provided by the host: sometimes a guest shows up with one of these in hand). Living in the Bay Area, with nearly unlimited access to amazing food, I find this incredibly sad.

Ok, a little off topic but: I am always astonished when I go to people's parties and there isn't any ice. And I always think it's truly gauche when the host hasn't considered non-alcoholic beverage options (score an extra point if the inconsiderate host is drunk when you arrive). While I drink alcohol, I frequently have to drive, and so digging through someone's fridge for the last swig from an old, flat bottle of Pepsi Zero (or One? Or two?) is super irritating.

I feel like hosts must consider that their guests' time is valuable. If you throw crappy parties with bad food, you are essentially wasting the time of your guest, who might have instead thrown their own party, or who might have declined another invitation to attend your event.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

I had this tofu cake at a camp party once...it was spongy, tasted like nothing...the blueberry sauce was the best part of the whole thing!

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

After reading all the replies, the commenters who listed store-bought chips and dip as the worst party food they've eaten should consider themselves lucky. To answer the OP's question, yes, it is snobby to expect more than that at a casual gathering. But that is what brings almost all of us to this site in the first place.

The worst food I can remember eating was an unidentifiable pile of chicken scraps in some sort of gluey sauce/gravy that looked like it had been scraped up from the bottom of a barrel. Other people at my table at least had whole pieces of chicken. This was at a high school band awards dinner, so in retrospect, expectations were probably too high.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

@brooke29- I know this is not a dinner party but my BF talks about when he was in high school and they made Tuesday Surprise which was canned stewed tomatos mixed with bulgar wheat and sometimes canned tuna, was added ooooo, ROTFL. This was the late 60's btw.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

Some slimy pieces of mozzarella slapped on a plate. Yuck.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

lamora - free yourself and Stop Bringing the Chickens - you don't have too! Just bring the same type of items that everyone else is bringing and you won't be so stressed. Yes - they will complain, but after a few months go by it won't be such a big deal. They'll say ' hey remember those chickens you used to bring?' your answer: 'Yeah - so what do you think about the weather?'

My worst experience was a potluck at someone's home who cooked "curried chicken" that tasted like mothballs!

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

I agree that a wedding with bad food is not worth attending. It almost makes you mad that you bought a gift and blocked out your day for the event. The food was the most important part of my wedding. Fortunately, my brother is a chef and he and a couple of his CIA classmates did the cooking. I've never had another wedding meal that compared.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

@brooke29--haha--that made me laugh out loud! That is so true! Surprises are for parties and gifts, not for food!

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

@pjracz10 - you know, my experience has taught me to beware of any food with the word "surprise" on it. For some reason, it's never a good surprise.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

@brooke29- anthing with a name like Tiki Pineapple Suprise Chicken s/b called Tiki Pineapple Surprise your Stomach Chicken.
Does anyone remember a tomato soup cake in the 70's ? I remember the Crazy Cake in the 70's which I did like and then the "Better then Sex" cake in the 80's which was good, very rich? But I never did try the tomato soup cake.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

The last two weddings I went to were BAD. Both had that thin-sliced, almost deli-style roast beef in congealed gravy...pasta in tasteless white sauce, bland bag-o-chicken, and really awful steamed veg. One at least had decent potatoes.

I'm really, really glad I focused on food when I got married, because bad food really, really sucks. I understand budget, but you can have cheap good food as demonstrated by another wedding I went to this summer that was lower budget but good.

From Talk

Worst Food You Ate at a Party

@pjacz10--haha! Yeah, I think that every party in the 90s had that menu come to think of it--I guess the baked tortilla chips made it 'healthier' than the 80s favorite, Doritos.

@brooke29--well, I just made up that name, but it does sound like a mish-mash of every 1950s tiki-menu craze item--like when hostesses would serve Jell-O with floating pineapple chunks to be 'ethnic' and 'edgy.'

oh, and @chiff--the Tick Tock Diner is one of the most famous diners in NJ--so you probably got better deal (although a belated one).

I agree though, that it's pretty shocking to serve booze without any food, as if these people are asking for trouble--in general, with all of this 'bad' party food, there is almost no excuse. It can be hard to cook for a dinner party, but for good party food, just getting really high-quality nuts, cheeses, crackers, smoked meats and cold cuts for those who eat meat, plus a variety of breads, dips, and spreads, and even ice cream, chocolates, toppings and fruit for dessert can satisfy most people.

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About erinmcgowan

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Location: New York City

About: I'm a serious eater and wine lover!

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