When you know the food's not going to be good but you have to eat there...

What do you order when you can already tell it's not a good restaurant? Obviously this differs depending on the cuisine, but what are some of your standbys?

[OneJayneDoe]

Just start drinking and the food problem will take care of itself. besides, it is the company that counts!

[Rick]

I must ask though Flynn, if you're in such a bad restaurant, do you think they'll really use fresh ingredients at your request? I'd imagine they'd take your "fresh only" order and toss it and make it just how they made the last one.

[davinagr]

A brothy soup and a side salad or ice cream.

Depends on the restaurant and cuisine. In New York City, if it's a plain typical diner, I usually stick to eggs and/or a Greek salad. They usually don't mess that up.

In a mediocre Chinese restaurant, I'll order steamed fresh veggies and brown rice. I hate gloppy sauces. In trendoid blah restaurants I'll stick to what sounds good (I have an inner Chowhound radar) and usually order the best out of the worst - a decent appetizer and the fish special.

For lousy Italian (let's say I'm stuck in Little Italy for some insane reason!) I'll order salad and pasta with fresh tomato sauce. Always ask for fresh ingredients before you order - whether it's a mushroom omelet, Chinese veggies, and so on. It makes a huge difference no matter how bad the place might seem.

I just take deep breaths, tell myself "For god's sake, it is just one meal out of your life" and make pleasant conversation. The meal isn't so important in the grand scheme of things.

The cheapest thing on the menu - this is about the company, not the food after all.

If there's a full bar, top shelf liquor helps the bottom shelf food go down.

I like the idea about the lowest cal offering, though, that makes sense to me.

B

The simpler the better. Grilled cheese, club sandwich, etc. Whatever involves the least amount of cooking. It's worth trying to look at the food on other tables to see what might be good.

I personally disagree with a few ideas below. Pasta is easy to mess up by overcooking and bad sauces. And I've had far too many bad quesadillas/tostadas/enchiladas/etc. in my days. Maybe my standards for Mexican and pasta are just too high, but I only order such items when I have a high degree of confidence that the restaurant does them very well. Soups are another item that I think should always be avoided at bad restaurants.

-nick

Yes, I agree with you about the soups!! "Had" to eat at Outback last night and I ordered a cup of their baked potato soup. SUPER SALTY! Like they poured a cup of salt in it. I've learned my lesson & will avoid soup at all costs, at these places. I appreciate all the recommendations because I am frequently in this situation with certain family members. They would rather eat at a mediocre-at-best "sushi" restaurant(hah!), or other chains that they KNOW, rather than try a new place, still within their budget. I enjoy their company, so I endure... but now, with better strategies ;)

Grilled cheese is always my standby! Especially in the crappy work cafeteria... even they would have to work pretty hard to screw up grilled cheese... although, come to think of it, they did once!

I agree with you on the Mexican food, guess my standards are too high, but I would *never* order it if I wasn't sure....with one exception: if it is a Mexican place and has soup on the menu, I will get the soup, and make that my meal along with a beer and some corn tortillas. Perhaps I am just overly fond of Mexican soups, but I have found that even when they aren't good, they are rarely really bad, and have also found that even some otherwise very mediocre Mexican restaurants make good soups! (besides...if the soup is albondigas, I can never resist trying it in the hopes that it will be the albondigas of my dreams... :-))

I think it depends on your expectations. If you're expecting it to be "Mexican food" then you're not going to enjoy it, but if you just think of it as vaguely Mexican-inspired food and judge it on its own merits, then it's usually okay. Mostly because the types of ingredients and preparation methods are pretty hard to screw up, and you can always doctor it up -- almost anything can be rendered edible by the addition of sour cream and/or hot sauce.

sisf: if you ever travel down 101 to LA, stop in Nipomo and go 1 block west to Paco's rest. The owner/chef makes divine soups. I've never had his albondigas, but based on the others he makes and serves (think Seinfeld) I'd say it was worth a try!

(Me, I'm always looking for the lengua of my dreams)

After your soup, turn around and go back across the freeway to Jocko's for some dynamite steak.

hey thanks! and since my daughter will be going to UCLA next year, that opportunity will come fairly soon (I'm thinking on the drive down to her orientation this summer, since I offered to come along for the ride..... :-))

I hear you on the lengua thing. Alas, I think you won't find it at a restaurant that doesn't have good food in general....

Burgers and fries are hard to totally ruin. I look at the menu and see what are simple and easy dishes that might be good. If I can find nothing that seems to please I will tell my companions that I don't like the restaurant.

When I was in my teens I made my family and friends very aware that I refused to eat lousy food. New acquaintances become rapidly aware of this within a few minutes of conversation. I do not compromise anymore on this one aspect of my life, ever. If anyone doesn't like it, too bad.

In the past when it got to the point where I had to make a choice I say that I try to eat healthy and do not eat chain food, poorly prepared, or low quality food. I then offer a few suggestions for other dining options. If they are not acceptable to my companions, then I leave.

My friends are all food lovers like myself. It is one of the criteria for my friends. My family now asks me to suggest places. I ask what they want/need and then I make suggestions that will fit all our wants and needs.
I refuse to suffer bad food, life is too short and this subject is too important to me.

I order whatever has the lowest possible amount of calories and fat!

Few things piss me off more than wasting my hard-earned calorie allowance on terrible food. (Not to mention my hard-earned money).

It also gives you a social "out" if you have to answer: "what..don't you like Applebees???". Convenient response: "Oh no...it's just that I kind of overdid it last night with my (insert any good food here). I was really craving something light, like this plain grilled chicken breast and steamed broccoli. Too bad, because I really love the (insert any item from menu) here."

I think refusing a social invitation on the grounds that you don't like the food choice is perhaps a little extreme. Have good taste in food is one thing; elevating the quality of your dining to a priority level above spending time with friends or family is quite another.

Even if you don't like the company, I think there are more appropriate ways to get out of the engagement.

S/he wasn't trying to get out of going to the restaurant, s/he was trying to formulate a polite response to why s/he isn't gorging on the McFunigan's bacon 'n' partially hydrogenated oil potato skins.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that's what she meant by an "out". My apololiges. Her post makes total sense now. :)

I think you could apply your comment to the post above this one, however. I agree with you. Sometimes company trumps food.

Agreed!

This is a far more extreme position: after suggesting alternative options...."If they are not acceptable to my companions, then I leave."

"My friends are all food lovers like myself. It is one of the criteria for my friends. My family now asks me to suggest places. I ask what they want/need and then I make suggestions that will fit all our wants and needs."

I love good food, but I like to be friends with people who are friendly, accepting of others' opinions, and compasionate.

yeah, really. how many friends would you have (who don't post to this board) if you just said "no, this is not acceptable to me, let's leave."

i used to be kind of like that, but i think it's immature and inconsiderate. the point of my post was what to eat when you don't want to have the food trump the friendship.

thanks guys.

Georgie,

This was a good topic. I hope my initial post of "A beer" wasn't taken to mean anything negative. Honestly, sometimes you grin and bear it, and have a good drink.

I have a very good friend who has terrible taste in restaurants. I get together with him probably 2-3 times per year, and each time I do my best not to let the poor restaurants he suggests negatively affect the evening.

(I'm a guy)

Jess caught my inadequately worded idea. It's a subtle tactic to avoid snobbery and insult without being disingenuous (in my case at least...I'm an avid cyclist and "fitness enthusiast" and I'm really focused on my food consumption). I guess if I were a 800 pound, known human garbage disposal my cover might be blown).

you raised an excellent point, and I hope I can remember to stick by it. in my case, I went to a "vietnamese" place yesterday for lunch with a friend, and ended up with something in lots of corn syrup that didn't taste very good nor did it have much nutritional value. (shrimp w/lemongrass -- i didn't think that called for the corn syrup sauce!)
-- but soup or salad would have been good choices, at least i wouldn't have wasted calories.
thanks!

Steak (not filet, though), very preferably ribeye or top loin (NY strip). If a place has lamb on it's menu, it usually means it knows how to deal with it. (Usually, not always.)

Any leaner flesh (pork, poultry or seafood) is much easier to abuse.

It's easy to do pasta in a mediocre fashion (precooked, reheated, slathered in sauce and put on unheated plates), so I normally avoid pasta in restaurants unless it's a place well known for its proper treatment of pasta.

These concerns are especially for chains where much of the food is pre-prepped in cryvac and then just microwaved (this is becoming standard in many chains, thanks to the pioneering of Olive Garden).

This is pretty much the way I work as well. I hate hate hate crappy pasta sauce, but I can find some enjoyment in a steak, even if it's a bad cut and is over cooked. They'll probably have some sort of mass-produced steak sauce anyway, at which point I can just relive my youth of eating so-so steaks slathered in A1.

I've got to go with the poster who said it's a matter of taste. You look at the menu, think about what you could tolerate even if they didn't do it very well, and order that.

In that situation, I usually go with a combination of appetizers. Sometimes I use it as an opportunity to order some crazy-sounding appetizer that I'd never see or order elsewhere. A couple of weeks ago I was in a restaurant like you describe and ordered an app of duck with strawberries. It wasn't good, but it wasn't boring, either.

Soup. I will probably come out of a can or from a powder mix. Won't be great but there is nothing they can really do to make it worse. Pizza is another option since they probably buy them frozen premade and just heat. In general look for things on the menu that are likely made outside the restaurant and just heated there.

Stick to the basics -- the simpler the prep the better. Something that can't be ruined by being poorly cooked (gotta disagree with the grilled chicken sandwich rec -- overcooked grilled chicken is inedible). Potatoes are usually reliable in any form -- the "restaurant" near my house has terrible food, except for the fried potatoes, which are actually pretty good. And yeah, anything pseudo-Mexican is probably edible.

I agree wholeheartedly about avoiding WHITE CHUNKS OF CHICKEN in most forms. Usually bad/dry/bland at even good places. Viva chicken-on-the-bone!

Even lousy places do a decent club sandwich, so that's what I tend to find safe. Order inexpensive.

I disagree on Mexican, as I noted above, but completely agree about potatoes. Even microwaved baked potatoes taste good to me, I just make sure to ask that any toppings be on the side (just to make sure I don't get fake bacon bits)...

a martini or three always helps in a pinch....

Avoid the seafood and salads (I can't consume wilty lettuce). That said, sometimes the caesar can be safe. Pastas are a good fallback for me if I'm not expecting anything besides canned sauce. Some kind of pseudo-mexican option, if it's a chain kind of place, can be ok. I mean, a quesadilla isn't too hard to mess up. BLT if it's lunch. And, yes, beer beer beer.

See, you have to skew your choices to your own taste: Morgan says he can't stand wilty lettuce, so he avoids salads; I don't mind tired greens unless they're actually black and slimy, so salads is what I go for. The other main point of Conventional Wisdom here, that you can't go too wrong with quasi-Mexican stuff, is worth remembering. Anything involving fried tortillas and beans is probably not only edible but delicious, even if it does give you gas.

Eat before you go and then just get something small from the appetizer menu.

good point, but i was thinking more along the lines of you meet up with someone for lunch/dinner, and didn't know beforehand where'd that would be. you sit down and realize this place probably does very few things well. what do you do?

Well, I suppose if you think it is going to be truly horrible, you could try and get your dining companions to go to a different place. If you are really stuck, order something that does not have to be cooked like a salad and get a bottle of wine.

Grilled chicken sandwich.

A beer.