So, what makes certain WDW meals inedible?

[U2_rocks!]

I read lots of reviews, and I expect there to be differences in how people perceive certains foods, or maybe a restaurant had an off night or whatever. But I can't imagine a meal being completely inedible! I know I'm not that picky, and I'm not easily thrown off by food not prepared exactly the way I was expecting, so maybe that's why I can't imagine it.

So please share with me some of your inedible meals, and let me know why they were so bad that you couldn't eat them at all. I just want to know if my idea of "inedible" when I read these reviews is accurate or not.

 

[Sweet Melissa]

I can't think of anything, save a food allergy, that would make a meal "inedible" to me.

 

[Chloesmom]

I have had things that taste bad. Like I had a crab soup at CRT a few years ago and it was soo fishy I could not eat it. At the same meal my friend had a pasta dish that had big raw veggies in it and the sauce was literally hot ketchup. That meal gave up both tummy trouble.

 

[chocolateMinnie]

We had a couple of awful meals at 1900 PF at their dinner buffet. Briefly - congealed stews and soups, literally a fatty skin on top of them. Cross contamination which I hate where foods have been dropped in or around another dish and no-one has bothered to clear it up even 30-40 minutes later. Hard/uncooked potatoes. Overcooked veg and not one of our very easy to feed family of four enjoyed the meal except for the characters. DS was also very sick after the second trip. We were staying in the GF at the time and others who had visited at the same time had the same problem. Came on very quickly so would seem to have been food posioning although I obviously can't prove it.

We had breakfast there also and although I can't say it was inedibly it was the poorest breakfast we ever had in the USA.

 

[DizzyStitch]

My husband ordered a fish meal last year at Kouzzinas. It was a whole fish and he did not care for it. They said if that happens just say so and they will bring you something else. I was surprised!

 

[christinec68]

It's hard to explain that something just tastes bad to other people. I had a burger at the Pepper Market once that tasted worse then any burger I ever had from a fast food place or even those frozen burgers you can get at costco or a supermarket.

I have been served meat that was a little grisly, too fatty or not cooked properly. Sometimes there's a spice or flavor that is not appetizing. For instance I hate caraway seeds and peppers - if that is unknowingly part of a recipe I will not enjoy that meal at all. It's not nearly the norm but it happens occasionally.

 

[U2_rocks!]

Getting a true feel for a restaurant from reviews is hard, because when someone says "it was horrible, I couldn't eat it", and then doesn't explain why, it's hard to know if it's a problem with the meal itself, or an issue with the person's individual tastes. If it's an individual thing, then it wouldn't stop me from choosing that dish or that restaurant myself.

Certain things can be fixed by sending the meal back (if it's obvious that something is actually wrong with it). Or, if the meal is fine but it isn't really how it was described on the menu and you don't like it at all, a polite conversation with the waiter may get you a trade. We also ask lots of questions before ordering, because we are accustomed to eating with allergy sufferers, so if there's something we just can't or won't eat, we make sure it's not a focal point of the meal. e.g. I hate raw onions, they give me issues, but I can handle cooked ones. So I'd want to check if there was any chance of raw onions being incorporated into my meal in such a way that I couldn't pick them out.

Keep the stories coming!

 

[Uncleromulus]

Only inedible meal (actually, an entree) I ever had at WDW was bloody chicken at Liberty Tree Tavern. Looked cooked on the outside, but inside was functionally raw...

 

[bleeps]

This is interesting to me.

I did reviews of our meals from our most recent trip (August 2009):
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2315601

What I said in there about our overall approach to meals and to dining at WDW is that we're in it to be happy, that we're flexible about what we eat, and that we take into account that we are ultimately having all these meals at a theme park and that we're really grateful that it's not all fast food. That is, we take the fact that it's theme park food and see the good, rather than obsessing about the bad.

It doesn't mean that we don't know a good meal from a poor one, or that we don't know what fine dining entails because we certainly do.

It is often said that people have higher expectations from Disney than from any other vacation/experience, and I think that bears out on these boards. We've been to the World 6 times, we generally go for about 9 days and we usually eat three meals a day, so I'm calculating roughly that we've had over 150 meals there. Never had food we couldn't eat. Liked some meals better than others, naturally, but never sent food back or failed to eat enough to make a meal.

 

[U2_rocks!]

Clearly undercooked I'd send back, especially if it could be dangerous, like chicken or pork. But a steak done medium instead of medium-well is no big deal. I'm pretty flexible. I've also eaten my share of "ho-hum" meals, and been a bit disappointed, but at the end of the day I'm hungry, I need to eat, and I eat, even if it's only ho-hum. I guess I'm lucky I've never had anything downright nasty!

 

[copperhound]

Hi! I think this is my first post on these forums! hooray!

I will preface by saying that I am 40+ years old, and can not remember ever sending a meal back in a restaurant prior to my Beaches and Cream experience.

I sent my Beaches and Cream veggie burger back and ended up with a grilled cheese instead. It seemed to me at the time as if no one had ever ordered a veggie burger there and this particular patty had been sitting in the back corner of the freezer for the past 10 years or whatever. Even after being cooked, it was obvious that it had been extremely freezer-burned. It was so dry that it was crumbling apart inside the bun. It should have been visibly obvious to the kitchen staff that it shouldn't be served.

I will say that I had a lovely ice cream after this experience though.

 

[Pakey]

In over 20 visits to WDW, I have only had one meal that was inedible and it was at Sci Fi (have eaten here at least a dozen times and while the food is not gourmet, it's always been edible).

This one particular time I ordered the turkey sandwich and the side salad. The bread on the sandwich was so stale that you could not chew through it. I ended up just picking out the turkey as I didn't really want the calories from the bread anyway. The salad had a very sour melon in it.

I've had some bad meals, where I thought the food was poor quality or the taste was not to my liking, but inedible is different.

 

[2manypets]

I've only had one inedible entree. At Cali Grill, the scallops had so much "grit" in them, I ended up having a pile of it on the side of my plate. I ate the first one and almost lost it.

I've had many, so-so meals, but that was the only inedible one.

 

[branv]

To me, there is quite a difference between something that didn't agree with your preferance, and something that is just wrong. I can have high expectations that food live up to what it promises, so I am not suprised that I find, for instance, WDW's food mostly marginal. It's a theme park preparing food for large masses, I expected their mac&cheese to have the consistency of glue, almost no flavor and overcooked noodles. I am not remotely surprised that the biscuits are too dry, or meat on the lower quality side. It is what it is, mass produced and cheap cost to them. So, therefore, I really wouldn't complain about that. But I do steer towards certain things I feel I'll be content with: food at Kringla bakery, for instance. I steer clear of things that are often unacceptable quality to me at WDW like pastas or "mexican" food.

What I will be vocal about is when it's just a plain foul up. Undercooked foods like chicken or shrimp. Burned food. Inedible food. Such as, for instance, before they changed the menu we ordered a turkey sandwich from Pinnochio's. The darn thing was full of ice crystals through out, turkey hard frozen in the center, and the bread was soaking wet, falling apart in our hands. I once got some chicken fingers that were so overcooked and old I was having to work at it like a piece of beef jerky. And, if I paid $40 for a medium rare steak that came out well-done, I'd send it back (to me, that's ruining a steak).

 

[SomDayMyPrnceWillCom]

We had lunch at Sci Fi our last trip. I wanted to try the ribs really bad even though I had read frequently to stick to the burgers and fries/onion rings. I got the ribs and it was unappealing by taste and texture. It was not "inedible" so to speak but I personally did not want to eat anymore of it. I was starving so I asked the waitress if I could change it to a burger, which she did and it was fine. The onion rings were good also and of course we had shakes to go with our meals. It's hard to mess up a shake.. yummy.

DD12 had the shrimp dish and ate the shrimp from it but said she wasn't overly impressed with her meal either, and she's not a picky eater in the least. She has said she doesn't want to go back there. We tried it, and both decided there are many many more restaurants out there we'd like to try on our future visits so we'll put Sci Fi on the back burner for now, but haven't ruled it out totally I guess.

 

[jennylyn_b]

Our absolute worst meal ever was at Coral Reef but I still wouldn't call it inedible. All four adults were utterly disappointed. The fish was overcooked and hard and the chicken was moist but flavorless and boring. We won't go back ever! But having said that, it wasn't inedible. I would think inedible would be undercooked to the point of not passing health code or overcooked where you literally can't chew it!
I like to read reviews of the restaurants we want to go to but I read the good ones and look at the menu. Other than the one meal mentioned above, we have NEVER had a meal we didn't enjoy at Disney. Most of which we LOVED.

 

[eliza61]

Well what do you mean by "inedible"? I've never been served any thing that would have killed me but the spaghetti served at Tony's is horrible. Basically it's luke warm Chef Boyardee can spaghetti. I sent mines back and got a salad. I still can't imagine on what planet would that be considered Italian. Nasty, nasty stuff.

 

[tami82]

The one thing that comes to my mind for the whole week we were there last year was the so called "ice cream" at chef mickeys. It was more like "ice milk" not a creamy texture like you would expect from a halfway decent ice cream and to top it off it was kind of runny. It wasnt edible to me
it was more like fake something you may give the kids as a cheap knockoff but i didnt fall for it. It wasnt good at all. Then again when i was at 1900 Park Fare I didnt care for the food. Im not picky at all but nothing struck my fancy as being great, there was nothing at all that stood out which was kind of odd for me. I wouldnt say inedible but nothing that stood out that would make me want to go back there again.
When i went to the ice cream machine at 1900 I was afraid it would be like Chef Mickeys but it was actually real ice cream and it was the best part of my meal.

 

[suse66]

The only meal we had last year that we didn't care for was at Coral Reef. The children's salmon was burnt and their rice and green beans were glistening with salt. I thought they were exaggerating until I tasted it and promptly spit it out in my napkin. My DH had the tuna and I had the Mahi Mahi. While our meals were edible, there was no flavour at all. I could have been eating cardboard. Overall, it was not an experience we enjoyed, nor would we choose to dine there again when there are so many other choices.

That being said out of 19 meals we ate at Disney last year, that was our only disappointment. Not too bad a ratio for a vacation.

Susan

 

[Shula]

Had a couple dissappointing meals at resort food courts but nothing so bad I couldn't eat it.