Perhaps the world's worst restaurant?

In a poll, I wonder if Applebee’s would be considered the all-time, worst chain restaurant. I know it would have my vote. Every time I’ve ever gone I’ve had a combination of horrible service and bad food and last night was no exception.

You have to realize, for Moe and I to even consider Applebee’s, we had to be pretty far down on the restaurant ladder last night.

So it was, with nothing else left that interested us, for the umpteenth time we said to each other “it has to have improved since last time we were there” and we went into Applebee’s.

The first warning should have been the large table of extremely loud high school girls who were apparently having a girl party and were incredibly obnoxious in the process. The only plus there was that I had something to make fun of while Moe and I were sitting and waiting and we weren’t seated so close that it was overbearing. Though, I pity that poor waitress who had to take care of them.

After about 10 minutes of staring at the menu, we both realized that it was still the same old crappy place with the same old crappy food.

Another few minutes and we finally decided to try the pasta alfredo with broccoli and chicken. I think we both figured that it was something that would be very hard to screw up. We also ended up getting an appetizer just in case the meal was gross.

The honey bbq boneless chicken wings showed up and were basically chicken fingers with a bunch of honey bbq sauce poured over them and barely sticking to them. They were okay, but nowhere near as good as the 99’s.

Then the pièce de résistance, our meals, showed up. I wasn’t sure what to think when I saw a waitress carrying two plain looking bowls towards our table. At first I thought they were desserts for someone else, but then she put them on the table and there they were. Two very large bowls that were maybe filled halfway with pasta with some tomatoes, chicken and broccoli scattered about.

Looking at it, I think we both let out a collective sigh – and that was just from the way that it looked. You’d think from the picture it would have at least looked good when they brought it out.
I removed my half-soaked piece of garlic bread from the bowl (the only side that comes with this dish) and started to eat the pasta. Now I’m no huge alfredo fan, but I know what it’s supposed to taste like and this pasta was nowhere near it. Not even that, the sauce had absolutely no taste at all – I could have been eating cardboard for all I know. I don’t think there was even a complete chicken breast mixed in with the pasta and the pieces that were in there, were made of grizzle and finally the broccoli was hardly cooked at all.

Moe managed to finish more than I did, I couldn’t get through more than half the bowl. Both of us were like “that’s gross” as we pushed the bowls away. When the waitress asked if we wanted to take the stuff home, we were both like “NO.”

I just wonder how such a horrible place stays in business. No matter the location or the meal, it’s just never good, it’s never even really acceptable at that rate. You would think over the years it would at least get marginally better, but no, from what I see, the place has stayed as bad, or gotten worse over time.

Just goes to show you that most people don’t care about quality – they get their big plate of tasteless, bland food and they are perfectly happy with themselves.

You can read more about my horrible Applebee's experiences in the review I wrote at Epinions.