The worst food I ever had to eat

Milk puddings are my nemesis - just the sight of a rice pudding makes me nauseous.
There is a " delicacy" , exclusive to Kent, I believe, served regularly in school, called Gypsy Tart.
It is a pastry base topped with evaporated milk boiled with brown sugar.. utterly revolting, but remembered with warm affection by many, I understand.

Haggis - completely inedible in my book.

And my mother's standby when short of money at the end of the quarter: fried eggs with a slice of fried Spam.

Our school dinners were cooked at school and thus quite tasty, although the puddings were far far better than the meat courses, but no child objects to that.

However, on one unforgettable summer day, a classmate found a boild wasp in her portion of mince!

This I believe is the reason a put a lid on any dish left standing out, at any time of the year.

Usually I ate everything, but I have vivid memories of some very fatty meat at school lunch when I was ten, which I flatly refused to eat. This was postwar Britain, about 1950, and good food was not plentiful. I was told I had to sit there until I ate it. I sat there all afternoon, steadfastly refusing. They couldn’t keep me there all night, so they had to let me go in the end. I won!

When I was a student in Liverpool, I lodged in Birkenhead, which is on the other side of the Mersey, and caught the underground train to college.
Sometimes, our landlady served black puddings with our cooked breakfast, which I hated. If I was lucky enough to smell them cooking before I went down to breakfast, I would put an empty tights bag in my handbag in readiness and surreptiously transfer the black puddings into it. I would then dump them under the seat on the undergound train and often wondered what whoever found them later made of it! I still do not eat black puddings!

On teaching practice and eating with the children we were served calves heart. I was expected to set an example and eat everything so I forced it down, but felt nauseous all afternoon.

We stayed in a hotel in Harrogate for a couple of days a few years ago. The hotel had certainly seen better days, but I was charmed by a glass domed ceiling in what I think was the ballroom and the dining room showed signs of gracious living. But the poor building needed so much love and care. We stayed there as part if a coach trip.

The food😮😮😮😮😮 I have never, ever tasted anything like it. It was simply ghastly. Even a poached egg tasted very peculiar.

Had gone to have lunch with 2 journalist friends of many years to a new Asian Restaurant and the Asian noodles were horrifying and terribly dried out.

We were very surprised.

Never returned.

The only other complaint I have are the Industrialised Croissants served in the large amount of Spanish bars.

Being French, do not eat Croissants in Spain !!

Just remembered hospital food from when I was 17 and was in for 6 weeks after a motorcycle accident. The first hospital in Reading (since closed) served such awful food I lost a couple of stone in weight. My grandmother brought eggs in for the nurses to boil for my breakfast and other relatives brought in takeaways and sandwiches. I was in that hospital for four weeks. I was in the second hospital for two weeks and food was infinitely better. My mum worked as a nurse there, but I don’t think that had anything to do with it.

Stir fried duck feet with chips proffered by a Chinese friend, for breakfast. I went out & bought a McDonald's breakfast instead . I think she was a bit upset as it's a delicacy but the grey rubbery webbed feet in a wok made me feel a bit nauseous. I apologised.

Another hospital story from me - my last meal on the evening before I was due to have my tonsils out the next day was hot tripe in white sauce...ugh!!!
The hospital was a very grim, very spooky Victorian building known as the Infirmary and that horrible meal matched the surroundings perfectly!
AND I didn't get any post op ice cream.
I've felt sorry for my poor little 11 year old self ever since.

The worse meals I have every had were in France, Brittany. Staying in a B&B with evening meal... Absolutely awful the final thing was the dead Bluebottle I found in the Cuscus.. When I told them, I just got a shrug, and was asked did I want any more?

Kangaroo. I just don’t like it and neither do my cats. They know if it is mixed in with their tinned food. Fussy pussies.

Macaroni cheese as made by my mum. You could build a garden wall with it.

I don't remember school dinners being very unpleasant but I've never been a picky eater.

The worst thing I had which was inedible was a falafel in Israel when we were backpacking back in the 1970s. The kosher food was bad enough but edible (we were there in the EAster holidays so there were many restrictions according to Jewish tradition - no unleavened bread etc). So we would often prefer food cooked by Arabs, who weren't obliged to keep those rules. But this falafel, from a street vendor in Nazareth, was revolting. I haven't been ab!e to look at humus since.

To be fair it was nicely cooked,but the battered and deep fried bull's testicle and spinal cord I had in Italy in 1970 probably takes some beating. I swallowed them whole!

In hospital, as a young teenager in the 1960s, my evening meal was put in front of me. It looked like a pale pinkish slop and I had no idea what it was. But, as it was the only meal I was going to get, I ate it. It was absolutely vile in both taste and texture. It was only afterwards that a nurse informed me that it had been sweetbreads. And then she explained what they were. not envy

My main memory of junior school is being forced to tapioca milk pudding, sitting there until the dinner ladies went home.

Like earlier posters, the school dinners sent out in huge metal trays from a central depot.
Don't remember soapy potatoes, but the puddings were vile. They used dried egg (decades after rationing) & the sponges were bright yellow, tasted of egg and served with that jam the consistency of snot with no fruit in it. If it wasn't sponge it was tapioca milk pudding, that frog-spawny one, not that appetising if its creamy and hot, but this was watery and lukewarm. The baked beans too weren't seasoned at all & not like Heinz!
No-one was allowed to bring packed lunch, the one good thing was it made me think my Mum was a brilliant cook...

Jane43

At grammar school the dinners were usually pretty bad, I remember one dish called Beef Olives, it was a slice of beef rolled up with stuffing inside, the beef was dry and hard and the stuffing was horrible.

Oh we have beef olives fairly often - they're always lovely. I like them stuffed with haggis or black pudding for a change.

Like others have said , school dinners in the 60's cooked elsewhere and shipped over to our school, the one I remember was liver, grey with a layer of scum coating and tubes coming out of it 😝 I will not eat liver to this day.
I loved the beef mince and gravy pie and the sponge and pink custard though.

I agree Magenta the food served in hospital when I have been an inpatient has been awful.
At a time when your appetite needs tempting it was inedible.
It is years since I have been in so I can’t comment on it now.

Hospital food.

At grammar school the dinners were usually pretty bad, I remember one dish called Beef Olives, it was a slice of beef rolled up with stuffing inside, the beef was dry and hard and the stuffing was horrible.

I remember many years ago I was in the army in Malaya as it then was. I became close to a Chinese family and I was invited to a huge celebratory dinner outside. There may have been about 50 guests and I, as an honour. was allowed to serve the soup. I used a large ladle and put the right amount in bowl after bowl until all but me had been served. Hey, I had been brought up to serve myself last, so I did.

So far I had been scooping off the top and as a reward, I decided to bottom scoop. Up came the ladle, sitting in which was a huge chicken head, peering at me in what seemed to be a disgusted and resentful fashion. I promptly dunked it all back and took my scoop from the top. The food was delicious but that rooster head, complete with comb, has never totally faded from my memory.

A sea urchin omelette in Spain was a taste I had no intention of acquiring.