What's a restaurant you avoid like the plague?

Long John silvers. Not for any particular quality or moral reason, I just don't like fish

There is this franchise in my country called Boston pizza. Decades ago, I am talking in the '80s, it was amazing, but now all of the food is made frozen in Toronto or something and flown in!
The last time I went there (edit for a sit-down meal) it was like 20 years ago almost... I went with a group of eight or nine people, my family. Every single one of us had cold food - like I'm talking "put your finger in the lasagna and it's still ice in the middle cold"
We were not allowed to make any substitutions on our pizza, we couldn't even have toppings taken off.
In complete exasperation at the end of this whole experience, my father asked the server what the hell is going on. Most of the meals were sent back. He sheepishly confessed that every single thing is there frozen, they can't even take toppings off pizza because they're all frozen in a giant block. You get what you get.
This place charges double what any family pizza restaurant would charge.
Just utter garbage.
And the worst thing is, it's kind of become the de facto hangout for people in our city. So you have to go and sit and politely order some piece of shit food that is horrible and choke it down just so you can socialize with people. They can barely even make nachos correctly, they don't have trained cooks on staff
The dingbats in my city do not even understand this is the worst possible food in the restaurant universe, they go and gobble it down with zeal. Mmmm grease

Olive Garden is nasty
- I went there once like maybe 10 years ago or so and I was shocked at how bad it was. Got the lasagna it was straight up Stouffer's. Tasted like garbage. I sent it back. I've never done that in a restaurant before first time in my life. Plus the soup tasted like it came from a can. The whole restaurant is just straight up gross.

Five Guys.
One was opening up near me and my friends were all excited to try it. Paid 14 bucks for a 3 dollar Steak n Shake Burger, a medium drink, and the most limp, bland, and unappealing fries I've ever had, and I've had microwaved frozen fries before.
Never gone back, and I never intend to.
- Five Guy worship is a complete cult. It's pedestrian, boring food that successfully hyped people up to the point they're willing to spend a week of grocery money for a soulless burger and fries. Where I live, for a grown man to have a proper burger and fries at that clown show is like $27 a f'king go after tax

Chick Fil A.
- Fuck yeah bro! Fuck Chick-fil-A. My gay friends still go there and I'm absolutely floored by that!
  
  I still don't understand it. Their chicken is mediocre, at best. And the sauces are all available elsewhere. Same with Raising Cane's, except there the chicken is even blander and reliant on the sauce, which again is a generic mayo and ketchup based fry sauce you can make at home.
  
  Agreed, one of my friends is a trans woman and it blows my mind that she loves Chick-fil-A.
- In my area, Popeyes is so much better too.
  
  Popeyes is great, and consistent. Easily the best chicken sandwich as well, especially the spicy version. I wonder why they don't use the spicy chicken in the spicy version in addition to the spicy sauce. I assume the two throw it off somehow, too much pepper, etc.
  
  I love Popeyes. So damn good.

Chipotle. Got it once and can't forget how much rice was packed into the burrito. Scarred for life..

McDonald's. If you can call that a restaurant

If you define the term "Restaurant" generously, it's McD.

McDonald's.

Burger King - Absolute worst of the whole fast food genre.
- I'll take Burger King over McDonald's any day. I get a craving once in a while that can only be satisfied by their onion rings.
- The last two times I went to Burger King, I ended up throwing up. Two separate locations, multiple years apart. I will never go back.
- Not my favourite but at least they haven't been hit as hard by shrinkflation
- You, me, and more than half the US military. That shit is like the exclusive fast food on every military base everywhere.
  That was my entire childhood experience of fast food
- I haven’t had Burger King in 20 years.
  It was my eighteenth birthday and I had a bad experience
- Same, but with McDonald's.

McDonald's. Worst most overpriced saltiness yet bland ass food.

The Cheesecake Factory is somehow a nationwide tourist trap — go somewhere exciting and then eat at the same overpriced trash faux-destination restaurant you could've eaten at back home.
- I don't understand cheesecake factory. It literally does nothing well. Jack of all trades. They do almost every type of food and yet somehow all of it is bland and boring. It's a nice restaurant for people too afraid to try new food

Any chain restaurant.

Literally all of them. I just go to the grocery store now for food.

I haven't been to a Taco Bell since before Covid started, and I feel pretty good about keeping it that way.
- You don't go to Taco Bell, you end up at Taco Bell.
- Having worked at almost every fast food restaurant, the only thing I can say for Taco Bell is that nothing gets "cooked" in store. Browning a tortilla or heating up a bag of beef or beans really doesn't count.
  I guess technically the cinnamon twists and nacho chips are fried fresh each morning. If you want to recreate the cinnamon twists, those are literally deep fried twisty pasta. It starts out about ⅛" in diameter, and 1" in length, and puffs up in the deep fryer to the big twists. You do need something to press them into the oil, or they will try to jump out like popcorn.

One particular local place: Went to this Chinese buffet (creatively named "Chinese Buffet") and there were cockroaches in the fried rice. Never ate there again.
Chain restaurants: Fuck Olive Garden. The only thing amazing about the place is they somehow managed to fuck up pasta, which is only amazing because it's hard to fuck up pasta.

♻️ https://sh.itjust.works/comment/17369377
Pizza Pizza. My dad was once in change of ordering pizza for a company lunch, and Pizza Pizza cancelled his order without notifying him, leaving him with a roomful of hungry people. When he phoned to ask for an update on the order, they blamed him for not calling to confirm an order he had already placed.
It was probably just that one franchise that was poorly run, but we've tried to avoid the company ever since. I think I've bought pizza from them maybe twice in my life.

Wendy's. Used to be my favorite. Then I moved to a town where they were all really, really awful. But that town had a Rally's, so overall significant upgrade.
- That’s a shame. I like Wendy’s too.
  
  I miss their soup and salad bars
  
  Best fast food nuggies

Panda Express. Like warmed over cans of LaChoy from the 1970s.
- Yeah... while your description is accurate, I'm still gonna eat there. Because sometimes warmed cans of LaChoy just hit that spot.
- My niece suggested this place for lunch today and was quickly shouted down by the rest of the kids here. They know!

Everyone's going low, but Ruth's Chris is the worst fucking restaurant experience I've ever had. And I've been a couple of times, once with family and once because we were given a gift card. Shit apps, shit sides and an acceptable steak for way more money than it should be. The wait staff was creepily servile, like the "how may I pleasure you" that Chick Fil A used to force. And the lights were a cool 5K color temp like I was eating dinner in the parking garage. Fucking garbage.
- We have a restaurant like that in our city called 529 Wellington.
  It's supposed to be a incredibly upscale chef run steakhouse.
  While the old building and decor is wonderful, the dining experience is a complete farce.
  The first thing they do is parade in front of you, several gigantic trays of raw meat, dripping with myoglobin. They want to sell you on how wonderful their meat is. I'm already here fuckface, get that fucking raw meat, which smells like raw meat, away from my table and my date. It's an implicit understanding that if you are charging me $60 for a steak, it's going to be the best mother fucking aged steak around, within reason of course.
  I was looking at this tray of meat and noticing that there was no marbling in any of the cuts. We were already there and we were already going through the whole rigmarole... But I was braced for a bad steak.
  Then, each dish is served separately, so now I'm expected to pay $24 for mashed potatoes and butter. Two heaping tablespoons of mashed potatoes, 2 fronds of dried chives on top. No other flavors except salt. $24. Don't put a scratch of nutmeg or garlic in there or anything just fucking boring potatoes with butter.
  Of course, the steak arrives, and it's predictably like a gym mat. Dense, dry, flavorless as a result. I did not even want to finish eating it.
  My date and I did not even order drinks, and we barely scrambled out of there for $200. I think in today's money it would be a $400 meal.
  For dog shit.
  Now I just go and get a really fatty marbled ribeye steak in the discount bin, for like eight bucks, and it's a hundred times better. Those pretentious steakhouses can go to hell, they are almost uniformly rotten in my experience.
  
  Ha! Gym mat! I can feel the toughness and taste the salt; that is a grim picture you paint.
  My wife and I never really went to steakhouses that often, but now that we can cook a better steak than anyone else, it's once in a blue moon that we go out for one. Marcel in Atlanta is the only place we go for steak and it's an incredible experience. I just want to put that out there so that people know it can be done right, just rarely is.

Chipotle you're likely to get some kind of mass food poison plus the food literally doesn't have flavors anymore. Unless you get one of the salsa then everything just tastes like that. Chicken no flavor, rice no flavor, beans no flavor not even salt.

Chili's. Woody chicken disease.
- I had an absolutely terrible burger at Chili’s. So obviously microwaved. I’m never going back.

Arby's. Like, not even the fries tasted good. The meat sandwich was just insulting.

Any club restaurant that has any form of a dress code. I dress for the occasion, not for dinner.
- Lol what if the occasion is dinner?
  
  As I said: I dress for the occasion. If I'm dressed appropriately for the occasion (I assume everyone else in attendance is too), and the restaurant denies me entry because of what I'm wearing, I'm waking out and going somewhere else.

Whataburger. I've only been there once, in Texas, and they completely DRENCHED our burgers in mustard. It actually looked like they dipped them in the mustard tub.
- I lived in Texas for a number of years and that place is super overrated. I don't think it's the worst place, but ended up disappointed because of all the hype vs what I got. Shake shack was the same to a lesser degree. Still have never had in-and-out.
- I moved to Texas for a job. I decided to try what a burger. The buns were stale and the burger was greasy. The mix of the two resulted in a taste like instant mash potatoes that weren't cooked right... I threw out 3/4 of the burger and found another place to eat.
  Still haven't been back because yuck...

I avoid this one called Pyongyang, for obvious reasons.