LTHForum.com

LTH,

Not the worst thing you've eaten in your life, or even in the past ten years, but lately, as in the last month or two*. Me, it's mini bagel dogs from Wolfy's. Now this is not a trash of Wolfy's, I like the natural casing hot dogs, grilled Polish, condiments and fries are fine, but the mini bagel dogs, a recent special, were bad, not inedible bad, but verging on.

It wasn't the bagel dogs fault, they can be tasty if properly prepared, but these puppies were overcooked, I suspect microwave, to the point where the mini-meat was shriveled and dry and the bagel coat was more suited to covering a baseball than hot dog, mini or otherwise. Worst of all, if memory serves, they were expensive, over $5 for 5 mini-bagel dogs w/fries. I would have returned them, but I was almost home before tasting.

Enjoy
Gary

Wolfy's
2734 W Peterson Ave
Chicago, IL 60659
773-743-0207

Let's stay away from accusations of food poisoning, critters in the food/restaurant and/or anything that would best be brought to the attention of the proper authorities as per LTHForum's Posting Guidelines.

_________________
Sauce on the side, always, implied, axiomatic..........never a doubt, BBQ sauce without.

Low & Slow

I've been lucky enough to have eaten some pretty good food lately...even in places that I would not have expected it. However, the Italian Beef I tried during the 47th St-Athon at John's G.A.R. has to stand out as the worst thing I have had in the last couple of months.

_________________
Steve Z.
Photographer/Pseudojournalist

"The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook." - Julia Child

Biscuits and "gravy" at Mitchells on Clybourn. I had 45 minutes to kill yesterday morning and I wasn't in the mmod for an omelet. The eggs were unoffensive, expecially with some Cholula on them but the gravy. It was an unholy marriage of elementary school paste, water and flour. They were blended into a homogeneous mass without the benefit of any heat source I could discern. A full tablespoon of pepper did nothing to help them and I left the plate with less than five bites taken.

I took a long time to get them and the waitress disappeared after she took the order so I told the person up front. He started out defensive but offered me more food to compensate. By that time I was running late and the idea of more food from them was not appealing so I cut my losses and left.

Mitchells
1953 N. Clybourn
Chicago

_________________
I used to think the brain was the most important part of the body. Then I realized who was telling me that.

Probably the thing that repulsed me most was, I think it was the barbacoa at Don Cuco's on the 47th-a-Thon, some other things were good but that was like negative flavor, meat mush that was sucking flavor out of dishes up to ten feet away. I don't think anybody took more than a bite. (But otherwise-- the 47th-a-Thon was great! No, really!)

But returning to Biscuits and Gravy, a noble dish, I stopped in at a diner-y place on the far northwest side somewhere, I can't find the address, has a nice old sign that says Supper Cup, however the menus inside say Super Cup, a similar issue of seemingly minor but intractable mistranslation from English to Polish-American seemed to afflict the actual food, I ordered B&G, I know, I should have known better, it's like ordering pierogi in Mississippi, but I ordered them. Biscuits were buff pads, pretty terrible, but worse yet, the gravy was made with what was basically Italian sausage, fennel and red pepper flavors instead of country sausage flavors. It suggested a really horrible idea for a pizza (New Pizza Hut Country Style Pizza-cuits-N-Gravy!)

Now can I admit that what was NOT the worst thing I've had in the last month was... McDonald's new Asian salad? Too sweet dressing, of course, but otherwise, not terrible at all.

_________________
Watch Sky Full of Bacon, the Chicago food HD podcast!
New episode: Soil, Corn, Cows and Cheese
Watch the Reader's James Beard Award-winning Key Ingredient here.

A mac & cheese I made about three weeks ago. The roux broke, and I couldn't save it. (Can you? Or should you just start over again?) I rationalized it was still all the same ingredients and chowed down, but there were thoughts of pizza in the interim.

_________________
--
Never toss pizza dough in a kitchen with a ceiling fan.

arrugula and prosciutto salad at Terragusto, confirming what I already knew: order pasta, pasta, and more pasta at Terragusto and ignore the waiter's sermon about traditional Italian dining as well as the rest of the menu. The arrugula was old and wilted, the prosciutto was oily and bland, and the whole thing was piled in an unattractive heap.

I was probably jaded by the previous night's perfectly fresh arrugula with great bite to it, served with very fine prosciutto di parma and arranged simply but attractively by the staff at Spacca Napoli.

Frontera brand frozen BBQ chicken pizza (bought at Costco in a package of 3). Although we usually order pizza from Tomatohead, Salerno's or Pompeii, I thought I would keep these in the freezer for my husband who can't cook. I came home a few nights ago from a great meal at LTH with a friend to find him taking his first bite of the aforementioned convenience food. Crust like cardboard, very little flavor in the sauce and scant ingredients mean we're stuck with two more of these things that will rot in the freezer.

being from costco, can't you still return it?

Frozen turkey sausage stromboli from Trader Joe's. It had Chef Boyardee qualities at 5 times the cost. The second one was filed in the kitchen garbage can.

Mike,

You are thinking of Super Cup on Central Ave. My in-laws used to live near there and it was a once in a blue moon breakfast stop. It's been 8-9 years, but I remember big portions of straight ahead diner food and a clientele age that averaged out around 65.

Enjoy,
Gary

Super Cup Restaurant
4800 N Central Ave
Chicago, IL 60630
773-282-1525

_________________
Sauce on the side, always, implied, axiomatic..........never a doubt, BBQ sauce without.

Low & Slow

The cherry soy "ice cream" I mistakenly grabbed from Trader Joe's yesterday. My three year old: "daddy, this ice cream is yucky, there's something wrong with the milk part." Trader Joe's products are bipolar, in my experience.

Lamb from a local Pakistani place (which shall remain nameless). This lamb had been marinated so long, it had the consistency of sawdust suspended in aspic. I shudder even thinking about it.

Is it the Double Rainbow Cherry Chip Soy Cream? We always have that in our house because we find that it approximates ice cream incredibly well.

You can return any TJ's product, no questions asked.

Best,
Michael

That was my exact experience with the turkey sausage stromboli. Ate one (which was awful), threw the second away...

_________________
"Ah, lamentably no, my gastronomic rapacity knows no satiety" - Homer J. Simpson

It was not Double Rainbow, but some other brand. Anyway, we still didn't know (actual as opposed to constructive knowledge) it was soy cream when the kid tasted it, so the close-but-no-cigar approximation of bad ice cream still left a wide margin for speculation about the somewhat strange taste and texture. Then I looked at the carton. I guess I should pay more attention to labeling.

Well, if you have a continued interest in soy ice cream, I highly suggest trying the Double Rainbow brand. At TJ's they carry Mango Vanilla and Cherry Chip. I'm very partial to the cherry. The combination of my wife's severe ice cream addiction and her congenitally high cholesterol makes us partial to keeping soy cream in the house and saving ice cream trips for a special treat.

On a side note, I have tried to get TJ's to carry more flavors, but they declined. I contacted Double Rainbow about finding more flavors, and they directed me to their local distributor who can sell them to me by the case, which I have no interest in.

Best,
Michael

I also tried to eat this. Awful.

Pepper and egg sandwich at Roma's on Cicero was also pretty awful.

_________________
I'm not Angry, I'm hungry.

Michael,

There aren't any other upscale / health food stores in the area that carry the Double Rainbow ice cream? I'm surprised that a Whole Foods or Wild Oats Market wouldn't have it....

_________________
-- Nora --
"Great food is like great sex. The more you have the more you want." ~Gael Greene

Remember, we're not talking about ice cream here, but soy, non-dairy ice cream.

I've checked both of those for other flavors of DR Soy Cream with no luck. Accoring to DR themselves, my options are either TJ's or the local distributor. If anyone is interested in the distributor's contact info, I can provide it.

Best,
Michael

Absolutely everything at the Wyndham Hotel Easter Sunday buffet in Lisle.

Please don't ask. It wasn't my idea.

_________________
-Dom
www.skilletdoux.com

The past couple times I've ordered pasta from Metropolis Rotisseria, it's been oily, bland, and lukewarm. Their chicken and side dishes usually hit pretty close to the mark, but their pasta seems excited about failure.

If you can find Soy Delicious Purely Decadent "ice cream," it is jawdroppingly good--both the Peanut Butter Zig Zag and Vanilla converted my Haagen Daz loving husband, at least momentarily.

Their corporate website lists Treasure Island, Whole Foods and Dominick's as Chicago outlets.

Oh man, you guys are killing me!
I actually eat these often. They are one of my few favorite frozen convenience foods.

Stevez, I had but a pinch of your Italian beef sandwich and concur with assurance that it was indeed bad...so bad, in fact, that it veered toward evil.

Hammond

_________________
“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

Funny you should say that, because the worst thing I've eaten recently was also a pepper and egg sandwich- in my case, delivered by Pompei on Sheffield. I know they have their detractors, but in the past, I'd always been a big fan of their pepper and egg. This one was dry, flavorless, and just BAD. I'll take partial blame for the lukewarm-to-cold temperature, because I will buy the argument that a pepper and egg isnt' designed for delivery (though i've had them delivered before w/good results), but the rest? Yech. Even adding ample giardinera couldn't save it.

Your post made me laugh out loud; Probably resulting in my co-workers thinking I'm crazy. I laughed a few times in fact...

One particular shrimp from Lawrence Fisheries. Deep fried playdough with an iodine center.

Also lemon cake topped with Edy's french silk ice cream at my moms house. Not terrible, or even bad, on there own, but a truly horrible combination. (I thought the cake was "yellow" not lemon.)

We tried to have dinner at Mitsuwa on Thursday , but they close the foodcourt at 7:00.
We ended up at the Japanese Bowl House on Algonquin in Rolling Meadows. I ordered a California roll which was ok but served in a large salad bowl , very odd. I tried the chef special , one shrimp tempura that tasted like it was deep fried in very old oil, salmon with the tail on that was very fatty and Korean pcs of beef that was pre cooked and dry and a couple pcs of tuna and salmon, did not taste fresh. My husband had the tonkatsu , large portion but it wasn't panko bread crumbs. I can't remember the last time I left most of my meal on the plate. Was never asked if everything was ok or if we needed anything. It was the worst dinner we had out in a very long time. Has anyone tried Nikko's Japanese Restaurant down the block from Mitsuwa , I was sorry we chose the Bowl House instead.

At one time Bowl House was really good... But this was back when they were on Arlington Heights and Golf. Once they moved it seems as of the quality had completely tanked.

The best sushi in the area is a closely held secret that I am going to share with the board. I found out about it after going to Sushi Station one night after they first opened... I was complaining to the manager about the quality of the food and he said they were not geared toward the sushi purist, they were targeting the person who wanted a lot for their money (by the way, to be fair they really seemed to have since changed focus, and the food there is much better now... When they first opened they didn't even have a trained sushi chef, just people in the back who would place the pre-cut fist onto pre-made rice balls).

Anyways, he told me about Tensuke in Elk Grove. It is a small grocery store (no, not Mitsuwa) that is owned by True World that has a full service sushi counter in the back (with all of four tables to sit at), sells packaged sushi from a small case, and sells fillets of sushi grade fish. The manager of Sushi Station told me that is where he grandmother buys sushi/fish when they want to serve it to their own family. Well, good enough for me!

Anyways, their food is absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend going there if you can get over the whole True World connection. It is on the corner of Arlington Heights rd and Higgins in the same shopping center as the Elk Grove Bowl. The sushi is the case is ok, but if the counter is open, order it fresh. Also, make sure not to miss their home made "hot" or "mild" spicy sauce which is absolutely to die for.

Would be great to have an address on this place please.