After going more than a year without visiting any horrific restaurants, I had hit two in two months. I’m not even going to introduce the Longwood Family Restaurant with any pleasantries like I always try to. This place sucked, plain and simple. I might have been able to find better cuisine out of the vending machine in my hotel. I laughed at the line on the bottom of the menu saying how they offer catering for large parties. Shit. I wouldn’t let this place feed their scraps to my cat. Despite recommendations of several good restaurants in and around Kennett Square, we decided to go to this trash bin instead. Why? I don’t know. It seems every vacation I take has one restaurant that was a bomb. This would classify as our Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and whatever is going to start World War III rolled into one.

I wanted something relatively healthy after a meat-heavy lunch at a place in West Chester that didn’t suck, so I went with the veggie panini (pictured above). Hell, I get them all the time back home. Maybe some spinach, roasted red peppers, onion, and cheese. Grill it up and that’s it. That’s all I want. I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular. What I got was this: the “roasted” red peppers were there, right out of a can, along with a bunch of Chinese stir-fry favorites including broccoli, carrots, snow peas, water chestnuts, and those tiny little corns you find in lo mein. There were even pearl onions to boot. I’m not guessing here, I’m telling you: the guy who wears the white jacket in the back microwaved a bag of frozen vegetables, threw it on the bread, gave it a press for about five seconds, and viola. Done. Oh, don’t forget the cheddar cheese. There was a little bit of that slime there too.

My friend had breakfast for dinner. Two eggs sunnyside up which were almost burned and toast stronger than a Kevlar vest. They have a full service bar, and so I also ordered a $3.75 gin and tonic. Superb price, can’t go wrong…right? Well, they gave me a lemon wedge instead of a lime. I was actually so spellbound by how bad everything was. The kind of experience you just have to laugh about rather than be angry. I wasn’t even going to say anything, actually. I even pondered ordering a slice of carrot cake (which he ordered before the meal and was pretty good—it probably fell off a truck in front of the restaurant) but then I decided this slum wouldn’t get any more of my money.

It was when I was paying the bill that it got uproariously funny. The manager/cashier asked how it was. I couldn’t resist. All I said was, “Not so good”. Nothing else. No asking for a comp on the meal, no further complaint. He looked at the bill, “You had the veggie panini?” I said yes and he goes, “Oh yeah, that’s pretty simple.” I couldn’t contain myself, “Yeah, I guess you get simple when you take a frozen Shop Rite bag of stir fry vegetables and dump it out on two pieces of bread.” That’s when this nimrod looks up from the register and says, “Well, it’s actually US Foods, but something like that.” Thanks.

I’m going to do something I never thought I would do, and award the Longwood Family Restaurant a 1 out of 5 stars. I don’t think there’s anything left to say. If I saw a rat walking around in there I would usher it to safety before it had a chance to eat anything cooked out of that kitchen. Thank you for a wonderful experience. You guys aren’t qualified to clean the bathrooms at McDonald’s.

This review was originally posted here. The Longwood Family Restaurant is located at 938 East Baltimore Pike in Kennet Square, Pennsylvania.