Top 20 Come Dine with Me Fails

Starting off with a couples’ edition, Angela was one of those people who claims they’re telling it like it is, but actually, they’re being painfully rude. She was horrendous all week, nitpicking everyone and even, on one night, demanding the hosts clean a fresh glass for her because she’d spotted a fingerprint with her magnifying glass. She took a keen dislike to Sam specifically, though, ribbing her at every opportunity. Sam retaliated, as anyone would, but Angela clearly started it. By the end of the week, even her partner Dave of seventeen years was saying he’d seen a new side to her since joining the competition. Somehow, the rudeness paid off, and they ended up winning.

It can be tricky to make ice cream from scratch, especially if you forget to whisk the yolks properly and accidentally turn your ice cream into scrambled eggs. Did they start again? No, of course not; this is “Come Dine with Me”, not “Bake Off”. They fixed the botched ice cream by simply pouring it through a sieve to remove the lumps and called it a day, wrapping it in pastry, jam, and deep frying it before serving. Though they went to all that trouble, they were still called out for buying the pastry instead of making it themselves. Luckily, it went down a treat, but it was very nearly revolting.

Chocolate mousse is a difficult dish to turn vegan because it requires eggs to get that airy texture. To make it vegan, you need a different binding agent, and on this week’s competition, she went with avocado. It’s not that weird of a recipe and avocados are often used, but it didn’t go well. She used four entire avocados, which meant that the taste of avocado was overpowering. Despite adding a massive amount of cocoa powder to get that chocolatey taste, not to mention maple syrup and almond milk, it still tasted of avocadoes covered in chocolate. Tasting in the kitchen she thought it was horrendous, as did all the guests.

How hard can it be to pull off a fantastic night with a Mexican menu? Well, harder than you think if you go out of your way to cook more obscure dishes that British lovers of Mexican food may not know. All the ingredients he added were in a traditional mole poblano recipe – onion, garlic, chocolate, banana, chili – but it didn’t come together on the day. The heat was the main issue, though, with Adam throwing in eight chilis and adding plenty of chili powder, too. The contestants couldn’t get it down, let alone enjoy any of the other flavours he’d added. After all that, he microwaved a packet of pre-spiced rice for his guests. “Mole Poblano” = https://youtu.be/kwHYmywMpGg?t=1

When it comes to Indian food, you don’t necessarily think of the bhajis being the most troublesome. Not so for this contestant, who just couldn’t be bothered to make the onion bhajis for his starter himself. He claimed that this was because he’d prepared his menu at short notice, though, calling up one of his friends to drop some round. He did make the rosti, but apparently, it tasted awful. They kept criticising him for how he hadn’t bothered to make the bhajis, which are relatively simple, but he didn’t take this well. He went off on one about how he’d chosen bhajis because he wanted to EAT bhajis, not because he wanted to MAKE them.

If you thought Angela was obnoxious, wait until you meet Heather, who remains one of the show’s most infamous contestants. All week, she was convinced that she was easily going to win, and that nobody else had a chance against her. But unfortunately, having the best menu is only part of how you win on “Come Dine with Me”; if you’re a rude so-and-so, people aren’t going to give you high marks regardless. Mostly, she was angry at fellow contestant Zaira, even though Zaira only came in third and didn’t win the money either. She ranted and raved and eventually left the room. She was persuaded to return and finish reading out the scores, though. “Zaira” = Same as “Zara”, it’s NOT like “Zyra”

This couple were from Zimbabwe and wanted to expand the palettes of the guests by making a traditional pudding, nhopi, or pumpkin soup. It’s a very thick, sweet treat often with added peanut butter, but it turned out to be the wrong time of year. Instead of pumpkin, they substituted it for sweet potato, which was a terrible mistake. They covered it in squirty cream and took it out, and it went down like a lead balloon. Sweet potato just wasn’t comparable to pumpkin, which we’re sure would have been far nicer. If you’re ever making nhopi at home, definitely don’t risk changing the pumpkins for anything else. “Zimbabwean Nhopi” = https://youtu.be/WK4LTxzRSOY?t=5

Who’d say no to a big plate of seafood tagliatelle? A lot of people, probably, if the “seafood” component turned out not to be prawns or clams, but sardines. David grilled his sardines and plated them up for people to enjoy alongside their tapas – but a lot of them didn’t even want to try the fish. Mark almost managed to get away with not eating his, hiding it underneath his pasta. Eventually he was goaded into it, but this was a bad move. It turned out that he didn’t like sardines and couldn’t even swallow it, nearly vomiting at the dinner table in a highly dramatic moment. That’s what happens if you eat fish without deboning it.

If there’s one thing you need to remember when you’re cooking chicken, it’s to make sure you don’t serve it raw. Edith and Martin didn’t get the memo, though, plating up their prawn-fried rice with a side of chicken without checking that it was cooked all the way through. It wasn’t just a BIT raw, it was VERY raw, practically still clucking, and definitely not safe to eat. Apparently, the prawns and rice, which were the main part of the dish, tasted good enough, but that hazardous chicken really puts a downer on the starter. They should get someone out to check if their oven needs replacing ASAP.

Like Angela and Sam, these two were a match made in hell, and spent the entire week needling each other. Watching the full episode, though, and you’ll start to realise that perhaps Peter’s legendary outburst at the end didn’t come completely out of nowhere. Though he wasn’t the most popular, Jane spent the whole week insulting him, including telling him right away that he was arrogant and that she didn’t like him. After seeing all that, the biggest fail was probably that the others actually voted for Jane to win, when we don’t think either of them deserved it. Today, Peter Marsh lives in near total obscurity and rarely talks about his “Come Dine with Me” tirade.

It’s as much about the food as it is about the host, which is why it was taken so badly when Tina revealed that almost all of her food was shop-bought. Even the one thing she did try to make from scratch, the flatbreads, turned out worse than she would have liked, so she got some from a packet. The ruse was uncovered when she was quizzed on exactly how she made everything and where she sourced the food from. Bizarrely, Tina defends herself by saying it was difficult to cook because she’d injured her foot. At least she made the pavlova herself, even if the curry was a failure.

Competitive bodybuilder Rob decides to be ambitious and make Thai Tom Yum Soup from scratch. Unfortunately, it’s clear the recipe has taken a turn as soon as he opens the pot: the noodles have absorbed all of the actual “soup”, leaving a bowl of mushy pasta and chicken for them all to eat. Rob can’t even blag it and say it’s supposed to be that way because Janine has been to Thailand and recognizes that this is a disaster. He gets some credit for trying something new and making it from scratch, but a cooking competition with a cash prize isn’t the best place to experiment in the kitchen.

Sophie and Lucas theme their menu on how looks can be deceiving, and they do this by serving up the weirdest dishes possible – in the hope that they’ll still taste great once the guests tuck in. Though nothing they serve is remotely normal, the Cherry Cola chicken wings take the cake. Sweet chicken definitely isn’t a bad idea and can be done well, but using Cherry Cola? And she doesn’t stop there – she adds hot sauce and maple syrup to the mix before she throws the chicken in. They also cook a roly-poly with cheese custard and bacon, if the menu wasn’t gross enough already.

While serving up too little food is a sure-fire way to lose some points, it’s not often guests are given way too much. Natsai decided to change all that on her night, by serving up outrageously huge portions of exotic meat. She starts with a thick fish soup with an entire shrimp on the side and an octopus on top then moves on to a “Lion King” themed main course. Simba didn’t find his way onto the table, but rich cuts of kangaroo, zebra and alpaca did. Maybe if she’d served just one type of meat, or smaller taster plates with the same variety, it would have gone down a bit better.

Craig insists that serving up sushi rolls on the belly of an almost-naked person is the traditional way it should be eaten – but it didn’t go down well with the guests. Sushi is a bold dish to serve on the best of days, let alone if you abandon the plates in favour of a teenager brought in off the street. Though they did eat some of the sushi rolls, the guests made no secret of how unpleasant the experience was in the talking heads. Even if you like sushi though, sweaty, hairy sushi rolls are enough to put you off for life.

Nothing goes right for Claire’s main course. She decides to cook steak and asks the guests exactly how they like it – and just to be awkward, one of them decides they want theirs done blue. But even if everyone had wanted their steaks well done, it still wouldn’t have gone well. After cooking her steaks in the oven she moves them into the microwave to finish. Even the chips don’t come out right, as she partially cooks them in the oven then shoves them into her wok to fry them up – using her dirty oven glove instead of an actual utensil. After all that, the chips are still underdone.

Ice cream floats are far more common in the US than the UK, though that’s just one reason why this dessert goes so badly. In Glasgow, Brian and Victoria decide to put a Scottish twist on the dish by making it with Irn-Bru, the country’s favourite soft drink. It’s not necessarily the Irn-Bru that leads to disaster, however; the ice cream is far from frozen and sinks to the bottom of the glasses. What’s served is a sloshy, orange mess none of the guests know what to do with. Unluckily for them, points aren’t given for ambition – the entire night was a failure.

Annie loves sausages, and she wants everybody to know. She makes her sausages from scratch, which is definitely impressive, but she doesn’t know when to stop. The guests are already sick of sausages by the main course, but there’s one last surprise for them: sausage trifle. That’s right, it’s a trifle with jelly, cream and custard, and then some fresh sausages in there for good measure. The guests – and viewers – can’t cope with the sight of a sausage in a trifle. To their credit, they do actually taste it, but there are some flavours that should never go together.

Pets at the dinner table is never a good idea, no matter how big a part of your family your animal is. This is especially true if your pet is an exotic animal many people are frightened of, like Claire’s pet corn snake Fluffy. Claire lets the family snake out to roam across the table. Even if nobody was scared of snakes though, they can carry salmonella, so it’s not advised to let one around your food. To make matters worse though, the snake ends up doing his business right there on the table. The chaos doesn’t stop once Fluffy leaves, however; Claire also ends up dropping all the plates on the floor.

It’s not entirely clear whether Lee knew he was taking part in a competition and needed to charm his guests to win, because he seems to go out of his way to host the worst night possible. He doesn’t even start cooking until after the guests have already shown up, doing almost no prep during the day. This means that all the food is served hours late, with the guests stuck in the living room having to make their own entertainment. Maybe this could be forgiven if the food had actually been good, but it was awful. In the end, Lee walks home with a score of 7 out of 30, the lowest in the show’s history. Let us know in the comments if you know anyone who’s been on “Come Dine with Me”.