What is the worst meal you have had in the military? What was the best?

SN Vivien Roman-Hampton So long two part response.
The WORST
Oct 1997 I PCSed to Alaska, left family in SC, went by myself to set up new home.
Thanksgiving meal served in 97 at Fort Wainright was awesome.. The atmosphere, the command climate and presence, and the food,,,all superior. So SSG Marquez decides when his family gets there Dec 24th (yes my wife, two young boys , two dogs flew in to remote Alaska on Christmas eve ) When they get there, we would have Christmas dinner at the DFAC....as it was awesome for the last Holiday.. Leave BEQ on the 25th, pack into my Bronco and roll to the DFAC...and its closed..ok, consolidated into the the other one on post, no problem,.... roll to that one and is almost empty.. no fan fair, no leadership, no big spread..seems in Alaska, no one goes home to the lower 48 for Thanksgiving but EVERYONE goes home for Christmas so no big meal is done... Only thing we can find open in Fairbanks to have diner is...Denney's...WORST Christmas meal ever.

The BEST
Thanksgiving 2007, deployed to Iraq, Im the company 1SG...On one of the daily patrols one of my platoons noticed a local had turkeys ..we bartered and bought 4 of them..
Made pens from HESCO's and we fed them what we could for 6 weeks.... We are in a patrol base we built from a farmers house and field.., the farthermost from a FOB of any US element in country..in a place no US forces have been stationed in many years.
I had three cooks assigned after we got the PB built up enough to have that level or support...the food service Sergeant refused to cook "them nasty birds" at first, but I ummm, convinced him it was a better idea to do as i asked then the consequences....and besides we compromised, we would cook them he just had to serve them...lol
He capitulated, we had "fresh" Turkey for dinner on Thanks Giving 2007 I had more then 225 SM on that company patrol base.. those 4 Turkeys fed..........about 90 people....LOL.. Luckily the DFAC SGT figured that out and had plan B. He fed all of us in style...... but those 4 scrawny birds they were more than just meat.... The boys found them, bought them, took care of them, fed them, and when it was time killed and prepped them for the cooking, then many of them to include the CO at the time, a new member of the team after a COC in country....... Those birds and a dedicated DFAC team made a very memorable Thanksgiving , best ever (away from home)

SN Vivien Roman-Hampton One of the best was a steak dinner that I had in Boot Camp. I volunteered to give blood, and was provided with a great steak dinner by Navy personnel who treated me with respect. It was a welcome break from Boot Camp, and for a little while, I was not a Maggot. This was my first experience donating blood, and I have since donated blood over 150 times. As mentioned by SGT Philip Roncari , the C rations that we had in Vietnam were bad except for the fruit cocktail and pecan cake roll.

The worst - veggie omelet MRE. It's literally vomit wrapped in plastic disguised as food.
The best - I think the best was during one of the shop's potluck get togethers. Someone made fresh bacon filled waffles. You could literally smell it down the hall. It made your mouth water. Then someone else brought in a pulled pork plate with a sweet potato sauce and the combination of sweet and spicy was delightful.

As an officer, I seldom ate in a dining facility, a.k.a., mess hall. We did get flight lunches from in-flight kitchens often. The worst were from in-flight kitchens that packed lots of meals in advance and let them sit around for hours and hours. The food was often stale. The best was breakfast at the dining hall at Columbus AFB, MS, in the 1970s. They put out a full spread of meats, eggs (real), sausage gravy, omelets to order, pastries, fruit. If we reported to the flight line before 0700, we were allowed to eat there and often did.

Worst meal? It's a toss up of any of the mystery meats I got in the field with the Marines. The "chicken," the "turkey," the "pork," the "whatever the heck that was," were all shaped the same, and none of them in any type of natural cut.

Another competitor for the worst was the mess hall at SFOR headquarters in Sarajevo in the late 90s. As someone else mentioned already, curry in EVERYTHING. I think I'm still feeling the heartburn effects 20 years later.

Best meal? Anything at the mess hall in Taszar, Hungary while I was deployed for Operation Joint Guard. Spent a week up there from Sarajevo loading vehicles on the rail head to go back to Germany. Hands down the best mess hall I have ever eaten at.

The best was in the mess at Fort Jackson. The Base Commander was supposed to visit our battalion that day so we were served lobster w/spanish rice. My buddy didn't like lobster so I traded her my spanish rice for her lobster! Not bad for basic training!

The worse was any meal at the mess in Fort Dix. Every lunch and dinner meal had some type of noodle soup. Day 1 Noodle soup w/chicken broth, Day 2 they would add some green beans, Day three they would add some carrots and peas (I don't think they've ever added meat to it).

My worst meal, bar none—the one I remember even now, 47 years later—was my very first meal as a new recruit at MCRD San Diego. We’d just spent all night in-processing and had just been marched to the mess hall. I can remember the smell of the recruits (yes, they have a unique smell—the brand-new uniforms, heads shaven, whatever) combined with the smell of the mass-produced food, DI’s yelling at you with about 5 minutes to get it all down; yeah, that was the worst.

Worse C rats - Vietnam
Best steak dinner - AirForce base on return from same

The worst that's easy, the cold spaghetti from C-RATs while a Typhon was hammering Okinawa.

Didn’t complain much about the food... It all was fairly bland due to health reasons. But if I had to boil it down, prolly the box lunch/dinners between Rhein Main and Saudi on the AMC flights! Cannot say I had a best meal. Some DFACs just did a better job at presenting the same stuff. The NCO Academy in Korea did alright with their burgers, but I guess if you consider a handmade burger over a pre-made “the best”, it’s still food. LOL