Once upon a time, just across the street from the Happiest Place On Earth, stood quite possibly the Saddest Place on Earth. Captain Kidd’s Family Dining was an all-you-can-eat buffet located for many years at 1550 Harbor Blvd, Anaheim, CA directly across the street from the main entrance to the Disneyland Resort; possibly the most eligible piece of commercial real estate in Orange County, if not the entire west coast. And friends, it was nasty in there. Captain Kidd’s was notorious among regular parkgoers for having the grossest, dirtiest, clammiest, heat-lampiest, understaffediest, most generally unpleasant dining experience in the Anaheim resort district, if not in all of Southern California.

With its “Spanish Fortress”-esque architecture, complete with fake cannons, bandana-clad hostesses, and fake barrels and crate all around, you might think someone was trying to cash in on the popularity of its neighbor’s beloved Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. In this you would almost certainly be right. What had initially been a Chinese restaurant, then a pancake house, reopened in 2003– the same year the first of Disney’s cinematic adaptations of that beloved ride graced screens everywhere.

Lured in by the promise of more and cheaper food than they would ever get on Disney property (for most of its almost two decades of life, Captain Kidd’s advertised its price as a mere $8.99), countless thousands of vacationers and locals soldiered on through cold, watery food, burnt desserts, and near-constant health code violations to stuff their gob at the Captain’s fine establishment. At the time of its final closure it sported an unenviable 1.8 star rating on Yelp. Guidebooks trashed it. Locals dubbed it the worst restaurant in town. Disney fan forums made a meme of it. But through it all, the Captain weathered the storm even as he spoiled many a vacation with toxic chicken nuggets, poisonous ribs, and suspicious spaghetti.

But without its usual influx of tourists too ignorant, or perhaps just too innocent, to know to give it a wide berth, America’s foulest dining experience could not maintain. On April 27, 2021, Captain Kidd’s closed its doors for the final time, undergoing significant renovations before being reborn in the summer of 2022 under new management (though with the building itself still under the ownership of the Flowers family) as a Day of the Dead-themed Mexican restaurant and cantina.

Farewell, Captain. Wind at your back, wherever ye sail– that we might never smell your fishy ham or fuzzy green mac and cheese again. This article isn’t a Let’s Read Old Menus, but you could think of it as a sort of dress rehearsal for my eventual return to that series.

And while this has been decidedly unappetizing, if you’d like to participate in a much more special meal, the yearly Avocado Remote Seder is tomorrow night, Sunday, April 28 at 8 PM EST/5 PM PST. For more information please see the dedicated thread.