Sietsema's Worst Dishes of 2024

Chinese burrata, meat-flavored ice cream, vegan biscuits and gravy, and more

“Strange flavor” burrata is one of the year’s worst dishes.

That wonderful and deplorable time of the year has finally arrived when I rummage through my notes and recollections to come up with a list of the year’s worst dishes. Some sounded good on the menu, but turned out to be totally blah or even foul; others, by their menu descriptions, seemed cursed even before the server dropped them on the table.

It is important to note that many of these dishes come from kitchens that are otherwise exemplary, with most dishes on their menus well worth ordering. No matter: Bad is bad, and it’s a critic’s central function to point out the vile as well as the wonderful. So, dear reader, here are the year’s nine worst dishes.

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“Strange Flavor” burrata at Chinese Tuxedo

Note that the quotation marks are the menu’s in this misbegotten dish ($18) that dumps an oozing loaf of burrata into a gravelly sauce that features astringent black vinegar, crunchy peanuts, and Sichuan peppercorns. The result is flavor chaos, and the repulsive appearance doesn’t help, as the ball is broken open and white fluid leeches into a brick-red sea that looks like tomato sauce — until you take a taste. 5 Doyers Street, Chinatown

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Pastrami on rye ice cream.

Pastrami on rye ice cream at Salt & Straw

This ice cream chain landed on the Upper West Side and Greenwich Village not too long ago, and its most touted flavor was something called pastrami on rye (single scoop, $7.50). Forget for a moment that meat doesn’t belong in ice cream — the salty and sweet contrast of ice cream and pastrami might have been at least interesting in a city that loves its pastrami, but predictably enough, the crumbly inclusion tasted only of rye bread. Various locations.