Interesting find. Not sure how I would replicate it, or what it means. Which score was 0, this is important, your STEW QUALITY or your TOTAL MEAL SCORE? Do you also mean that it forced you the BAD STEW END? (e.g. weevils in the rice, etc)
There's a bunch of things which go into the scoring of both STEW QUALITY and TOTAL MEAL SCORE, even into negatives[?], so I guess what I wonder is it seems during your playthrough, you got a "0 score" response, but it feels unnatural, perhaps like you should have already achieved a score of anything but 0?
STEW QUALITY can be affected greatly by ingredient count, total spices etc, or cooking it over an unearthly fire. Max is 100 iirc.
BLACK TABLE RESULTS are based on your guests, their liveliness/worldstate, and especially THE HERMITS own being NOT CURSED. Max is 10,000 iirc, but there's a remark just in case someone scores higher!