A brutal review of a Michelin-starred restaurant in Italy has gone viral, delighting readers with its descriptions of the ‘disastrous’ meal that included slivers of edible paper, ‘rancid ricotta,’ foam served in a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth, and ‘an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport.’
Everywhereist travel writer Geraldine DeRuiter, 41, and seven of her friends visited Bros’, a restaurant in Lecce, Italy with a coveted Michelin star. But not only were they left unimpressed by the 27 courses they were served — they also walked away starving.
It was a very unpleasant experience. However, DeRuiter from Seattle found humor and wrote an amusing review entitled “We eat in the worst Michelin-starred restaurant ever.” That readers find funny.
Geraldine DeRuiter (Everywhereist Travel Writer) and seven of their friends visited Bros’, an Italian restaurant with a Michelin star in Lecce.
They paid €200 each for the four-and-a-half hour meal that left them starving because nothing actually ‘resembled dinner’
The restaurant is helmed by Chef Floriano Pellegrino, who responded to the criticism by saying he is a ‘great cook’ and ‘master chef’
DeRuiter and her friends were expecting a wonderful multi-course tasting menu when they visited Bros’, which is helmed by Chef Floriano Pellegrino.
This restaurant was awarded a Michelin star and is described by the guide as being ‘innovative, surprising’ as well as creative and exuberant.
DeRuiter was completely different and described her experience as “amazing.”forever indelible in [her] memory because it’s so uniquely bad, it can only be deemed an achievement.’
She was still a little confused by all the events, but she stated that it helped her. You might be wondering “whether or not?” [she was]Living in a simulator in which the programmers of this restaurant failed to correctly program it.
The main issue was that they weren’t served anything that they would claim was real food, which ‘made me feel like I was a character in a Dickensian novel.’
On the restaurant’s website, it says they serve eight- and 13-course meals — but DeRuiter and her friends had a whopping 27 mini courses served over four-and-a-half hours — and they were still hungry.
‘Some “courses” were slivers of edible paper. Some shots contained vinegar. She wrote that everything tasted fishy, even non-fish dishes.
Their main problem was the fact that they didn’t get anything they could claim to be real food. This made it feel like they were writing Dickensian books.
Dishes included slivers of edible paper, ‘rancid ricotta,’ and an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport’ (pictured)
They were confused when they were served a citrus foam that came inside a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth – and were told to ‘lick it out of the chef’s mouth’
They were served a dozen types of foam, a tablespoon of crab meat, a teaspoon of savory olive-flavored ice cream, and something she describes as ‘an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport.’
They were alarmed when a server told them that a dish was ‘made with rancid ricotta,’ and confused when they were served a citrus foam that came inside a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth — and were told to ‘lick it out of the chef’s mouth.’
A server brought drops of gelatine infused with meat molecules to their lips, and then presented them with frozen air, a fish that DeReuiter joked was literally melted before anyone could eat it. This felt like a metaphor about the evening.
After the meal, they had a sweet dessert made of marshmallow and cuttlefish.
DeRuiter, who was desperate for real food, was served a single slice of’reconstituted orange’. It was also plated with real oranges. DeRuiter wanted to eat the orange so the server replied with angriness and took the food away.
Several of the dishes have been illustrated with photos by The World and Then Some editor-in-chief Elle-Rose Moogan.
One server dropped drops of gelatin infused with meat molecules in their mouths. Then they were served a dessert called’marshmallow flavor like cuttlefish’.
She said, “I wasn’t expecting to have a fever-induced hunger for four hours.”
All the group became horrified at the dinner and became exaggerated by it by the last.
‘We kept waiting for someone to bring us something — anything! — that resembled dinner,’ she wrote.
But it was not just the food that was bizarre. She describes the setting as a ‘bunker where one would expect to be interrogated for the disappearance of an ambassador’s child,’ and recalls how someone scolded her friend to sit when he tried to take a cigarette break between courses.
As for why they didn’t just leave, she wrote: ‘We’d been beaten into some sort of weird psychological submission. The Stanford Prison Experiment is a similar experiment, except with more prisoners and aspic.
To add insult to injury, the bill was massive: The 13-course menu is €200 ($226.43) per person, and that does not include wine.
Today’s DeRuiter stated that she was pleasantly surprised by the experience.
‘I’m used to experimentation in cuisine and I’ve visited a number of Michelin-starred eateries. It was something I expected to find unusual and enjoyable. “I wasn’t expecting to have a four-hour fever dream induced by hunger,” she explained.
As for why they didn’t just leave, she wrote: ‘We’d been beaten into some sort of weird psychological submission’
Also, she wrote of rude waitstaff that didn’t understand the dishes or scolded one for not standing.
“They’re either comic geniuses of sadists and that’s fine, but it’s not what we were expecting. But, they’re kinda wanted to eat dinner,” she said.
Meanwhile, Chef Pellegrino responded to the negative review with a three-page letter in which he described himself as a ‘great cook’ and ‘master chef’ who has ‘studied the history of food making’ and ‘taken years of lessons to make great dishes.’
“What’s art?” He wrote: He wrote: What does it mean to be a chef? What’s a client? What defines good taste? Is there anything more beautiful than that?
Bros is a place where avant-garde is our goal every day, he said. This risk has been taken by us since after our international experiences, when we returned to our homeland. It is our goal to transform it and help it grow.
He continued, “We are very aware of where we are” and “What we’re doing,” he said.
‘We thank Mrs. XXX — I don’t remember her name — for making us get to where we had not yet arrive,’ he concluded.