Hilarious travel writer pens scathing review of a Michelin-starred restaurant in Italy
‘The worst Michelin-starred restaurant EVER’: Travel writer pens SCATHING review of Italian eatery’s ‘abhorrent’ €200 27-course tasting menu – which included foam licked from a mold of the chef’s mouth, ‘meat droplets’, and ‘frozen AIR’
Everywhereist travel writer Geraldine DeRuiter, from Seattle, and seven of her friends visited Bros’, a restaurant in Lecce, Italy with a coveted Michelin starThey paid €200 each for the four-and-a-half hour meal that left them starving because nothing actually ‘resembled dinner’Dishes included slivers of edible paper, ‘rancid ricotta,’ gelee infused with meat molecules, and foam served in a plaster cast of the chef’s mouthThe 41-year-old also wrote about rude and inattentive waitstaff who didn’t explain the dishes and even scolded one person for standing upDeRuiter’s colorful and creative review has gone viral and left readers in stitchesChef Floriano Pellegrino responded to the criticism with a three-page statement in which he wrote that he is a ‘great cook’ and ‘master chef’
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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.
While it was no doubt a terribly unpleasant experience, DeRuiter, from Seattle, found the humor in it and wrote a scathing yet colorful review, entitled ‘We eat at the worst Michelin-starred restaurant, ever’, that readers find hilarious.
Everywhereist travel writer Geraldine DeRuiter and seven of her friends visited Bros’, a restaurant in Lecce, Italy with a coveted Michelin star
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.
The restaurant has earned a single Michelin star, and the guide describes it as serving up ‘innovative and surprising, as well as ‘creative and exuberant in equal measure.’
DeRuiter’s take was wildly different, and she described the whole experience as ‘forever indelible in [her] memory because it’s so uniquely bad, it can only be deemed an achievement.’
Still seemingly bewildered by the whole ordeal, she said it made her wonder ‘whether or not [she was] living in a simulation in which someone failed to properly program this particular restaurant.’
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 were glasses of vinegar. Everything tasted like fish, even the non-fish courses,’ she wrote.
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’
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.’
At one point, a server squirted drops of gelee infused with meat molecules into their mouths, before presenting them with a fish called ‘frozen air’, which DeReuiter joked ‘literally melted before you could eat it, which felt like a metaphor for the night’.
They finished the ‘abhorrent’ meal with a dessert of ‘marshmallow flavored like cuttlefish.’
DeRuiter was in desperate need of real food when each person in the group was given a single ‘reconstituted orange slice,’ which was plated with a real orange. When DeRuiter asked if she could eat the orange, the server responded with annoyance and took it away before she could finish.
Several of the dishes have been illustrated with photos by The World and Then Some editor-in-chief Elle-Rose Moogan.
At one point, a server squirted drops of gelee infused with meat molecules into their mouths, and they finished with a dessert of ‘marshmallow flavored like cuttlefish’
‘I was not expecting a 4-hour hunger induced fever dream,’ she said
The whole group was horrified by the meal and became giddy by the end of it
‘We kept waiting for someone to bring us something — anything! — that resembled dinner,’ she wrote.
Yet it wasn’t just the food that was strange. 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. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment but with less prison and more 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.
Speaking to Today, DeRuiter said that the meal was nothing she could have expected.
‘I’m pretty used to experimental cuisine, and I’ve been to a few Michelin-starred restaurants. So I was anticipating something a little unusual and fun. I was not expecting a 4-hour hunger induced fever dream,’ she said.
As for why they didn’t just leave, she wrote: ‘We’d been beaten into some sort of weird psychological submission’
She also wrote about rude and inattentive waitstaff who didn’t explain the dishes and even scolded one person for standing up
‘They’re either comedic geniuses or sadists, and hey that’s fine if that’s what your audience is expecting, but we sort of wanted to eat dinner,’ she added.
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 is art?’ he wrote. ‘What is food? What is a chef? What is a client? What is good taste? What looks beautiful?’
He continued: ‘Here at Bros’ we strive every day for avant-garde. We have undertaken this risk since we decided to return to our territory, after international experiences. We invest to revolutionize it and make it grow with us.
‘We know very well where we are and what we are doing,’ he went on.
‘We thank Mrs. XXX — I don’t remember her name — for making us get to where we had not yet arrive,’ he concluded.
