Michelin stars are awards coveted by chefs worldwide who want their restaurants to be put on the gastronomic map. It’s a badge of honor, for sure. However, it’s not always the indication of quality that many of us assume it to be.
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Writer Geraldine DeRuiter, the founder of the Everywhereist blog, went into excruciatingly hilarious detail about her horrendous dinner at “the worst Michelin starred restaurant, ever,” called Bros’ in Lecce, in southern Italy, in the ‘heel’ of the country’s ‘boot’ on the map.
The meal was expensive, pretentious, and Geraldine didn’t hold back any punches in her witty, snappy, and funny critique that had me taking notes for the next time I have a bad meal and need to vent. From actually rancid food and tiny portions to rude staff members and getting citrus foam served in a plaster cast of the chef's mouth, this wasn't the type of experience to gush about to your friends. This was something to call out.
"Maybe the staff just ran out of food that night. Maybe they confused our table with that of their ex-lover’s. Maybe they were drunk. But we got twelve kinds of foam, something that I can only describe as 'an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport,'" she writes.
Naturally, the story was so good, it went viral on Twitter and beyond. It’s better than fiction and we hope you enjoy reading about it all as much as I did, dear Pandas. You’ll find Geraldine’s highlights from the awful meal for her social media below, but if you’d like to read the story in full, you can visit her blog right over here. Floriano Pellegrino, the chef at Bros', later responded with a 3-page statement, likening his food to art.
Geraldine told Bored Panda more about her experience at the restaurant. "It's honestly hard to pick the worst thing about this meal," she said. "It was a symphony of mistakes made by the kitchen. But honestly, the worst part? It was that the food didn't even taste good and it was so, so expensive compared to other, wonderful meals we've had in Lecce."
Meanwhile, pie artist, author, and food expert Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin told me that it’s important to keep our sense of humor no matter how badly the meal seems to be going. “If nothing else, you’ll have a great story to tell later…” Scroll down for Bored Panda’s interviews with Geraldine and Jessica.
Writer Geraldine visited Michelin-starred restaurant Bros' in Italy. Unfortunately, her experience was intensely negative
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The blogger explained everything that was wrong with the dinner. Her story was so fascinating, it instantly went viral
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Geraldine said that she isn't sure exactly why some chefs "sacrifice everything for aesthetics," but she has some ideas. "I guess they've forgotten what it means to actually be a chef. They've let ego overtake everything else," she told Bored Panda.
"I think that food can be so overworked and so far removed from its original source as to become pretentious, but when that happens fault obviously lies with the chef," the writer said that the fault ultimately lies with the chef, not anyone else.
I also asked Geraldine for some advice for those of you Pandas who enjoy her style of writing and would like to follow in her footsteps but feel a tad too shy to show your work to the world. According to the writer, we should all just go for it.
"The internet is full of people who are going to scream at you, whether you voice your opinion or not. So you might as well voice your opinion. And honestly, what are you waiting for?"
Pie artist Jessica gave Bored Panda some awesome insights into why some restaurants have absolutely tiny portions. “Tiny is relative!” she said that the size of the dishes very much depends on who is eating.
“Some restaurants have ‘tasting menus’ with intentionally small portions to enable guests to sample many different types of dishes without over-stuffing themselves. Of course, the sticker price on these small tasting dishes at ‘fancy’ restaurants may be comparable to the price of a full entree at a conventional family restaurant, which can influence expectations when you aren’t already familiar with the establishment you are attending,” she told Bored Panda.
According to her, it’s always best to do some upfront research on the restaurant you’ll be going to if you have any worries about the type of food and the size of the portions you might be served. “If portion size is a concern for you, check out the restaurant’s Instagram account first and get a sense of what the food looks like before you go, and you’ll avoid disappointment.” However, research doesn’t always pan out! Sometimes, there’s a nasty shock waiting for you, even if the restaurant has glowing reviews.
"This was the largest course of the 27 (We got six noodles and one piece of bread each) I’ve added the bread plate for scale."
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"A course for *two* people at Bros"
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Most annoying aspects from the whole dinner experience:
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Image credits: everywhereist
"Rand holding up one of the courses – a paper-thin fish cracker – in its entirety"
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"This was a main course. It’s about a tablespoon of food"
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"A sliver of oyster loaf with foam. David’s face here says more than I ever can"
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"Teaspoon of olive ice cream"
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"Rand tries to figure out what part of this dish is edible"
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"He cannot"
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"The meat droplet course"
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The chef at Bros', Floriano Pellegrino, responded to Geraldine's review with a statement where he spoke about food as art
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Geraldine and many internet users found it absolutely hilarious
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Image credits: everywhereist
Image credits: everywhereist
Geraldine told Insider that her experience eating at Bros' was "as though someone who had never seen a restaurant or eaten food tried to replicate what they thought a restaurant was."
The number one thing that stands out to me when I read Geraldine’s work is her honesty. She’s very forward about sharing her real feelings, but I wouldn’t call them blunt: they’re razor-sharp. Her scathing review of the Bros’. restaurant got to the core of what many of us absolutely loathe about dining out—the fact that some chefs eventually become so full of themselves, they forget they’re supposed to be making actually edible food for real, live, thinking, feeling human beings.
I’m awe-struck by the fact that Geraldine and the entire party of diners had enough patience to deal with the restaurant staff reprimanding them and serving them sub-standard food, including rancid ricotta.
I’m awe-struck by the fact that Geraldine and the entire party of diners had enough patience to deal with the restaurant staff reprimanding them and serving them sub-standard food, including rancid ricotta.
Geraldine is an acclaimed author, a world-renowned public speaker, and runs the award-winning Everywhereist blog. She’s been lauded by TIME Magazine as creating “consistently clever” work while The New York Times has called her writing “dark and hilarious.” When she isn’t traveling with her husband around the world, she lives in Seattle.
Pie artist and food expert Jessica told me just last week that we should definitely call out the chefs if what we’re being served is awful, objectively.
“If your lettuce was a little wilted because they spent so long arranging it artfully, or your ice-cream a bit melty by the time they added all the fancy toppings, keep the feedback constructive. If their 'reverse spherification shrimp balls with oyster foam' gave you food poisoning, feel free to let 'em have it!" she told Bored Panda.
"You may be an artist, but if your chosen medium is food, remember that somebody has to eat that art in the end!"
According to Jessica, what we might call pretentiousness on a plate to her is “food that has wholly sacrificed flavor, texture, and the general eating experience in service of aesthetics.” In other words, some chefs focus one side of the scale, ignoring taste for the sake of presentation.
Not all fancy food is automatically bad, of course. "If your food is complicated, presented in an unusual fashion, or requires a little more interactivity from your guests than they may be used to, that's all fine provided you've used fresh ingredients that combine to create a pleasing flavor profile and mouth feel. If your guests' mouths are as happy as their eyeballs at the end of the meal, then your fancy food is not pretentious, it's just delightful!”
We also have to be aware of our own subjective tastes. "If you didn't enjoy the process of eating the food—perhaps you felt there were too many steps involved, things took longer to eat than you would prefer, you personally didn't enjoy the visual presentation, etc.—then I would chalk it up to 'different strokes for different folks' and maybe choose a simpler dining experience for yourself in future and leave it at that," Jessica mused.
"If, however, something about the presentation of the food affected its actual quality, that is a different story. If in service of presenting the food in a particular way some elements ended up cold when they were supposed to be hot (or vice versa), or the freshness of any element was compromised, that could warrant a tactful comment to the server. Just remember, that you are dealing with real people with real feelings when leaving critical reviews," she said.
People had a lot to say about the review:
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Mike Rugnetta's observation about cookbook covers might seem amusing at first, but it touches on a greater issue of presentation versus reality. Much like how the fancy design of a cookbook cover fails to guarantee culinary expertise, the allure of a Michelin star at a restaurant doesn't always ensure an exceptional dining experience. Reviews like Geraldine DeRuiter's on her blog provide firsthand accounts of the disconnect between expectation and reality, reminding us that not all that glitters in the culinary world is gold.
More on the humor behind peculiar presentations can be found when exploring unusual cookbook covers.