Hahaha!!! The culinary TRUTH somehow escaped and ran rampant here!!!

[jswordy]

Geraldine DeRuiter, her husband and their friends arrived at the restaurant Bros’ with high hopes, given that it had been awarded a Michelin star, one of the industry’s most respected honors.

The 27 courses that followed over the next four and a half hours dashed those hopes, she told The Washington Post in a Monday morning phone interview. The meal was the subject of a review DeRuiter posted last week on her blog the Everywhereist that has since gone viral.

One course at the restaurant in Lecce, Italy, was slivers of edible paper. Some were shots of vinegar. Another was fried cheese balls filled with what the servers repeatedly described as “rancid” ricotta.

Waiters served one course using eyedroppers to squirt liquid onto the diners’ plates. They then announced, “This has been infused with meat molecules,” and walked away, DeRuiter said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/13/morning-mix-bad-michelin-restaurant-review/
The original review...

https://everywhereist.com/2021/12/b...t-the-worst-michelin-starred-restaurant-ever/

 

[cmason1957]

I believe I might have left after the 2 hour mark and nothing approaching food having been served at that point. It was theater, I believe, sort of like the OLD, OLD, OLD Bad Theater sketches from SNL

 

[jswordy]

I believe I might have left after the 2 hour mark and nothing approaching food having been served at that point. It was theater, I believe, sort of like the OLD, OLD, OLD Bad Theater sketches from SNL

Did you see what they PAID for that????

 

[ratflinger]

They knew what they were heading into. No one eating at that level goes into a restaurant blind.

 

[cmason1957]

Did you see what they PAID for that????

I did and it was crazy for what they got. (100-150 Euro or 112 to 170 US Dollars per person)

 

[balatonwine]

Did you see what they PAID for that????

Cost: 130-200 Euros per person

Shrugs. Actually not an unexpected price for an avant-garde 20+ course restaurant.

I agree with @ratflinger. They knew what they were getting into when eating at any avant-garde establishment like this. It may get weird. Actually, I found the chef's reply kind of fun, and very, very avant-garde (which of course the Internet world then misses the point making memes....).

https://www.ladbible.com/news/chef-gives-bizarre-response-to-viral-review-20211211
Heaven forbid if this person went to Sublimotion.... a meal there costs $2,000 and designed to create "moments of humor, pleasure, fear, reflection and nostalgia".....

And I bet they would enter the afterlife if told a bottle of Romanée-Conti may set them back $3000.....

It is all about experiences. Either you like the experience you paid for, or do not. But do not complain about the price, as the price range should be well known beforehand and you take your risks on experimental cuisine.

Overall, tempest in a teapot. Much ado about nothing. Acknowledge and move on.

 

[balatonwine]

Interesting update. Apparently, he has sold out of those 58 Euro ceramic mouth molds, which Ms. DeRuiter found so applauding... and can not now keep up with demand. And has used the added publicity to expand his interests:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/world/europe/bros-restaurant-review.html?searchResultPosition=1
One quote from above:

“Maybe it’s going to expand their business, and then we are going to see 20 Bros’ around the world.”

As P.T. Barnum once said, "There is no such thing as bad publicity."

 

[jswordy]

Interesting update. Apparently, he has sold out of those 58 Euro ceramic mouth molds, which Ms. DeRuiter found so applauding... and can not now keep up with demand. And has used the added publicity to expand his interests:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/world/europe/bros-restaurant-review.html?searchResultPosition=1
One quote from above:

“Maybe it’s going to expand their business, and then we are going to see 20 Bros’ around the world.”

As P.T. Barnum once said, "There is no such thing as bad publicity."

Yeah, I cannot resist a comment here. As anyone who read the articles saw, he sold out of those silly goo-gaws to the high-falutin' almost right away at $66 each. In fairness, she actually LINKED to the sales point in her column, providing easy entry.

As P.T. Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Or, as poet Thomas Tusser wrote, "A fool and his money are soon parted."

I actually read her piece in the humorous vein in which it was written. SO FUNNY!

“These are made with rancid ricotta,” the server said, a tiny fried cheese ball in front of each of us.

...and...

“We’ve infused these droplets with meat molecules,” the server explained, and left.



What a total JOKE is being played on his clientele by this chef, and he is making a mint doing it, hahahahaaa! Snob appeal carries a high price, though, this is true. But don't get me wrong, if people are this gullible, then more power to him!

The funniest part: "The bill arrived. The meal cost more than any other we’d eat during our trip by a magnitude of three. They’d given us balloons with the restaurant’s name across it and the chef emerged and insisted on posing with us for a Polaroid that we did not ask for. We were finally released into the night, after every other restaurant had closed, ensuring that no food would be consumed that evening."

...and...

P.S. – The next day, one of the staff tried contacting the only single female member of our party via Instagram messages. “Hey, I served you last night!” he wrote. She immediately blocked him.

I cannot wait to see the next Bros evolution: "Here you are, sir, a bag full of AIR! We have infused this with molecules of oxygen. That will be $1,000."

 

[Bkat]

balatonwin largely summed it up by describing it as a tempest in a teapot and I concur. I guess if one really wants to delve into the matter, it begets the question, is an exemplary chef an artist or a craftsperson? IMHO, both are worthy of esteem but food is not fine art. Although if this particular chef wants to claim his cooking is elevated to "art" one should remember, there's a lot of bad art in the world.

I think rather than quote PT Barnum, I’d reference Andy Warhol. "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.” And so, here it is. The chef’s brief flash of fame.

There are numerous Michelin-starred chefs (and probably just as many who have eschewed the Michelin rating system) who do break new culinary ground and charge a lofty sum for their craft. That said, I will hazard a guess that this fellow isn’t one of them so probably best to let him fade back into obscurity.

 

[jswordy]

balatonwin largely summed it up by describing it as a tempest in a teapot and I concur. I guess if one really wants to delve into the matter, it begets the question, is an exemplary chef an artist or a craftsperson? IMHO, both are worthy of esteem but food is not fine art. Although if this particular chef wants to claim his cooking is elevated to "art" one should remember, there's a lot of bad art in the world.

I think rather than quote PT Barnum, I’d reference Andy Warhol. "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.” And so, here it is. The chef’s brief flash of fame.

There are numerous Michelin-starred chefs (and probably just as many who have eschewed the Michelin rating system) who do break new culinary ground and charge a lofty sum for their craft. That said, I will hazard a guess that this fellow isn’t one of them so probably best to let him fade back into obscurity.

Ya know, it's not the lofty sum paid that bothers me about this guy, so I'd hate for everyone to fixate on the money. I have plenty of unbelievably well-off friends – through their own success, luck or inheritance. They absolutely LOVE to take me and others to places where they spend lavishly to impress us with how much cash gushes their way, and even for some of them, how superior they therefore are, and that's fine. I take my friends where they are at, knowing we are all poor after death, and so I enjoy these endeavors.

What bothered me about this whole scam was not the money, it was the fact that the patrons left HUNGRY. It seems to me an essential part of the word "restaurant" that people get actually FED for their money. The very DEFINITION of restaurant is "a place where people pay to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served on the premises." A meal is "any of the regular occasions in a day when a reasonably large amount of food is eaten."

What this plays on is the same trait I already described in some of my friends: they wish to show their alpha being by the fact that they spend so much for such an experience, or be able to name-drop that they did. The fact that Geraldine DeRuiter exposed how well this has been exploited in her bitingly humorous column is hilarious. I certainly wouldn't comment to my conspicuous consumer friends that they got took at their high-class eatery. But she did! And for drawing back the curtain on the absurdity of it all in a way that was just as self-deprecating as anything else, she has earned both my thanks and my laughter. This is very reminiscent of Randy Kurniawan.

And then, people got upset that she pulled the curtain back!

 

[cmason1957]

Absolution correct Jim. They left still quite unfed. A restaurant, even an avant-garde, pretentious as can be restaurant, should feed its patrons. The write up was hilarious .