Isabella Poti from Bros’ in Lecce, Italy. Photo:
Geraldine DeRuiter, her husband and friends came to the Bros’ restaurant with high hopes as it had been awarded a Michelin star, one of the most prestigious awards in the industry.
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 telephone interview. The food was the subject of a review DeRuiter published on her blog last week.The universalist‘ It has now gone viral.
A course in the restaurant in Lecce, Italy, was made of edible paper. Some were shots of vinegar. Another was fried cheese balls stuffed with what waiters repeatedly described as “rancid” ricotta.
The “Chef’s Kiss” – citrus foam served in a plaster cast molded in the shape of the chefs’ mouths. Photo: The Everywhereist
Waiters served a course using pipettes to squirt liquid onto guests’ plates. They then announced that “this was infused with flesh molecules” and walked away, DeRuiter said.
But perhaps the most bizarre moment of the “four-hour starvation-induced fever dream” came when the waiters rolled out a course called “Cook’s Kiss” – citrus foam served in a plaster cast that had been sculpted in the shape of the chefs’ mouths. With DeRuiter’s cast, some of the foam had escaped the parted lips and dripped down.
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She thought the waiter would bring them spoons to scoop out the foam.
Nobody came.
“We were told that we had to kiss the mouth of the ramekin to slurp up the foam,” she told the Post. “…At that point I was like, ‘Okay…this is a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode. I feel like I’m in a modern kitchen parody.”
“It was such a symphony of bizarreness on so many levels that endured and just kept going. It was an energizer rabbit of disaster,” she told CBC’s As It Happens radio show.
DeRuiter said she and her husband paid for everyone’s meals. The check for the party of eight, which included alcohol, was about 1,350 euros, or approximately A$2,136.
Bros’ responded to a request from the Today show with a “statement from chef Floriano Pellegrino,” a three-page document with a series of images, each showing a rider on horseback. The first is a fairly simplified drawing, the second is Jacques-Louis David’s painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps, and the third is an abstract painting that is almost unrecognizable.
Many can produce the first drawing, and just as many people can conjure up the culinary equivalent, Pellegrino wrote in response. “It’s not that difficult, but most people will admire you.”
Only great chefs, who have studied and trained for years, can prepare “spectacular food,” as David Napoleon put it.
“The problem with this artist is that many artists have made paintings like him. I admire the quality. It’s well done. But I’m bored with such spectacular paintings,” wrote Pellegrino. “The Louvre and the Prado and the Hermitage are full of stuff like that. It’s impressive, but it’s superficial.”
Pellegrino and Bros are interested in making the type of food that corresponds to the third abstract painting, he said. This type of eating forces those who manage to “doubt everything, including themselves.”
In doing so, they ask big questions: “What is art? What [is] Food? what is a chef What is a client? What is good taste? what looks beautiful
“What is a man on a horse?”
DeRuiter acknowledged that Pellegrino made some valid arguments: Food, like art, should challenge people and, to some extent, make them uncomfortable.
“But when we talk about food and a restaurant, it’s not just art, it’s hospitality,” she told the Post. “…Should you bring them new experiences? Absolutely. Should you challenge them? Absolutely. But should their experiences be uncomfortable? I don’t think so.”
At the end of his written response to “Today,” Pellegrino addressed “Limoniamo,” the plaster mold that contained the citrus foam during DeRuiter’s meal. Buyers can purchase the mold, which takes the shape of either Pellegrino’s mouth or chef Isabella Potì’s mouth, for 58 euros.
“We thank Ms XXX – I don’t remember her name – for taking us where we hadn’t gone yet. We no longer have ‘Limoniamo’ in stock, thank you.”
The Washington Post
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See also: Travel Tips: 10 Signs Your Chosen Restaurant Is Terrible
Jonathan Edwards
December 14, 2021
