“We’ve infused these droplets with meat molecules,” .....

[james]

"..... the server explained, and left."


This review of a disappointing Michelin starred restaurant meal in Italy made me laugh.


"There is something to be said about a truly disastrous meal, a meal forever indelible in your memory because it’s so uniquely bad, it can only be deemed an achievement. The sort of meal where everyone involved was definitely trying to do something; it’s just not entirely clear what.

I’m not talking about a meal that’s poorly cooked, or a server who might be planning your murder—that sort of thing happens in the fat lump of the bell curve of bad. Instead, I’m talking about the long tail stuff – the sort of meals that make you feel as though the fabric of reality is unraveling. The ones that cause you to reassess the fundamentals of capitalism, and whether or not you’re living in a simulation in which someone failed to properly program this particular restaurant. The ones where you just know somebody’s going to lift a metal dome off a tray and reveal a single blue or red pill.

I’m talking about those meals."


Continues at...

everywhereist.com/2021/12/bros-restaurant-lecce-we-eat-at-the-worst-michelin-starred-restaurant-ever/





"Recommendation: Do not eat here. I cannot express this enough."

[dradtke]

"Waiting for Gateau" has to be one of the best puns I've come across lately.

[TKennedy]

The retort -

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

[coachdoc]

Anyone have a non blocked version of the text of this article?
More meat molecules, 
Please, Sir.

[John B]

Dec 13, 2021 10:52:22 GMT -5 coachdoc said:

Anyone have a non blocked version of the text of this article?
More meat molecules, 
Please, Sir.

Isn't the first link unblocked?

[coachdoc]

Sad, sad, sad.

[Marty]

We had a Podium Christmas/New Year dinner at a place that did Art food. They did keep the wine cheap figuring that if you were drunk enough not only would you not notice that you were still hungry after $200 worth of Art food but that none of it was really that good.

[epaul]

The Chef's retort (really):



The Chef's response has brought much unintended joy and inspired many.

[epaul]

When a link to a particular source is blocked, doing a general search on the topic in question will often bring up several unblocked articles covering the same; often identically or nearly so. There is a full page of links covering the Chef's response and responses to the Chef's response.

[dradtke]

Last summer up at a Duck Band rehearsal I slapped a cow, and epaul was covered in droplets of meat molecules. He didn't like it much.

[TKennedy]

An excerpt from the chef’s response. Sans artwork.

Bros’ responded to an inquiry from the “Today” show with a “Declaration by Chef Floriano Pellegrino,” a three-page document featuring a series of pictures of a rider on horseback. The first is a fairly simplistic drawing, the second is Jacques-Louis David’s painting “Napoleon Crossing the Alps,” and the third is an abstract painting that’s almost unrecognizable.
Many can produce the first drawing, and similarly, a lot of people can whip up the culinary equivalent, Pellegrino wrote in the response. “It is not that hard, but most people will admire you.”
Only great cooks who’ve studied and trained for years can make “spectacular food,” just as David depicted Napoleon.

[Dub]

From today’s Washington Post.

A travel writer’s bad review of a Michelin-starred restaurant went viral. The chef responded with images of horses.

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.
But perhaps the most bizarre moment of the “4-hour hunger induced fever dream” came when servers brought out a course called “chef’s kiss” — citrus foam, served in a plaster cast that had been molded in the shape of the chefs’ mouths. On DeRuiter’s cast, some of the foam had escaped the parted lips and dribbled down.

She thought the waitstaff would bring them spoons they could use to scoop out the foam.

None came.

“We were told that we needed to kiss the mouth of the ramekin in order to slurp out the foam,” she told The Post. She added: “At that point, I was like, ‘Okay … this is a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode. I feel like I’m in a parody of what modernist cuisine is.”

“It was such a symphony of bizarreness on so many levels that endured and just kept going. It was an Energizer bunny of disaster,” she told CBC’s “As It Happens” radio program.
DeRuiter said she and her husband paid for everyone’s meal. The check for the party of eight, which included alcohol, came to about 1,350 euros, or roughly $1,522.

Bros’ responded to an inquiry from the “Today” show with a “Declaration by Chef Floriano Pellegrino,” a three-page document featuring a series of pictures of a rider on horseback. The first is a fairly simplistic drawing, the second is Jacques-Louis David’s painting “Napoleon Crossing the Alps,” and the third is an abstract painting that’s almost unrecognizable.

Many can produce the first drawing, and similarly, a lot of people can whip up the culinary equivalent, Pellegrino wrote in the response. “It is not that hard, but most people will admire you.”

Only great cooks who’ve studied and trained for years can make “spectacular food,” just as David depicted Napoleon.

“The problem with this artist is that many artists have made paintings like him. I admire the quality. It’s well done. But I am bored with spectacular paintings like that,” Pellegrino wrote. “The Louvre and the Prado and the Hermitage are full with such stuff. It’s impressive but it’s shallow.”

Pellegrino and Bros’ are interested in making the kind of food that’s equivalent to the third abstract painting, he said. This kind of food forces those who make it 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 admitted that Pellegrino made some valid points: Food, like art, should challenge people and make them uncomfortable to a certain degree.

“But when we are talking about food and a restaurant, that isn’t just art, that’s also hospitality,” she told The Post. She continued: “Should you bring them new experiences? Absolutely. Should you challenge them? Absolutely. But should their experience be unpleasant? I don’t think so.”

At the end of his written response to “Today,” Pellegrino addressed “Limoniamo,” the plaster mold that, during DeRuiter’s meal, held the citrus foam. Buyers can purchase the mold, which comes in the shape of either Pellegrino’s mouth or the mouth of fellow chef Isabella Potì, for 58 euros.

“We thank Mrs. XXX — I don’t remember her name — for making us get to where we had not yet arrived. We are out of stock of ‘Limoniamo’, thank you very much.”



Jonathan Edwards is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. Before joining The Post, he covered public safety for The Virginian-Pilot and Lincoln Journal Star.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
© 1996-2021 The Washington Post

[TKennedy]

That restaurant would never fly in Douglas County MN. Around here it’s all about portion size.

[Russell Letson]

The man-on-horse line drawing looks familiar--specifically, like a figure from a manuscript of The Canterbury Tales. But then, that particular pose is all over medieval manuscript decorations.

BTW, Chef Floriano is full of shit about the nature of art.

[Dub]

Dec 13, 2021 14:48:48 GMT -5 TKennedy said:

That restaurant would never fly in Douglas County MN. Around here it’s all about portion size.

Sure, for the locals. But think of the people it would attract from Minneapolis. Next door to the art cuisine café you put an elegant B&B with a house jazz combo in the parlor. You could clean up.

[billhammond]

Dec 13, 2021 14:48:48 GMT -5 TKennedy said:

That restaurant would never fly in Douglas County MN. Around here it’s all about portion size.

In Wisconsin, we don't have Michelin-starred restaurants -- we have Firestones.

[Marty]

The "meal" to me was all about the presentation and very little to do with eating. Any good chef will tell you that making something delicious is always better if it also looks good. But that was totally to the looks side, PB&J on a oyster shell, lots of color, aroma and a rather complex set of flavors and textures, but it's still just PB&J that any 5 year old can make.

[Village Idiot]

Dec 13, 2021 14:48:48 GMT -5 TKennedy said:

That restaurant would never fly in Douglas County MN. Around here it’s all about portion size.

The same in Iowa. That restaurant would be pounding out their tenderloins with the end of a pin.

[factorychef]

I rarely eat out. I cook all the time since I love to cook. Eating out to me is not an enjoyable time for me. I've work in enough kitchens and have seen what goes on back there. I also cook for my dogs and my gang of cats. Last time I ate out was at the IJam sunday breakfast. Todd love school food.

[majorminor]

I thought Michelens were tires?