Hilarious Restaurant Review

This is a review of an Italian restaurant called Bros, with one Micheline star.

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.

At some point, the only way to regard that sort of experience—without going mad—is as some sort of community improv theater. You sit in the audience, shouting suggestions like, “A restaurant!” and “Eating something that resembles food” and “The exchange of money for goods, and in this instance the goods are a goddamn meal!” All of these suggestion go completely ignored.

That is how I’ve come to regard our dinner at Bros, Lecce’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, as a means of preserving what’s left of my sanity. It wasn’t dinner. It was just dinner theater.

No, scratch that. Because dinner was not involved. I mean—dinner played a role, the same way Godot played a role in Beckett’s eponymous play. The entire evening was about it, and guess what? IT NEVER SHOWED.

Moral of the story: to appreciate avant-garde, you may want to go with an already full belly.

Or just keep going past the front door.

You can experience it at home:

I had no problems with being full from Inn at Little Washington. They have plenty of dishes that are this is a thing to be made to look like another thing, but it isn’t that thing. They have 3 Michelin Stars and we left pretty dang full.

Terrific review!

(I just realised that indelible is almost an anagram of inedible)

I think we’ve all had that at one time or another. We actually dined twice at a noted and highly rated Toronto restaurant where the food in my own view is best described as earnest. Twice? Yes, second chances aren’t always a good idea.
But there usually something. One memorable dish over the two evenings - a ‘campfire dessert’ inspired by s’mores where they also wafted burning juniper bush smoke through the restaurant, but the dessert itself was excellent. Both meals we left hungry. The only other saving grace was getting an introduction to an excellent PEC winery.

Not quite sure of the distinction between avant-garde and modernist but have has excellent modernist meals that were about total experience and they did not forget they are also feeding you - Fat Duck being a pre eminent example.

Honestly I think it is a terrible, unjust review. Certainly this restaurant pushes the envelope in many ways. Is it dinner theater maybe, probably. It is quite evident what they are when you go to the website.
The reviewer “has been to a few Michelin starred restaurants”. Clearly the restaurant was not for her. Which is fine. That doesn’t make it the worst ever. There is little if any comments around flavors etc. I have no idea if the restaurant is good or not but to trash it for doing what it says it is going to do makes no sense to me. I thought the chef’s response was great.

George

Well, everyone can make up their own mind, but I found these snippets from the review particularly telling:

“we were led across the street, to a dark doorway and into the Bros laboratory. A video of the shirtless kitchen staff doing extreme sports played on a large screen TV while a chef cut us comically tiny slivers of fake cheese.”

“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.”

There’s avant-garde that can guide you to places you haven’t been (and which you may or may not like) and there’s avant-garde which shows complete contempt for its customers. Bros’ (and yes, that is a telling name) seems to belong to the latter group.

“Another course – a citrus foam – was served in a plaster cast of the chef’s mouth. Absent utensils, we were told to lick it out of the chef’s mouth in a scene that I’m pretty sure was stolen from an eastern European horror film.”

It was all worthwhile if it resulted in lines like that. Best laugh I’ve had all week.

Clickbait. Just like the entire review. Maybe it happened maybe it didn’t. Seems out of place for Italy IMO.

George

You’re saying the server hitting on a woman customer is out of place in Italy? There are many women who would disagree with that assessment. It is somewhat out of place for a Michelin starred restaurant.

“Somewhat”??

It MOST CERTAINLY does not.

OK point taken. Still think it was a crappy review. I wonder if it increases the restaurants reservations? It makes me want to try it even though it is really not my style.

George

Here’s a social media review of a new small restaurant in Cannon Beach, OR where I had a lovely Filet and somewhat bland Escargot a month or so ago. Quiet setting, sweet staff, nice proprietor.

This lacks the eloquence and wit demonstrated above.

From one Gustav Skaarsgaard (guessing fake profile): Worst meal we have eaten on the coast! Undercooked, chewy, sandy, nasty scallops we had here & the worst tasting & undercooked steak around for $200. Not to mention the gritty, three white asparagus cartilage stalks wrapped in uncooked prosciutto that laughably came as the side dish. A complete waste of money. Ought to be embarrassed!

I’m getting my head around 27 courses. That just seems bizarre.
Calories …taking a typical meal at what 1500 calories that’s 55 cal per course, that’s less than 1 oz steak.
Taste … The bigger issue is whose palate would not be totally befuddled by the end of such a parade.
The premise just doesn’t seem credible to me.

Like Alinea taken to an extreme. I’d have a hard time sitting still for a meal that long even if the food was excellent.

I know some people who like grazing for hours. I’ve seen a few travel videos where a “meal” lasts for 8 hours. I would get terribly bored if I was there for 8 hours and wasn’t with a group of friends.

Can’t match eight hours but there was a family lunch i was invited to in Nice years ago that went about six iirc but a normal number of courses and a running game of pétanque.

My concern with the 27 courses was not the time but the plethora of flavours etc.