- A blog post calling Bros' in Lecce, Italy, the "worst" Michelin-starred restaurant is going viral.
- Geraldine DeRuiter said one course was a citrus foam served in a plaster cast of the chef's mouth.
- DeRuiter's post went viral after New Yorker writer Helen Rosner tweeted about the dessert.
A blogger's post about dining at the "worst" Michelin-starred restaurant — where she says she was served a dessert inside a plaster mold of the chef's mouth — is going viral in the food world.
Geraldine DeRuiter, an author and blogger behind The Everywhereist, wrote about her experience trying the 27-course tasting menu at Bros' owned by the Pellegrino Brothers in Lecce, Italy. The establishment is the only Michelin-starred restaurant in the southern Italian city. Representatives for the Pellegrino Brothers did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
In her blog post published Wednesday, DeRuiter wrote that during the meal, her table was served "twelve kinds of foam, something that I can only describe as 'an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport', and a teaspoon of savory ice cream that was olive flavored."
However, one dish in particular stood out: a citrus foam dessert served in a plaster mold 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," DeRuiter wrote of the menu item.
She added in her post that the serving dish is sold on the Pellegrino Brothers' online gift shop, "in case you want to have a restraining order filed against you this holiday season." At the time of writing, the item is on sale and costs €45, or around $51.
DeRuiter's post received attention after Helen Rosner, a food writer at The New Yorker, tweeted a screenshot of the blogger's photo of the dessert along with a quote from the review to her 154,300 followers.
"This is so upsetting," Rosner wrote in her tweet, which has over 6,000 likes at the time of writing.
—Helen Rosner (@hels) December 8, 2021
She also shared a screenshot of a text exchange with DeRuiter getting to the bottom of what was inside the bowl.
—Helen Rosner (@hels) December 8, 2021
Speaking to Insider about her visit to Bros' in October, DeRuiter said it was "as though someone who had never seen a restaurant or eaten food tried to replicate what they thought a restaurant was."
One of the worst parts of the experience, accoridng to DeRuiter, was the lack of a menu, which she said was "angering" and "irresponsible" because some items contained foods her husband was allergic to, even though she said they had provided this information beforehand. In her post, she wrote that instead of a menu, there was "a blank newspaper with a QR code linking to a video featuring one of the chefs" but there was little explanation about each course.
DeRuiter told Insider most of the courses were "not quite hitting the mark" and that the fried cheese balls were a particularly low point (according to her post, a waiter said they were made with "rancid ricotta").
Despite labeling it the worst Michelin-starred restaurant of the dozen she has visited, she said that "as an evening out, it was so wildly entertaining." She added that the check for a party of eight was €1,200, or around $1,354.
DeRuiter acknowledged in her post that others seemed to have a better experience with other dishes based on photos that people who had eaten at the restaurant have posted online.
Still, she told Insider, she wouldn't recommend it. "Don't go there if you're in Italy," she said. "I have great recommendations for that part of Italy but not that place."
You can read the full blog post on The Everywhereist.
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