An Exquisitely Well-Told Story of a Nightmarish Meal

Geraldine DeRuiter, writing at The Everywhereist, on a 27-course “meal” at Bros, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Lecce, Italy:

The servers will not explain to you what the hell is going on.

They will not do this in Italian. They will not do this in English. They will not play Pictionary with you on the blank newspaper as a means of communicating what you are eating. On the rare occasion where they did offer an explanation for a dish, it did not help.

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

“I’m ... I’m sorry, did you say rancid? You mean ... fermented? Aged?”

“No. Rancid.”

“Okay,” I said in Italian. “But I think that something might be lost in translation. Because it can’t be — ”

“Rancido,” he clarified.

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.

No nonsense like this when I open my steakhouse.

★ Tuesday, 14 December 2021