The worst Michelin-starred restaurant in the world?

🗡️💪🛡️ It’s Tuesday, or Tyr’s Day in Norse Mythology — Tyr being the one-handed Norse god of war, bravery, and justice who got into a rough altercation with a wolf (that’s how he lost his other hand)
Issue #170: an email from 9/11, a journaling trick, and saying goodbye
By Harris Sockel

“We are given a belly button and told not to eat it, but lick the juices from it,” was the line that got me to drop everything and keep reading this review of a $775/head Michelin-starred restaurant in Spain. It’s written by John Ferris, a career food critic who came out of retirement to publish this story on Medium.

Mugaritz was once ranked the sixth-best dining establishment in the world by Restaurant Magazine. The Michelin guide depicts its chef as an innovative rule-breaker, the Steve Jobs of food — but Ferris doesn’t think any of his current experiments really land.

I mean: Flowers dipped in lip gloss? A “wet ponytail that had just been washed in lemon scented shampoo”? Lamb skin brought to you with a QR code leading to an app playing baa-ing noises? In a viral TikTok, one diner videotaped a customer trying to get out of paying because the food was inedible. (The police were called.) In Google reviews, some diners praise the chef for “challenging your tastebuds”; another writes: “A lot of R&D but the food is not good.”

Mugaritz reminds me of Bros, Lecce, a ~$200/person restaurant that served Geraldine DeRuiter an “oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport.”

Michelin star takedowns are a way of speaking truth to power. The Michelin guide began as a tire catalog in 1900 — but by the ’20s it had expanded to restaurant reviews. Michelin sends anonymous testers to dining establishments around the world. Their exact rubric is shrouded in mystery, but criteria boil down to three things: quality, artistry, and consistency over time. It’s a super subjective system, yet a Michelin star can lead to an increase of 20–30% in sales.

So, reviews like Ferris’ serve an important purpose: They’re a check on the influence of a single institution. They’re also parables about what happens when innovation goes too far. “Innovation comes with mistakes and errors, it’s the only way to get to the near perfect things,” writes Ferris, who knew he wouldn’t enjoy all 23 courses (the point is novelty, not necessarily enjoyment). But there’s a line between experimentation in service of customers and experimentation for its own sake.

What else we’re reading

• Two weeks ago, W Lance Hunt — who worked four blocks from the World Trade Center and felt the towers fall — published on Medium the email he sent to his family and friends on 9/11. A Booker T. Washington quote replayed in his head as he walked the six miles from his office to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, caked in dust: “I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.”
• National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor shares an exercise that helped her come up with her best (and weirdest) ideas: fill a pocket-sized notebook in short bursts and don’t read what you’ve written until the whole thing is full. The result? Your ideas will feel just a bit more foreign to you, and you’ll be able to see them with clear eyes.

Your daily dose of practical wisdom

To know how you really (I mean, really) feel about something, try saying goodbye.

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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

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