Travel influencer slams Spanish Michelin star restaurant

A travel influencer has ripped a world-renowned restaurant for serving her “the worst meal” of her life after she dropped close to $1500 on the experience.

A travel influencer has ripped a world-renowned restaurant for serving her “the worst meal” of her life — after dropping nearly $1,000 (AUD $1500) on a repast said to be so revolting, a neighbouring diner refused to pay.

Chloe Jade Meltzer dropped the zero-star review in a series of videos for the restaurant in Spain’s Basque Country — snagging eight million views on TikTok.

“I truly cannot believe how bad this restaurant was,” Meltzer moaned in one of the posts, the New York Post reported.

The object of the globetrotter’s ire was Mugaritz, a two Michelin-starred establishment in San Sebastian, Spain, that regularly appears on lists of the world’s best eateries.

Andoni Luis Aduriz, the chef at Mugaritz, is renowned for his culinary creativity — which seems to have been altogether unappreciated by at least one table during the recent visit.

“For approximately three hours, and through about 23-25 creations, together we will try to weave a tale of stories, gestures and emotions,” the restaurant’s website promises potential diners.

Chloe Jade Meltzner is a travel influencer. Picture: chloejadetravels/TikTok

“Flavours, textures and aromas that you can enjoy and feel using your hands to stimulate all the senses and to evoke our more primal customs,” the pitch goes on.

Meltzer said she was initially intrigued by the “inventive” setup, recalling how she selected her wine by picking a photo and telling the servers “three things about yourself” — like cabernet Charades.

Unfortunately, the meal appeared to go downhill almost immediately with the arrival of the first dish, a vaseline-evoking blob of fish goop that patrons were required to eat with their hands.

“I was essentially eating lip gloss,” lamented Meltzer, while licking the viscous gloop from her fingers like an aardvark.

Other lowlights included a “sea rash” that the well-travelled eater compared to a “soggy cigar,” and a “belly button”-shaped Mold comprised of kefir and olive oil that diners are “supposed to suck weird juice out of” — like an interactive movie prosthetic.

Other alleged indignities inflicted included “charred spinach with BBQ sauce,” a fermented potato skin with more “disgusting BBQ sauce” — a combo that the influencer analogised to a “makeup wipe” — as well as some “old bucatini” and a “churro” that was actually uncooked plantain, clearly the culinary equivalent of catfishing.

The total price tag for this malevolent-seeming meal? 897 Euros (AU $1496) for Meltzer’s party.

“I truly don’t understand how this restaurant is in business,” fumed the content creator. “It is the worst restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life.”

And while Meltzer, an apparent pescetarian who admits to avoiding at least one meat dish during her measured take-down, observed that Mugaritz gives diners a disclaimer at the start warning them that they won’t “like all of the dishes.”

However, she said, it didn’t make any sense for everything to be “utterly disgusting.”

She slammed her experience at a Michelin star restaurant. Picture: chloejadetravels/TikTok

The TikTokker wasn’t the only reviewer who felt that the restaurant was the emperor’s new clothes. She claimed that one patron was “so tired of the BS” that he refused to pay the bill until the police were called, as seen in her second video.

The TikTok commentariat was bemused by Meltzer’s skewering with one writing “I am so obsessed with bad Michelin star restaurant reviews.”

Another wrote, “This is why I don’t go to Michelin star restaurants without extensive research and review. I don’t mind paying the price but not for pretentious garbage.”

Many compared the experience to the 2022 foodie thriller The Menu, in which unsuspecting patrons are invited to a sadistic social experiment under the guise of an avant-garde tasting menu.

Mugaritz currently holds an average rating of 3.5 stars out of 5 on TripAdvisor, however the reviews from the past few months are overwhelmingly negative.

One rater dubbed the experience “awful from start to finish”.

“At the end of the day however clever you think you are as a chef — the food has to taste good and in reality the food is a disaster,” Meltzer declared.

“From the 22 courses served there was not a single dish that I would ever want to eat again.”

“Yes experiment, yes support local produce, yes be seasonal, yes, challenge the guests to a new experience — but somewhere along that journey it has to taste good,” she said.

This story originally appeared on the New York Post and reproduced with permission

Originally published as Travel influencer slams Spanish Michelin star restaurant