I’ve eaten at the worst restaurant in the world. I was served a live animal there. As in, an entire animal, which was still alive, was placed in front of me and I was expected to eat it, to just shove the whole thing in my mouth and chew it up while it was still moving and swallow it and .
.. I guess enjoy the experience? My partner and I paid something like $1500 for that meal (half of that cost, to be fair, was the wine pairing, which included a Bordeaux from 1978).
True destination dining: Mugaritz. The restaurant was – and is – Mugaritz , a two-Michelin-starred eatery in the hills behind San Sebastian in northern Spain. It’s true destination dining, the sort of unique, incredible experience that people travel from all over the world to try.
The chef there, Andoni Luis Aduriz, is a genius, a mad scientist, someone driven to evolve dining beyond anything that has been achieved before. He’s also, you gradually realise, deeply pretentious and completely out of touch with the desires and pleasures of modern society. I’ve written about my experience at Mugaritz before, but I’m thinking about it again right now because the restaurant has recently gone viral on social media – for all the wrong reasons.
TikTok and Instagram influencer Chloe Jade Meltzer recently ate at Mugaritz and posted three videos of what she called “the worst meal of my life ”. Face to face with your food at Mugaritz. She included shots of food that seemed to range from ridiculous to inedible.
She even showed a clip of police turning up at the Mugaritz front door because a customer was refusing to pay for his meal, presumably because it was so bad. And I thought, oh yeah, I remember that. I remember Mugaritz for good reasons, for the wines that I will probably never have the chance to try again, for the beautiful venue, for the fact it was a birthday celebration, for the dishes that stood out as being so incredibly tasty.
But I also remember Mugaritz for bad reasons, for reasons that, if amplified or extrapolated, could most definitely turn it into the worst restaurant in the world: the mushy, fermented avocado served as an amuse bouche; the little booklet on the table with a glossary of terms that included the likes of, “Convention: Door that begs to be knocked down”; the octopus roe served on our hands because “this is the way people in poor countries eat”; and yes, the live animal, a baby eel served encased in a bubble of seawater, a dish called “Conception”. Clearly, five years later, Aduriz has taken the latter elements and chosen to focus solely on them, now serving soup out of a rubbery blob that looks like a belly button (called “The world’s navel”), plus a gel that looks – and apparently tastes – like lip gloss, which has to be scooped out of a narrow cup with your fingers (like, er, lip gloss). There’s also a dish called “ Exquisite corpse ”.
“The world’s navel” dish at Mugaritz. What even is this? Is it designed for pleasure? Because if it is, it’s failing spectacularly. And if it isn’t, then .
.. what even is it? I have no plans to go back to Mugaritz.
I mentioned this last week . I’m really pleased I ate there when I did, when the place was on the borderline – a good mix of fun and funk, of beauty and stupidity. “Exquisite corpse.
” What even is it? But the stuff they’re doing now, wildly experimental and with total disregard for diners, I don’t ever want to experience, let alone pay an eye-watering amount of money for. And anyway, there’s no need, because you’re in San Sebastian. You want a luxurious dining experience? You can have it.
Almost anywhere. Walk the streets of the Parte Vieja, the old town, or across the river in Gros, and call in to a few bars for a drink and a snack. Go to Bodega Donostiarra for an indurain, a skewer of tuna belly, salt-cured anchovy, guindilla peppers, pickled onion and olive.
Go to Bar Nestor for a steak and some tomatoes. Go to Tamboril for the raw tuna in escabeche with black peppercorns. If you want to sit down for your luxurious meal, check out Casa Urola, or Ganbara, or Gerald’s Bar, Lanperna or Arenales.
If you want the high-end experience, go to Arzak, where the food is occasionally a little crazy, but the focus is 100 per cent on the customers having a good time (waiters take you through the set menu at the beginning and offer to replace anything that doesn’t sound good). Loading There’s a niche movement worldwide now towards wildly experimental, “multi-sensory” fine dining, inspired no doubt by El Bulli, the revolutionary Spanish restaurant that pioneered the concept of “molecular gastronomy”. That idea has been pushed further, which is why you now see diners being asked to suck foam out of a plaster cast of the chef’s lips , or eat a dish shaped like a human tongue .
Or, I guess, eat a live animal. Don’t spend your money like this. There’s better food in the world.
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License this article Food and wine Tips & advice Spain Opinion For subscribers Ben Groundwater is a Sydney-based travel writer, columnist and author with more than 20 years' experience. He specialises in food and wine – writing about it, as well as consuming it. Follow him on Instagram @bengroundwater Connect via email .
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