El Bulli

Annually, eight thousand people were selected to make the pilgrimage to dine at El Bulli (www.elbulli.com). It took a year from application to when my wife, Judie, and I dined there. We arrived on a hot, August night and gazed at the red clay roof of the Spanish style villa, overlooking the Caya Montjio, on Catalonia’s Costa Brava.  The pebbled parking lot had been groomed by a metal rake.  I began to worry about our guests being late for dinner, but since they had the use their  company jet, there was little chance they would be at the mercy of a commercial airline. With only five minutes to spare, guests in hand, we strolled past the massive glass window that looked into the kitchen. Inside the immaculate, quiet kitchen, chef Ferran Adria greeted us for a photo opportunity. He was dressed like most chefs, blue jeans, chef jacket and white apron. We were guided to our table on the terrace to begin our culinary odyssey. The procession of dishes began in rapid succession at 8 pm. Each one-, two- or three-bite morsel of delicious creation [good phrasing]was explained in detail.

To execute the daily ritual, 50 kitchen and 20 dining room personnel serve the 35 courses to just 50 people. This event requires 1,750 plate-like pieces, including a small white 5 cm cube, twisted mesh wire, shiny buckled metal platters, and see-through wood shavings to protect our fingers from touching the delicate foods.

Two of my favourite dishes:

Handkerchief: a paper-thin wafer of pineapple with speckles of dried black olive, similar in shape to a mitre (bishop’s hat)

Mimetic Peanuts; semi-liquid filling of sweet peanut, in what looks exactly like a peanut shell, but is actually a super fine shell of sugar with a few grains of sea salt on top.

Least favourite dish: Trout Roe Risotto, trout caviar served with a dollop of yogurt jelly, garnished with a piece of gold leaf. The flavour combination wasn’t pleasant. The two flavors just clashed.

Most acoustical dish: Pond; a glass bowl with a frozen layer of water. Minted sugar is sprinkled onto the pond followed by basil powder. I could hear the sugar being sprinkled onto the dish at a neighbouring table. You break the thin shell and eat the shards of sweet, herbed ice. Unbelievably refreshing.

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Ferran Adria turned his back on the rules and rituals of cooking in 1987, after chef Jacques Maximin explained that “creativity means don’t copy”.  With that, the fire was lit within Ferran.  A new and creative cuisine he liked to term “techno-emotional” was born.  Most chefs know it as molecular cuisine, the first major revolution in cooking since nouvelle cuisine in the 1970’s.

I believe Ferran Adria has given to food the creativity that Salvador Dali gave to the world in art. Boundless energy coupled with a wild sense of imagination. The best example I can think of is Dali’s lobster telephone.  At 1.30 am, it was time to leave the culinary temple and begin to relive the moments for years afterwards.

The now shuttered El Bulli will reopen in 2014 as the “El Bulli Foundation.” New disciples will soon walk the grounds and be inspired to create the next generation of cuisine.

Culinary bucket list.  #1, El Bulli, tick.

To see all the photos from the evening at el bulli, go to www.modernca.ca/restaurant/el-bulli/