El Bulli

chrisp

1/3 brilliant, 1/3 experimental, 1/3 inedible 29th September 2009

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A lot of people will tell you that Ferran Adrià, head chef at El Bulli, is a genius. For what it's worth, I think he probably is, but being a mere mortal myself it's quite a hard call to make. You see, that's the problem with genius - you almost need to be a genius yourself to recognise it in others, at least before the ideas and innovations developed by said genius become mainstream, and until they do you're more likely to be baffled or frustrated (or even worse, cursed with jealousy, Salieri-like) than, well, really actually enjoy much of it.

Consider the Beatles. Widely accepted as the greatest rock and roll band of all time, in eight short years they grew from exciting and innovative rock performers to wildly inventive studio technicians through to assured and mature crafters of clever and literate pop albums. There would be few that would argue that The Beatles (or at least Lennon and McCartney, and towards the end Harrison) were geniuses in the traditional sense - they literally invented new ways of thinking about and performing music, and their songs are stamped into the world's musical consciousness in the same way as Mozart and Beethoven. But have you listened to the White Album recently? It's one third brilliant and listenable (Blackbird, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Dear Prudence), one third challenging and experimental, but still just about accessible (Happiness Is a Warm Gun, Julia, Glass Onion) and one third bizarre, unlistenable trash (Wild Honey Pie, Why Don't We Do It In The Road?, Revolution 9). Even today it's quite hard going; God knows what they made of it in 1968. I remember my father telling me the first time he heard I'm Only Sleeping (from the album Revolver) that it was so odd with its false endings and backwards cymbals and dreamy vocals that he couldn't believe anyone could ever enjoy it. Of course now it's a seminal moment in psychedelic pop and a thoroughly good listen. When you experiment so freely, some stand the test of time and some don't. I refer you to Revolution 9.

But back to the present, and to a small restaurant at the end of a precipitous coastal road 15 minutes out of the seaside resort of Rosas in north-east Spain. It is a lovely spot, in common with much of this stretch of coastline, and the restaurant makes the most of it by serving "canapés" and "cocktails" on a very attractive terrace overlooking the bay. I use the quotation marks deliberately, because these are not canapés or cocktails as you would know them. Our "Caipirinhas" and "Mojitos" were actually short stems of sugar cane soaked in alcohol and sprinkled with salt and sugared lime peel and mint - you chew on the cane and the liquid squeezes out into your mouth very satisfyingly. It was innovative and refreshing and very enjoyable. It was also probably the most normal thing we ate or drank all evening.

I won't go into detail on all the canapés but let me take just one initial example from the selection. We were served what looked like normal, fresh, juicy strawberries. And indeed they were at one time, until El Bulli saw fit to inject the inside of them with something very very salty. So what we end up with is... salty strawberries. Which tasted pretty horrible, actually. Did I just not 'get' it? Will we all be eating salty fruit in a few years time and I'll look back on the time I thought they were horrible and laugh? Is salty fruit Adrià's I'm Only Sleeping or his Revolution 9?

And so the evening wore on, and we were reseated in the restaurant proper inside. After sucking on some flower heads (which contained a lovely hibiscus 'nectar' inside), we were presented with what looked like a big block of white soap. We were instructed to 'use the paper' to eat it, which turned out to be a largely useless bit of advice as it was so fragile it almost collapsed on contact. So I buried my face into it and came back with a mouthful of what tasted mostly like coconut soap. Not actively disgusting, and you have to admire the technical skill in making such a light 'sponge', but really, this was not a pleasant thing to eat. It was bland and soapy and weird.

Far better was the next course, a miso sponge which took what was presumably the same technique and applied it to a savoury ingredient. It was rich in umami and very prettily presented. As was a slice of fried chicken skin doused in a chicken stock reduced and concentrated so much it was like eating a stock cube. But in a good way.

Truffles presented two ways didn't do much for me - great big shavings of real truffle but they were cold and one had a strange gloopy mushroomy... thing inside it which was quite off-putting. And the next course was another pretty horrible one. Chervil 'tea' - which was as far as I can tell just liquidized chervil, served in a metal bowl and looking like drained bile in a hospital kidney dish. It was unseasoned and unsettling.

Next, a little bowl of very tasty sesame-flavoured raw (I think, or at least very very lightly cooked) prawns. These were actually really nice - fun to eat and with bags of seafood flavours, but they were accompanied by a mouthful of sea anemone and caviar which didn't really taste of much. Quite an achievement for caviar.

The next course was almonds presented a number of different ways - ice cream, jelly, whole, etc. They were fine, tasted like cold almond bits. But with it was a huge lump of incredibly salty mango. Now I'm not the biggest fan of mango at the best of times, but just like the salty strawberries this was inedible - unnecessarily, pointlessly experimental for the sake of experiment.

It may seem like I'm dwelling unnecessarily on the unpleasant items and skimming over the nice bits, but this was pretty much how it went all evening. A dish or an element of a dish that tasted great and looked attractive was very often accompanied or shortly followed by something bizarre or unpleasant. Take this one for example - here we have four gorgeous, fresh, raw cockles with a couple of slicks of vermouth reduction and beautifully cooked crispy fennel. And there, lurking in between the seafood, are two pieces of preserved kumquat which were so unbelievably sour it was like chomping down on a raw lemon. Why?

Next, soy done a number of different ways, which we were instructed to eat from left to right. This was really interesting actually, and on the whole fairly tasty - kind of like a journey through the land of soy. I liked the crunchy beany and sprouty bits and I liked the slicks of umami-rich paste. Didn't think much of the ice cream, which was pretty bland and there was too much of it, but other than that I was happy.

The next course was very nearly successful. A gorgeous looking arrangements of rose petals was described as an 'artichoke heart', and did indeed taste a little bit like that vegetable. But it was too bitter for my liking - these were after all raw rose petals - and underwhelming all said and done.

This cute little 'apple sandwich' was a highlight. The fruit was twisted and pulled in all different directions, forming a crunchy salsa and a gloopy jus as well as the 'bread' of the sandwich itself (presumably some sort of clever freeze-drying method). It may seem a bit too clever for its own good but this one went down really well. I don't mind them messing about too much if it actually tastes any good. Fun, too.

Next was another very strong dish. We were told to dip these three little bags filled with different presentations of pine nuts into the bowl of passion fruit soup and eat it immediately. The flavours and textures here were lovely - the soft, earthy nuts and rich sweet fruit matched perfectly and it was again great fun to eat.

This shell was filled with raw chopped oysters, mushrooms and God knows what else but tasted fantastic - in fact I'd say this was probably my favourite course of them all. I wouldn't normally like anyone messing with oysters but the mushrooms added an interesting earthy extra dimension to the briny shellfish and was incredibly successful.

These huge local prawns were very cleverly presented - raw bodies but with the legs and head somehow drawn up to the top and deep-fried. You could eat the whole thing, and the crunchy legs contrasted with the squishy flesh of the body.

Parmesan Ravioli was not entirely unpleasant, just a bit pointless. The flavour combinations were, for a change, subtle and the textures pleasantly balanced - the ravioli themselves contained a creamy parmesan sauce and burst in the mouth. Nice plate, too.

The next course was one I'd been dreading - Rabbit Offals - but turned out to be almost verging on conventional. At least the bits of rabbit were all cooked - very well too, I might add - and all slipped down very well like a very meaty bruschetta. Ironically, two of my friends on the same table had at the start of the meal opted not to go down the offal route and were instead served a genuinely disgusting course of baby squids ballooned with squid ink served with a foie gras foam. They were bitter and repellent, the ink coating your mouth like thick black bile.

Fortunately, the mysteriously titled 'Hunt' was far more straightforward. Juicy, tasty and well-cooked venison in a thick jus was served alongside a few little jellied sour berries (cranberries?) covered in gold leaf. It looked and tasted delicious.

Our next course was a small glass bowl with a thin layer of ice that somehow cleverly floated inside the rim of the bowl. It was sprinkled with green tea powder and brown sugar, and you ate it by cracking off bits of the ice with your spoon. I'm also pretty sure the ice itself was flavoured with peppermint. Technically impressive, and great fun to eat.

And then, just as it seemed the meal was settling down and being consistently if not great than at least edible, a giant dinosaur egg arrived. It turned out to be coconut milk 'cooked' on the inside of a balloon using liquid nitrogen, and was certainly a sight to behold. But - much like the coconut soap at the start of the meal - it didn't really taste of anything other than unsweetened coconut ice-cream, which is not something I'd normally choose to eat. I didn't eat much of it.

This dish of freeze-dried summer berries wrapped in a sort of flavoured rice paper was really great - bursting with fruity flavours and containing a bewildering array of textures that still managed to combine well. But that was swiftly followed by a supposedly 'humorous' course of cockle shells filled with fruit ice cream served with yet more inedibly sour preserved fruit.

And that, more or less, was it. We were ushered out onto the beautiful front terrace for a final time and listened to the waves crashing onto Cala Montjoi as we stuffed as many of the house chocolates down our necks as we could. It was a meal that is almost impossible to make sense of, or make any decisions about. I was fretting about writing it up from the moment, during the canapés, that it became obvious that I would not enjoy everything put in front of me that evening. Some of it was great, certainly. And the service was sparkling - all evening attentive and discreet, friendly without being matey and pitch-perfect in every regard. But it seems that now, little under a week later, it's the really nasty moments that I remember rather than the highlights. If Adrià is a genius, then perhaps this meal was his White Album, mixing in equal parts the sublime, the experimental and the downright wrong. The Beatles made that album shortly after the death of their manager Brian Epstein, and it is a body of work that exists largely due to the absence of his sensible, commercial sensibilities. If I could have taken out the dishes I hated and left in the ones I liked, perhaps I would have enjoyed the evening more. But then, that's not my decision to make. I'm not the genius.

I'll leave you with one final thought. One of our canapés at the start of the meal was the famous Spherical Olives. Sort of an olive made of olive, a delicate membrane containing a thin sauce, they burst delicately in the mouth and give forth the most incredible concentrated olive flavour. Just the right mix of technical know-how, playful innovation and command of flavour, they have become a symbol of the kind of food El Bulli is lauded for creating. But they were first served a few years ago now, and it's hard to imagine anything else we were served this visit becoming a classic in the El Bulli canon. The Spherical Olives were perhaps being served at a time when the ambitions of the kitchen and the conventions of Western cuisine met at just the right time to produce food which was not only technically stunning but also accessible and, most importantly, tasty. If the White Album marked the point where the Beatles' cohesion and self-discipline were breaking down, then perhaps the same can be true of El Bulli today. But then, perhaps this is a necessary transition. After all, the Beatles went on to make Abbey Road. Will I be back to El Bulli? It's almost a relief to say I probably won't get the chance.

sokratis at 30/09/09

Kudos for the visit Chris and an excellent review.
I have to say, I'm not rushing to book my tickets to spain though.

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Artemidor

Impressive 3rd September 2008

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A very expensive restaurant. Do not go there if you earn less than… I do no know, maybe 100.000 pounds a year. However, it is worth absolutely every penny. Ferran Adrià is the absolut master of the new Spanish cuisine. Imaginative, clever, surprising… it is everything (or even more) you could ask about a meal.

I attended to a wedding past year and Adrià had designed the menu. We tasted every bit of his creations: the gorgeous mini-burgers, the turkey…. And the greatest moment arrived. The deconstructed tortilla de patatas (Spanish omelette with potatoes). No potatoes in sight, just three layers of creams and mousse. Eat it with a spoon… and it is an omelette! Impressive.

Browners

Brilliant El Bulli 18th December 2007

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I overheard a fellow foodie at work called James talking about his trip last year to El Bulli. He'd scoured the Egullet forums until he picked up enought clues to have a pop at booking a table. He deduced, having translated lots of "chatter" in Spanish that the best time to contact them was in the middle of October. Apparently this is when they take all of their bookings for the year. For every table 400 people desperately try to get in. The chances are very slim.

Thanks to James' success last year I took his advice and sent El Bulli a very nice email asking for a table for 2 on my birthday. Weeks passed. Maybe even a month. And then I got the best email of my entire life asking if a table at 8pm on April 6th would suit us! Sweet Jesus! A table at 10am for dinner would suit us!

When the sheer excitement and level of luck had sunk in we went about working out what to do either side of dinner! From what we had heard El Bulli was near Barcelona. Well it turns out that this was about as accurate as saying Birmingham is near London. So we booked an appartment in Roses with a legend called Wolf for 3 nights and decided to spend a further 2 nights in Barca itself.

Wolf turned out to be a very eccentric Germnan gentleman with one of the best located apartment building ever. If he had a few quid to spend on it he could turn it into an incredible Hip Hotels calibre boutique hotel. Given that he probably spends all of his pennies on sun cream, speedos and white paint I don't think this will happen any time soon.

The downside to the low cost of our appartment was a camp bed propped up against the French windows and a less than luxurious bathroom.

But what the hell, we had the best view you could possibly imagine from our bed! And we needed to save all of our pennies for the most expensive dinner you can imagine!

We drove from Roses to El Bulli the day before hand to do a reccie. We were so lucky with the weather which treated us like Gods for our entire stay. El Bulli is tucked away in the nook of a bay at the bottom of some beautiful hills so that it catches the evening sunlight.

The entrance is guarded with stylish rusted steel signs and an army of agarve plants, all shaded underneath towering euchalyptus trees. Very tropical. A bit like a baddy's layre in a Bond film. The headquarters to Spectre perhaps?

When we arrived for real we could barely contain our excitement as we parked up against the sea front and made our way nervously towards cooking's Mecca. A charming group of fellow diners took our photos in front of Feran Adria's kitchen which felt a bit naughty but had to be done. We could see all the chefs getting our food ready inside. A hive of serene activity with the maestro at the helm.

We were taken to see Feran Adria and his immaculate open plan kitchen and were honoured with a very warm handshake. We really weren't expecting such personal treatment. We were then led to our table through a very distinguished but not over the top dining room and were seated in the corner looking out at everybody else. It made for incredible people watching as we waited for the menu and some champagne to arrive.

The menu is 30 "courses" long and is completely choice free. We had been asked previously if there was anything we didn't eat and we had said we ate everything! Did this include sheep's brains and marrow? Of course! How could we not in El Bulli!

The sommelier did an incredible job of offering me a reasonably priced bottle of Spanish wine with the option of a more expensive bottle that he said was probably not as good. The very epitome of great service. He knew a 25 year old was already mortgaging his life to come here so why ruin the evening by making me buy a bottle of wine for hundreds of pounds. In fact we were so focused on our wine that it lasted for the entire 4 hour meal!

Our snacks arrived along with a molecular gin fiz which is icy gin with an orangey, warm yoghurt topping that did a great job of balancing acid and creamyness, warmth and cold. It cleansed our palette for the onslaught that was to come.

The snacks included some pineapple french fries, yoghurt, peanut butter and chocolate wafers, beetroot puffs, petal candyfloss, curried rice balls wrapped in gold and spherical olives. All a complete shock to the system and served in such style it knocks whatever you see in Sunday supplements into oblivion. We took a few photos but they don't really do it justice. We just wanted to enjoy the experience.

The general theme was of deep, earthy, challening tastes and textures. This was experienced most intensely during the succession of courses which moved as follows:

Razor Clams
Lamb Brain
Mackerel sweatbreads
Roast bone marrow
Truffle with truffle oil and walnut
Snails eggs
And anchovy

Intense. Heavy on unami and more than anything else very slippery. It really challenged us and has left an indelible impression on my mouth. Everything was deliciious but you wouldn't necessarily order it normally! But then again this is no ordinary experience.

Hightlights included a sensational cheese ice cream meringue with a little corn kernel infused with passionfruit. You eat it with your fingers, using the meringue spikes for grip and then feel like a taster in Willie Wonker's factory as the taste explodes in your mouth.

Then you realise why the people on the next door table had been tonguing the back of their molars and talking about something happending in the back of their mouths. That little kernel of passion fruit infused corn got wedged in the back of our teeth. Just like a rogue bit of pop corn does. Then the more you tongue it the more of the passion fruit flavour annexes your mouth ripping the cheesy ice cream taste away and leaving your palette cleansed for the next course. Sheer genius.

This got us talking to the table next door to us. These were the guys who took our picture earlier. The guy in charge was a chap from Hong Kong who had been trying to get a table for 5 years and was shocked to hear what a fluke we'd managed! He had given up trying to book for himself and instead did a deal with his mate with the black book from heaven to sort something out. In return he paid for his business class flights over from HK and 5 star hotel for 2 and for some other friends to come over too. On top of this they had wines that you could buy a small flat in London for. To him this was a once in a life time experience. He was going for it. One of their 10 bottles of wine was a Chateau Pingus which I saw in duty free on the way home for over a grand... Lord knows what it and the other 10 bottles set them back! But this wasn't done in an ostentatious way. It was a sheer epicurean extravaganza. Why do things by halves?

Another highlight was a dish of utter brilliance. Billed as a "Quebean" egg, it was a yoke cooked at 65'c for ages so that it was runny but cooked surrounded by a dash of stiff cream and a smear of taragon vinagarette. At first it made no sense. Then as you started to mix things together it turned into first hollandaise and then bernaise sauce. All we needed were some muffins and some grilled ham! It brought a smile to our faces and made us realise that we were being cooked for by the best, most innovative, playful and imaginative chefs in the world. People tell you off for playing with food. Bollocks!

We finished with some warm sheep's cheese wrapped up in candy floss with a nugget of quince paste. It was a quirky take on the what it's like to be a sheep which was a good laugh after some seriously brilliant food.

It all ended with a whisper of wind. The last course was a stack of brittle sugar panels which shimmered in the gentle breeze of the restaurant. So delicate. So different. So light. And yet again so clever.

After our 4 hour marathon we left in awe. Blown away by the best meal we will ever have.

sue at 18/12/07

Sounds absolutely amazing! What an experience.

Hugo at 18/12/07

Wow. Gastronomic nirvana!

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