September 15, 2007


El Bulli sits just above an isolated cove beach, Cala Montjoi, on the Costa Brava in Northeast Spain. Widely regarded as the top restaurant in the world, it is elegant, but not fancy with a relaxed, almost-farmhouse feel from its exposed beams, stucco walls and tile floors. (The kitchen is however a modern machine with a staff of 45 catering to 50 guests each evening.) There is no music and the lights are bright, all to focus on the food, which is dazzling, surprising and captivating. Not many would say El Bulli is the best dinner they've ever had, but it is perhaps the most important restaurant in the world for the inventiveness of its chef, Ferran Adria. A dinner from him is a chance to think about food and flavors in totally new ways; almost all of his courses are about isolating ingredients and presenting them in new forms.

1 cosmopolitan-mallow/cosmopolitan-mallow
Like Sangria, deep ruby red...lightest foam marshmallows. Tasted a bit like sangria, what kind of juice or extract was in it? Not sweet but not tart either, really a bit more like wine. Far deeper flavor then any cosmo I've ever had - and those evanescently light little lime marshmallows! Yum! Oh, and this cosmo was eaten with a spoon.

2 aceitunas verdes sfericas/spherical olives
Olives - holy cow! Looks like an olive, tastes like an olive, but liquid inside! I think they were emptied, turned into mousse/liquid and restuffed but skin is intact. They explode in your mouth. Served in a ball jar with olive oil and an orange peel, lemon peel, garlic, thyme and rosemary sprigs. Learned later that the "olive" was a gelatin ball, filled with a heavy olive oil! The olive oil is so viscous that it tasted like a soft solid, not at all like an oil. (The answer is a preparation that includes calcium chloride and sodium alignate, of course.) We were instructed to eat each whole, not in bites, because a bite would have left a trail of oil down my chin and shirt!


3 pepitas de oro/golden nuggets
Crunchy, intensely flavored air!

4 Mercedes de queso de cabra/goat cheese "Mercedes"
Cheese tart, yummy strong cheese
Served with Brut Nature Gran Reserva 2003 cava

5 marengue/profiteroles de remolacha y yogur/beetroot and yoghurt meringue
So light and crunchy -- beet, sweet meringue -- air puffs that turn into flavor explosions.

6 pan de olivas negras/black olive bread
Tempura puffs, light as air.

7 catanias saladas/salty "catanias"
Cocoa thing with walnut (far right) - a little oily inside - not sweet - intense cocoa.

8 chocolate salado de cassis, yogur y pistacho/salty chocolate with cassis, yoghurt and pistachio
Chocolates are very oily...pistachio is salty and intense...cassis is sour and sharp & a little salty too! Interesting concept but a bit too oily for AW!

9 bombones de mandarina, cacahuete y curri/tangerine bombons, peanut and curry
Tangerine treat on the spoon, and the peanut/curry wafer on the right. I think the outside of the tangerine cube is made from a solidified fat. It has this explosion of tangerine liquid inside - Boom! Loved the inside filling, less the outside shell. The peanut curry was an interesting contrast. Really strong flavor and salty.

10 bizcocho de pistachos con mousse de leche acida/pistachio sponge cake with acid milk mousse
The mousse was served in a cup and we spooned our own onto the cakes. The cake had this spun air kind of quality to it. Not one of my faves but all so interesting for what he does creating textures and extracting flavors.

11 bizcocho de sesamo y miso/sesame sponge cake with miso
Black sesame miso log - light, airy, cakey - yummy - hints of peanut in the black sesame - such a smooth, airy structure yet still firm and cake-like - intricate air tunnels. One of Jim's faves!
Everything is such a surprise when you touch, smell, taste it -- weird but it all works.

12 fondant de frambuesas y vinagre de frambuesa/raspberries fondan and raspberries vinegar
Wasabi-topped candied raspberry with a spoon of warm raspberry vinegar. Wow! Never had food that came with instructions before: One bite of warm, crystallized raspberry - one spoon of raspberry vinegar - then the second bite of raspberry -- Intense and yummy!

13 flores de horchata/tiger nut milk flowers
Yummy frozen nut milk. Barely holds together with the touch. Also has a lot solidified fat.
1998 Chateaux Margaux being decanted -- yumm!
Happy Birthday!
OK, this is pathetic - vocabulary has gone back to kindergarden level - wow, yummy, holy cow -- I just don't even have the words better than these!

14 yogur de ostras con px en tempura/oysters yoghurt with px in tempura
It's a cold soup (in cool little Reidel espresso cups) - the foam on top encompasses the taste of a whole oyster. Crazy how he can make foam taste like you are really eating a gorgeous fresh whole oyster! The soup was creamy with a nice balance flavor. The tempura after is a freaking explosion of cherry flavor inside!

15 sandia con caviar de moras/watermelon with blackberry caviar
The watermelon was carved into these little boats. The texture has also been altered some, maybe marinated? It is a bit firmer then it would normally be and doesn't break apart the same way that raw watermelon would. The little blackberry caviar is a yummy intense flavor - seeds and all.

16 judion con panceta Joselito/haricot bean with Joselito's Iberian pork fat
A total play on baked beans and ham. Rich, powerful stock, clear broth but so thick and rich tasting - a favorite for both of us!! Amazing how that viscous broth can so capture the essence of the ham flavor. The soft bean almost dissolves in the ham soup - but comes through as beautiful clear white bean. I guess this must also be one of the warm gelatin tricks encasing "essence of bean" because I've never seen any real bean that looked like that.

17 Caju con yogur/Caju with yoghurt
Cashew done four ways. Pungent, sour, frozen, creamy. I loved it for the inventiveness of it! Not Jim's fave.
Wine ('98 Margeaux): tobacco, leather, chocolate, red, red fruit, no tannin - so much depth & structure & layers.

18 anchoa con jamon y yuba de yogur/anchovy and ham with yoghurt yuba
The white stripe on top was described as milk film, so was more about texture than taste. The broth seemed to be the same ham soup as in course 16 above with some sort of ham cracklings added in at the table, and the anchovy was yummy, salty and oily. The crunchy bits were super fine and super crunchy, providing a great contrast in that viscous soup. I liked the milk foam because it reminded me of my grandmother making warm milk for me and my favorite part was always that skin with its odd texture.

19 cascara de gorgonzola, nueces, apio y manzana/gorgonzola shell, walnut, celery and apple
Icy, frozen shell of gorgonzola. Again the outside shell tastes like it is a solidified fat - not my favorite. The inside though was a pretty yummy gorgonzola between a consistency of a mousse and ice cream. It's the classic gorgonzola, celery, apple, walnut salad, just deconstructed, semi frozen and liquified!

20 cous-cous de tomate con aceite-aceitunas a la albahac/tomato cous-cous with oil-olives, basil and parmesan cheese
Each element was surprisingly strong, seemingly a laser of the individual ingredient. The "cous-cous" was a cold and melting, freeze-dried, robustly flavored tomato; the olive in the middle, pressed or extracted to be so rich; and the basil on the left a concentrated mousse. The parmesan is in the glass! When delivered, the waiter just said casually, "oh and here is the parmesan to drink" we looked at him as though we had clearly misunderstood. Raising the glass, with that intense smell of fresh parmesan and then tasting it - wow, no misunderstanding there! How the heck do you extract the essence of parmesan cheese into a light, clear liquid??? It was fun watching them bring that dish to other tables as everyone has the same startled reaction. We were laughing with the lady at the next table when she almost fell out of her chair upon tasting it!

21 cuitlacoche con maize/corn "cuitlacoche"
OMG - so good - black bean flavor in the cuitlacoche plus banana nitrogen frozen powder. The corn-balls are like cutting the kernals off those mini-ears seen in stir-fry. They are fried and a bit oily but taste super light and fresh inside. It is like the corn inside is cut into grain-size pieces and you can make out each individual fine kernal.

22 ceps al natural con patatas suecas/cepe mushrooms with potatoes
Different consistencies/presentations of cepes with MINI potatoes plus purple basil foam...cepes in liquid, slices and quarters. Mushroom slices are creamy, woody, forest-like. Tiniest potatoes - starchy, greenish, full.

23 almeja-pulpito/clam-octopus
Clam cut to look like octopus - so sweet - no brine at all. Olive oil caviar - firm, gelatinized, solid olive oil! The black base is really buttery. And the bomb on top of the plate is a soft very powerful peppercorn.

24 fiduea de shimensi/"fiduea" of shimensi
Tiny clams with enoki - surprising - clams have a bit of solid inside - stronger and so concentrated - seems to have a film around and filled with liquid - like the olives at the beginning were. The seaweed adds astringent bitterness, which I love - cleanses the palate and just jumps out against the woody, sweet enoki in that gooey texture and the intense liquid clams.

25 ventresca de caballa teriyaki/teriyaki mackerel belly
Very Japanese tasting dish. The red stuff is a light as air but strong tasting foam with a bit of tang. The mackerel was strong flavored but not super fishy. The little green plum was a tart counterpoint (and my favorite part of the dish). I don't know what the little black bits were but they were very finely textured and crunchy. I think that the little black flecks on the pink foam were seaweed but not bitter or astringent like the one in the previous dish was, just a bit briney.

26 anguila-chirimoya/eel-custard apple
The eel - ummm - salty. The foam - broth, buttery, lemony but not sour - the fois gras, torched on top - so intense - the "eel fish" texture of fish & looked like fish - one of my faves.

27 tortola con su jugo/turtledove with their own juice
Ok, when eating this, we thought it was turtle. Aren't turtledoves only in Christmas carols? The turtledove tastes like liver - really good calves liver - great brown sauce. Stuff on top I would think is a mushroom. The white stuff was sort of gelatinous, no idea what it wa supposed to be. the leaf had a strong flavor, not shiso but a bit like it. Finished Margaux, so served the sherry with it (Oloroso Pata de Gallina). The sherry was great, dry and yummy.

28 torta Canarejal con frutos rojos/"torta Canarejal" with red fruits
Umm - the sheep cheese with raspberry - so good! The liquid in the middle is the cheese!

29 "trufitas"/"trufitas"
Yuzu and egg yolk - Now I get the point of yuzu!! Citrus & egg yolk - tangy, creamy, sweet & delish! Brought over in this big tray of finely powdered sugar so you searched them out like little treasures!

30 paisaje nevado/snowy landscape
Winter wonderland! Amaretto biscotti crunches, clouds, powder, spongecake plus fruit bombs. Served with Kracher Eiswein Curvee 2005.

Followed recommendation to ask for Juli's vodka & lemon. Shown also is an unnamed and unnumbered course of lemon treats (we'll call it 31).

Another dessert was a chocolate beignet filled with ice cream - one bite, wow!!! (32)
For this next one, the flowers were presented, and then cut with small scissors into these bowls for us! Frozen, sweet, crunchy. (33)

Thank you to the master in his kitchen. Chef Adria, "I do not want to condition people. Freedom is most important here, and in life. Everybody has a right to think what they want here, as they do in a theater or museum."