El Bulli, Roses: 3/3 - Sweets

The switch to sweets is unclear at El Bulli (as is the nature of the whole dinner and many of the courses). Our meal had already been underway for hours at this point. You would be flagging too, I promise. I keep thinking about this, and even if I look at the pictures and think critically, I can't understand the thematic development. It's hard for me to believe that they serve you 30+ things with no effort to connect between them though. As I said before with some of the weirder courses, I believe that the chefs mean everything they're doing. It just may be that they're more used to the challenging stuff than the diners are, and similarly that transitions that look clever on paper are too complex for someone to grasp when they're eating. 'Cuz it's eating, after all.

So here's something simple, technically clever, immensely refreshing, and just plain neat to start the sweet portion. It's a 'pond', which is a frozen glass bowl filled with a layer of ice. Just a layer, mind you. Under that layer the bowl is empty! Except possibly for some menthol flavor, which is either in the bowl or in the ice. I say menthol advisedly, because it was stronger than mints that you're used to. Curiously strong (R)?

Onto the surface of the pond they sprinkle brown sugar crystals...

And then green tea powder. And then you're allowed to crack the ice, which is fun and childlike, and then it's all minty and refreshing. Ready to go back for more courses!

Which is funny, because the first dessert kinda takes you back to the beginning of the meal - still refreshing, and in fact a cocktail. The orange bar is a slightly-slushy frozen passion fruit whisky sour. It was ridiculously refreshingly, errrrr, sour. The white thing, I dunno.

Then another technical item, refreshing and cooling but in a soothing and non-sharp way. This 10-inch ball of frozen coconut milk comes to the table whole, and after a brief pause while you admire the technical craftsmanship, the server cracks into it with a spoon.

And sprinkles curry powder on it, leaving you the shaker. It's weird - very pure flavor of coconut (because there's nothing else in it, I presume), with the flavor of curry, which usually indicates savory, while being cold and giving you the expectation of dessert-ness. No way to finish this, and it's funny to watch yours or the ones on other tables melt and devolve - homage to Dali?! Let's not overthink.

I believe the menu calls this 'puff pastry of pineapple'. We all found it to be verily void of value.

'Roses' was a funny dessert - again with the intense, sour flavors. I guess that's a refreshing theme for September 1st when it's still hot? What I remember about this was that the rose on the left was a very strong cassis puree, while the white stuff under the foam was yogurt-based. I don't remember any of it having any sugar to speak of. It was a bit much, but the technique was lovely, especially on the rose. Other than that, it looks a bit like many of the blobby plates that I've seen from prior years. I think I understand the blobbiness now though - El Bulli is less focused on presentation than I thought. It's more conceptual - "two flavors + 1 technique" - and if the result doesn't look like much, who cares?

There's a lot of speculation about how different the menu is between days and between tables. I'll tell you, our menu was very different from the others I've seen from 2009 - half or so compared to people who ate only a month apart (I think that's a lot, don't you?). I wasn't sure if other tables were getting different things on the night, but when I went to the bathroom at one point I saw another table eating this shellfish platter, and I was bummed. It looked so fresh and inviting...that I had to laugh when it showed up at our table and I realized I had been fully tricked and it was really the last dessert. Nice one. Great twist to finish!

Again, I saw another writer talking about how this giant lemon had been dehydrated and rehydrated. I'm not sure if that's true - at all. It's awfully juicy for that to be the case. The fact is, the skin was processed in some way such that it was completely edible and in fact sweet, while the flesh wasn't especially sour. I think part of both of those aspects was due to the type of lemon it is; I've read about these big Mediterannean lemons, and don't really know what to expect from them. But this piece that I ate, procesed or natural, was delicious. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd make up something like "cooked at low temperature in sugar solution, and maybe injected with more sugar". Who cares. Loved it.

And the shellfish! So cute! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - this is a lychee (jelly, I think) pressed into the mussel shell. Nothing fancy beyond the presentation, really.

In the cockles was a star anise ice cream or the like. Again, a funny Asian twist on things, but very edible and enjoyable.

It's normal to get 'morphings' after these desserts, which are...well, I dunno, because we didn't get them. I think they're just more little surprises. Instead we got a humidor, packed to the absolute gills with chocolate-based petit fours (which could qualify as a big surprise). Looking at this is making me feel a little sick. I didn't even have room to try them all. Oog. The craziest thing is that it was all chocolate. The gravelly stuff under the individual nuggets is in fact chocolate gravel. The red plastic was only red plastic. I think. I didn't bite it.

Freeze-dried strawberries dipped in white chocolate. On the right are these odd spidery, rooty red things (blow up the picture) that were chocolate with a red powder coating (rasperry or beets, I have no memory).

The sponge technique made another appearance, this time (I think) with white chocolate. Actually I don't mind it reappearing here, because for a number of other diners it showed up as a black sesame sponge with miso paste earlier in the meal. That would have been +1 Nuts, -1 Japanese Influence.

Mini chocolate bars in various colors. No idea about flavors. Ooog. It's a rarity for me to see candy and not want to eat more, but oy my oog.

Finally, the far side of the humidor was filled with these rows of herbal chocolate leaves. Note that there is a third row under the mint leaves. Oog. Note also that we were a table of 4, and there are at least 10 of each of these. Oog. After a series of bite-sized plates, this was a sledgehammer of chocolate. It was sort of like the bottomless rice and soup at the end of a Japanese meal - 'fill up the cracks'.

Somehow, we had managed to be among the last patrons to leave the restaurant, so this is what we saw on the way out. I love this decor, and I especially like it like this, with the lights a little dim. Considering the sated, braindead frame of mind we were in, it was wonderful to feel like we were the last people, and that we were closing the restaurant down with the staff. Mellow. Chillaxed.














Would I go back? Sure, I guess. I love the fact that the menu was completely different than anything I had seen from previous years. Some of the techniques persisted, some of the flavors were similar, but it was all new. I got no sense, none at all, that the kitchen is past its prime or that the chefs are repeating past glories (the skeptic says "because they had none!" haha). Look at the lack of nitro use, the judicious application of foam, the limited quantities of LYO or whatever other processes and chemicals have been reviled in the past. I don't know what it's growing and evolving into, but the experience is certainly growing and evolving.

Also, I dispute the oft-muttered statement that the produce is low-quality. Where there was produce in its natural form (the shellfish and cephalopods being prime examples, except when they were filled with frozen sweets), the quality was excellent. Most of the produce is remodeled so extensively that you can't tell what it was like originally, and I think that's the real problem for people in our terroir-driven, locally-sourced, 'cut the nuts off the bull myself' high-end restaurant culture. I really don't care if the vegetable or mineral was free range, battery-raised or chemically grown; I just want it to taste good.

But you can tell from the above that I had no great love for the taste. The experience, sure. But the food had too much nuttiness and too much Asian-ness for me, and I missed the traditional arc of a grand dinner through cold, hot, veg, fish, meat and sweet. I guess if I could have understood what they were trying to do it might have been better, but the fact remains that if the food doesn't connect with the diner, the experience will miss something. As this did, for me.

But it wasn't missing enough to make me unhappy or bitter, and you know why? Because it was fascinating! I don't think there's a rule that says a restaurant is a place that offers things that taste great according to a certain set of criteria. I got to eat things I've never eaten before - ingredients, tastes, textures, the whole lot. Couple that with the joy of the unexpected and the occasional straight-up delicious item, and you've got a world-beating proposition.

That's why I plan to...well, probably give it a year or two before even trying to apply again. There's still a lotta foie and sashimi I'd like to eat.

El Bulli, Roses: 2/3 - Mains

At some point in the past, some wag must have offered the opinion that Ferran Adria has a persecution complex. That hypothetical (or apocryphal) person would have had a field day with the decor near where we were sitting - not only this sculpture high up in a niche in the wall, but also various art pieces that looked to have been donated by friends of El Bulli. These feature the restaurant logo, and in at least one case, Ferran's face. As I said before, I think this sort of criticism is misplaced, and the headshots probably shouldn't be taken for that kind of adoration, but it was a funny way to be greeted as we came into the body of the restaurant and sat down.

We were, unfortunately, in the inner room. This is a bit more formal, though not much - it has a separate area up 4 steps that contains several couches as well as the above artwork. I'll show you the main room later - it has a really cool Spanish-Rococco-beach-shack sort of decor. If you're lucky enough to go with a party of 4, I think you should ask for the sunken round table by the bar in that room. It's a little separate and looks the best.

The three tables for two across the room from us were occupied by couples of the young-and-handsome variety. One of our party described them as 'fund manager and trophy wife', if that helps you picture it. Two of them actually knew each other in advance. The big table at the front of this picture was empty until almost 10 PM when a group of Spaniards came in; since the restaurant assigns the start times, I can only imagine that they followed the 'locals eat late' philosophy. Their arrival also fortunately dispelled the idea that the inner room was only for English speakers...but if I ever go back, I'm still asking for the main room.

With that grumbling out of the way, we were off to the serious races...

...with flowers. Filled with nectar. Pick one up, pinch off the end, and suck the nectar out through the thin end. I'll spare you the picture of me with flower in mouth, OK? But this is fun. Sweet, tiny, cute...why not? I suppose this could be meant to confound expectations since the 'serious' part of the meal starts with something so manifestly playful, reminiscent of childhood honeysuckle (which I discovered was not part of anyone else's childhood!).

This coconut sponge was not appreciably less playful. I think I saw this texture described somewhere as a 'loofah', and that's pretty accurate (except really soft). It's coconut milk somehow softly frozen into this shape, yet pliable. It melted a little in your hands, then fully in your mouth. And tasted like coconut milk, but that's OK because it's about the texture (or the technical process, some would say. But those reviewers are...). Incidentally, it's another nut-based dish (loosely; coco-...+1).

Things got odder after that with this funny twist on Japanese food - nori-like sheets of raspberry, with wasabi. Cute, no?

And we continued in the raspberry vein with these actual nori handrolls, filled with raspberry sorbet. I wish I could remember the taste of these, because they were fun.

Even more fun when you've never had one before is an oyster leaf, in this case with a few drops of vinegarette 'dew'. I had never had one before, so this was fantastic! When you're in the El Bulli mindset, it's very tempting to think that they've done some kind of amazing process that makes this small, spinach-like leaf taste exactly like an oyster. My theory was that the faint white dusting on the leaf was dried oyster powder, which seems like the sort of technical foolishness they'd get up to. In fact, this is a completely natural ingredient - it's a plant that tastes for all the world like a nice, fresh oyster rolled up in a spinach leaf. It's uncanny. It was much less uncanny when we had them the next night at a different restaurant...(and I note that the next night's leaf was lower-quality, take that you El Bulli produce haterz).  Incidentally, note how instead of receiving an actual oyster with vinegar for an appetizer, you get...a leaf. On a very pretty plate.

Continuing to play with basic flavors in weird forms, this was a chicken canape that tasted like yakitori on a cracker. Only the meat was softened (very softened) chicken cartilege, and the cracker was crisply fried (very crisply-fried) chicken skin. The yakitori sauce was excellent. It would be nice to find a place using just that tare. The leaves looked kinda like pea sprouts, but I don't remember the taste. I was also worried about the sauce dripping through the plate onto the table, which seems to be a minor design flaw.

Things took a weird turn in the next two courses. This was Summer truffle two ways, and I think a play on the 'truffle' form, as in chocolates. They were 'one bite' concoctions because they had a truffled-flavored liquid inside that burst in your mouth. Different textures, with the farther one being wrapped in shaved truffle while the nearer one was in shredded truffle. Generally, no one found this cold, raw presentation to be that alluring; I suspect a bit of heat and some other flavor are needed to really get the truffle going.

I tried to consult the menu, but this course is just called 'Osmanthus', and employs El Bulli's 'single noodle spaghetti' technique, where they pipe some liquid into another and it sets there. Checking some other blogs, it looks like no one else really understood it either. I remember it as a spaghetti of hazelnuts in a soup of indeterminate oil (which must have been flavored with osmanthus flowers). I do remember that it was the grossest thing I ate all evening, and the rest of our table didn't finish it (I did, but only because...well, why not? Maybe it only gets good after you finish the whole bowl! Maybe it's a meditation on the aftertaste!)
Nuts, +1. This 'single noodle spaghetti' technique seems to get panned a lot in El Bulli reviews; I think it's too confronting for many people because of the texture. Another reviewer insists that it's 'reconstructed udon noodles', but I can't think of any reason why they'd serve a dish made from raw pasta dough.

Umeboshi on crackers. Tasted like umeboshi. Ferran, don't be gettin' all ninja on us...

Prawn, Two Firings was the subject of much enjoyment and discussion (actually someone remembers this as having been fired 3 times, but the name gives the lie to that; the review who thought it had 4 distinct temperature segments, from icy cold at one end to deep fried at the other, is also...). The point, I think, was to get the maximum value out of this lovely little prawn - best when the tail is barely cooked, but the legs are well cooked or even battered and fried. So this was batter on top and fried on a string or something, then the whole thing was dropped in briefly to finish (two firings?). Eat from the tail, you get the maximum benefit.

And after drink this spoonful of soup or sauce (Americaine) made from prawn heads. A whole prawn experience in optimized form, I think. If they could figure out how to get one segment of tail raw, maybe they would. Then you'd have raw, cooked and battered shrimp, and the best use of the heads (this replaces sucking the heads, which I'm not a huge fan of), all on one plate. If that's the intention, it was cute. If not, it still tasted great.

Like me, I'm sure you haven't been keeping track, so I'll point out that all courses until now have been finger-oriented. We received forks just before this dish. Which was almonds. Lots of almonds. Nuts ++++. But it's almonds different ways - fresh, gelled, frozen, re-formed almond butter. With a mound of tomato-water sorbet (in the back) and nut oil. And a slice of apricot (?), covered in red shiso (I sort of remember it as mango, but not the flavor, and I saw someone else call it apricot (could be) in olive powder (no). I'm also sure it's not a 'dehydrated and re-hydrated tangerine slice'.). Tomato, nuts, fruit...all added up to something a little disturbing, I think because of the contrast between the sorbet and the oil pool. I do love almonds.

Cockles with fennel and yuzu. The cockles are the brown bits; they were not at all the equals of those at Rias de Galicia (no crime in that, though). The fennel was soft and roasted, and obviously had some green oil on it. I would swear that the 2 and 8 o'clock bites on the plate were actually preserved lemon segments, but they were described as yuzu. I have no idea how this was supposed to fit together, but it didn't do a lot for me. I was also worried about cutting too close to the plates sloping edges; it was actually a raised platform with two sides having long legs bent from the same material as the top and rounding over to the table. Not much leakage protection, but we're not here for practicality!

This is, indeed, (steamed?) rose petals and artichoke petals with pesto, silver foil and some oil (I'd like to say nuts +1 but can't remember). Flowers make a thematic reappearance. I was disappointed at the sloppiness of the silver leaf applique, but this was unexpected and interesting, if not especially appetizing.

At our table this was the second-most disliked dish, after the single-strand spaghetti. While resembling a sandwich (cruel joke on cheesesteaks, the chosen sandwich of god), the bread is sort of pumpkin-flavored styrofoam, while the filling is mainly those summer truffles again, sliced thinly, topped with fresh almonds (again) and pumpkin oil. I'm not sure if it's thematic or repetitive when things appear in dishes multiple times (like nuts, +1), but I'd like them to be a bit elaborated. I got a spot of the bright-orange filling oil on my sleeve while eating. I thought for a couple days whether I should ever wash the shirt again, but in the end gave in, and mysteriously the stain came right out in water. Thus it probably wasn't oil in the way that I thought.

I see through a bit of a browse that some people thought this was a great dish (although they were rapt at the 'generous shavings of white truffle', which is sad considering that these are black summer truffles. It's great to be colorblind and not prejudiced, but for me white is always going to be better than black when it comes to truffles). Other reviewers thought this was an adaptation of ravioli through the inclusion of ingredients somewhat like a pumpkin agnolotti with pine nuts and truffles, or an adaptation of traditional Spanish sandwiches with truffles acting as ham, or a meditation on the levels of the earth, with truffles being roots, pumpkin growing at ground level, and almonds growing on trees. I dunno. I just didn't like it that much. The styrofoamy bread is weird in a way that I couldn't forgive considering how the taste was also lacking.

Have you noticed how little foam there's been up to now? And how little liquid nitrogen? Maybe it was used in other ways (God only knows how they made the 'bread' above), but it's not obvious in every dish where the trickery comes in. I respect that - many of the dishes are straightforward juxtapositions of ingredients, perhaps one with a technical element. But there are rarely that many things going on (cf recent fine dining where meats have to be presented three ways or more to qualify for admission: chicken leg, wing-shaped nitro-foam which is actually a clever pun because it's made from egg, and caramelized cock's comb). It's almost like they have a rule about how much you can complicate a dish, with each ingredient and technique taking up a space.

Anyway, here's some foam! Thing is, this was one of the favorite dishes on the night. It's sea anemone (the green, tangled, strandy things) with caviar and seaweed jelly, and I think the foam was lemon-ish (grass or verbena or something). I'm still kinda excited that I ate sea anemone, and anyway it was a unique texture and a nice, subtle, gently-crunchy ocean taste. I would love to eat this again to confirm.

When the grand palace restaurants of Paris can serve TV dinners, El Bulli can serve pre-packaged condiments. These were two varieties of pine nuts and one of spiced oil, I think, to be eaten in order. It's funny that they served this playful, dare I say it, nutty (+1) course between two delicate fish items, but I think there must be an internal logic to it.

Especially when you consider that the condiment packages were technical items - they dissolved in water, so you had to dip quickly in this 'shabu shabu' liquid and then eat. This was playfully served in a cup with a rounded bottom, which required a ring-shaped base in order to stand up. I playfully failed to notice this, and barely saved the cup from draining onto my lap after I playfully placed it directly on the table. Perhaps the conceptual ephemerality of the packages was meant to offset the heaviness of the nut-ness within, leaving it balanced as an intermezzo between seafoods? Riiiiight.

That's especially believable when you consider that the next two seafood 'mains' were quite strong in flavor. This squid dish was excellent - again, anyone who tells you El Bulli can't source a good squid and cook it to perfection is just wrong. If you find something to ruined, it's very likely they wanted it to have that aspect (though presumably the chefs didn't find it gross like you), but I can't imagine anyone finding this dish to be ruined. It's Thai at heart; I think the brown pool was largely tamarind-flavored, but in any case we all agreed that it was a good use of standard Thai flavors. A little disappointing, actually, since the flavors were so standard, but the taste and cooking were wonderful. I especially liked the finely-sliced, noodley bits on the far right of the plate; they were served facing the diner and led down into the body of the squid (which was also topped by small cuttlefish that you can't really distinguish above). This was one of the best dishes for me, and I'm pleased to say that it doesn't show up in a lot of other reviews (I'm pleased because the others have a lot of things I wish I had eaten!).

This abalone presentation was nuts. I think the point is sort of to reconstruct an abalone in its shell on a rock with seaweed, don't you? The abalone was very well cooked and tasty (assuming you like abalone), sliced and reassambled. Around it, the oval 'shell' portion was made of shimeji mushrooms cooked in a thickened Chinese-style sauce, and the antler-like green bits were probably seaweed in addition to imitating seaweed conceptually. That's a good trick, conceptually imitating something that you actually are.

From this angle, the replay shows how the mollusc was cut and reassembled (someone else described it as 'raw abalone alternating with blocks of lardo', but ours was certainly cooked. I'm not sure what the light-colored blocks were, but solid lard?). One thing I can't show you is how salty this was. It was one of the other times on the trip when my ordinarily salt-loving tongue was stunned into submission and crawled whimpering into my throat.

As I think about it, the overall appeal of this dish was indeed a bit Chinese, which lines up with the use of the popular luxury ingredient.

Not sure why this was called Natural Scampi, but there's nothing very natural about being split in two down your tail! Poor scampi... I thought this was an excellent-quality scampi, and the presentation was beautiful, what with the salt and the elaborate silver serving tray and all. The bummer of it was the sesame sauces (nuts +1; one a sweetened whole sesame and the other ground sesame/tahini), which totally overpowered the taste of the scampi. Poor little guy, going to waste like that. I'm now wondering if I missed the eating directions on this, because eating any of the sesame before any of the scampi would have guaranteed destruction of shrimpy flavors.

Sea cucumber? This was actually very pleasant, soft and yielding, much like a...the only issue was that the flavor was based on XO sauce, which didn't impress our Chinese member very much. Like the Thai dish before, it was viewed as a somewhat obvious take on ethnic flavor. But a great surprise since it was an ingredient that I think of as being gross, but the taste and texture were pleasant (or better).

This is one of the dishes that they're referring to when they ask you to confirm your dislikes and allergies before arrival. And also why they ask you that question before the food starts. And also why they specifically say "Can you eat rabbit brains and kidneys? And snail eggs?"  The crackers here seem in my memory to be like the fried chicken skin earlier, but I think they were just crackers. This was pretty great, actually - on the bounds of textural and flavoral acceptability, but on the right side of them and pushing outward a bit. The plate is cool too, isn't it? Reminds me of some of the sea creatures we ate earlier.

Snail eggs. Something like two Euros per gram. Difficult to harvest, somewhat innocuous of taste (the harvester even says that, not me), inferior to salmon eggs in texture...

I have one regret about our whole evening, and we've now come to it. After course after course of complete weirdness, one member of our party started to crack (I tried to get everyone ready for dinner with pep talks, but the food exceeded my expectations). Some normalcy was required. She ordered a coke. They were very nice about it, and promptly brought a coke in a glass bottle, and this glass of ice and lemon. But they left it on the sideboard, because the sommelier is evidently meant to serve all drinks on the first pour or something. He picked up the bottle, examined it, looked around in a horrified, quizzical way until he found the waitress, confirmed visually that this foul thing had in fact been ordered, and then looked at it in a quizzical and horrified way for a while.
And I didn't manage to take a picture. Shit.

Going from memory, this was lamb kidneys with ham soup and chamomille oil. The lamb kidneys were confronting - I don't think they were even sous vide, they were just barely cooked. Taste and texture was aggressive. The ham soup sounds nice but was lost or overpowered by the weirdness of nearly-raw kidneys. The chamomille oil, an invisible slick to the left of the meat, was an odd touch. No idea how this fit together. I'd have to eat it again and see if I could get used to it!

At this point we were pretty eager for another break and were happy to realize that the main dishes had finished. The first break we took was a little weirder. I had been led to believe by other reviewers that dining here was a luxurious and high-service affair, and if you got tired at some point during the onslaught of confronting dishes, you could raise your hand and ask for a couple minutes, at the convenience of the kitchen. When I tried this, the waitress seemed taken aback by the request. I know all the dishes are served with pinpoint timing, so I tried to make it clear that we would do it at the convenience of the kitchen, but she still seemed harried. Eventually someone else came over and told us to "Go right now!" It's a lot to take in, and you're paying for it, so I still think it's worth stepping out when you're tired.

Interestingly, here's what the kitchen looked like at this point - practically shut down. This is from the stairs that I showed in the first post. I guess the 'sweet' side of the kitchen, which I think is in a different room, is pulling the heavy duty at this stage of the night, and that's where we'll turn in the third post.

As you've noticed if you read through everything above (and are still reading), 2009 is clearly the breakout year for food blogging. There are tons of exhaustive treatments of the El Bulli experience online from this season (half of which seem to be written by gay men; I especially liked the comic book-style one). I'm a little sad that all of this writing is less special as a result but, like the El Bulli service experience, it's a good reminder that there really isn't anything that special about going to an expensive restaurant and eating a load of food. The epiphany is only in your head. I hope you liked the pictures at least!

El Bulli, Roses: 1/3 - Arrival, Snacks

September 1st, 2009. 8 PM.

It's hard to anticipate something for 10 months. It's even harder when it's The Best Restaurant In the World. You know I mean that ironically, right?  But it wasn't too long after Luis Garcia 'found a solution' in December 2008 for my friend Andre that El Bulli was voted into that title again for the 4th consecutive year and the 5th in total (2002). Every year the Top 50 list is peculiar (for example, it's unlikely that the best Japanese restaurant in the world is in New York, or that the list's only restaurant in Japan should be French and get tepid reviews domestically).  But it's still a list, and El Bulli is still #1. Again. And again. No one else has a list, not even Michelin. You have to respect the magazine for being bold enough to do something this silly, and you have to respect the restaurant for doing whatever it's doing to keep being #1. Even if it's just marketing.

Of course, El Bulli has been doing this at the same level for a long time. Many restaurants get tired, bored, old, after this many years. The chef moves on to other things, whether it's a different style or a different venue or an international chain of burger shops that cash in on his good name while providing a franchised version of the service and dishes that made him famous. In other cases, chefs reach fame and simply stop what they're doing - same menu, same dishes, same service, everything petrified (and in the worst case, Bernard Loiseau). Read a good essay about this by someone who knows much better than me here.  This is what was on my mind as we dressed for dinner, overlooking the Mediterranean. Did I mention how much I enjoyed staying in Cadaques? It's a 45-minute drive to El Bulli, but well worth it. No, the road through the national park is not drivable. We hiked some of it it in the morning, and it's a hiking trail.

The drive has distinct parts if you do it this way - back over the hills out of the sheltered Cadaques bay, down the mountain to Roses, a short tour of town that makes you glad you're not staying there, and then up another hill into scrubby brushland, exposed rock faces and pine trees. After twisting through this landscape, you start to see the ocean again, and then this is your first glimpse of the small bay where El Bulli lives. I'm glad it was still twilight so we could really appreciate it. Some reviewers describe the descent along the hills overlooking the bay as 'terrifying' or 'dangerous dirt roads'. They are wrong. It's really beautiful. The road is paved. Although it doesn't have guard rails...

It's quiet and pleasant - the only other things there are a hostel and some beachfront amenities. If you blow up this picture, you'll just be able to see the restaurant sign - the small lit patch in the middle. This sort of modesty can cut two ways - they're certainly under-promising and trying to reset your expectations by not having a more grand approach. But they can't reset you all the way - after 10 months (and maybe some previous failed attempts to get a booking) you come here expecting the Meal of Your Life at The Best Restaurant In the World. I wondered whether they were interested in delivering that experience.

The view from the parking lot is beautiful, no? While we contemplate this, a few points I'd like to mention.

Many people go to El Bulli in the wrong frame of mind. They expect to get bread with the food. They expect to get food with the food. It's not necessarily like that. You have to expect to be fed and surprised, and hopefully delighted, and you'll leave full.

But I say 'not neccessarily' advisedly - the dishes we ended up having are almost completely different from what I saw in reviews from previous years. I saw a TV piece that really decided my view of El Bulli. Anthony Bourdain visited the restaurant and sat at the kitchen table. As they ate together, (chef Ferran) Adria was beside himself with excitement over each dish - he wanted to see Bourdain eat it, and hopefully enjoy it, because he loved them so much. After seeing that, I no longer gave any credence to the idea that El Bulli is making stuff up for the sake of it, or, as other reviewers put it, 'chemistry experiment', 'emperor's new clothes', 'made me gag'. Those reviewers are wrong. I was convinced that the chefs were there to make things that taste good, and they really meant all of what they served. They've got different tongues from me, and I from you, so they might like something I found vile. I also suspect that, as consistently adventurous eaters, they're used to lots of things that freak out other people, but as long as the intention is there, why not give it a fair go? And a fair go is required, since the menu changes all the time and is probably never less than adventurous. If you manage to go, chances of you having any of the dishes that will follow are slim.

I hope that wasn't too pompous. It just pains me when people make confident blanket statements based solely on their own perceptions, like "The food was crap" or "Those reviewers are wrong."

These stairs are just to the right of the front door, but I never found out where they go. The lights you can see at the left are actually the kitchen. They do make food in the kitchen. It's not all chemically grown and brought in on flatbeds.

The greeting at the door was as muted as the sign. I don't actually recall them saying 'Welcome' or 'Hey, it's El Bulli!' or anything. It was more like "We all know why we're here, so let's skip the chitchat and get to work, OK?" Any excitement would be unseemly.

Another piece of evidence in Adria's favor - he's in the kitchen every night. Wearing an apron. I'll always remember how I went to Charlie Trotter in 1997 and Chef was there, stopping by our table to say hello...in a tweed jacket and obviously on his way out the door. I don't require a chef to be sweating it out every night, but I certainly appreciate the passion or obsessiveness of one who does. On this night, when we walked through the kitchen (as everyone is required to do before eating; it's part of the ritual), he was right there (on the right), looking pensive and a bit distracted. We shook hands. As everyone is required to do.

And here, the view from the first table. As with the other elements of service, I felt like there wasn't much interactivity. We weren't going to say no to taking our aperitifs and snacks on the terrace, overlooking the Mediterranean, but there wasn't really an option. Like the greeting, like the kitchen tour, it's a bit perfunctory. Maybe Basques are like that. Maybe you shouldn't expect to have the Best Meal of Your Life anywhere, just be happy if you get it. (I should say up front that I really enjoyed the experience, so any grumpiness is minor in the overall picture.)

Another thing, I didn't take any notes. I take too many pictures as it is, so I resolved early in the trip that I'd just take the pictures, and if a dish wasn't memorable enough for me to remember what was in it, that would be fine.

Everyone starts with cocktails. Previous years have included much more dramatic things, like carved ice blocks filled with margarita foam onto which rock salt is freshly grated. Ours was pleasantly understated - mojitos and caipirinhas. In stick form. These are made by soaking fresh sugarcane in the appropriate liquor; you bite and suck, then discard the pulp. I think it's a play on the fact that sugarcane becomes sugar, and then rum, and then mojitos, but I don't like reading that much into things. Good.

And snacks started at the same time. This 'handkerchief' was an eat-with-your-hands sheet of corn-flavored paper. Sweet, nutty and delicious, a favorite of everyone. Very good.

Did I say nutty? One of the oddest surprises of this meal was the way the menu revolved around nuts. I haven't noticed this single-theme bias in other people's reviews, so I can conclude only that we were a little unlucky in what happened to be on offer this year. This month. Today.

The second batch of cocktails was a gin fizz, I believe. It was really another quick burst of surprise, since the gin mixture was topped by a hot foam.

Which had the consistency of real shaving cream, if you've ever had a shave from a barber who uses a foam dispenser. Hot foam on top of a cold drink was neat. There was too much happening on the table as the snacks below arrived, so it was lukewarm by the time I got close to the bottom. Part of the difficulty is that they serve so many things so quickly here; if you're OK snacking on them, it's cool, but I suspect many people try to eat everything as it comes, which is tough. You're all keyed up for the meal of Your Life, it's natural to gobble a little.





With little ado, they serve what may be El Bulli's signature dish - olives. There were actually people at our table who had not read about these, and I think that's great. Makes it all the more surprising. Also a good introduction to the 'specific eating techniques' portion of the evening - you'll be in serious trouble if you try to nibble.

Because they're not olives, they're gelatinous spheres filled with olive oil and concentrated olive flavor. They're good. Many people think they're a-MAZ-ing. I DO think the concept and execution are excellent, and a perfect illustration of the restaurant's philosophy. I love how they serve them in jars filled with oil and herbs, and they look mostly like the olives you expect, but they're different and in some ways better. They're not olives, they're their own great thing. If you were to say "I had olives at Cal Pep for 1 Euro that blew these away!", you'd be stating your preference for traditionally-constituted things, not invalidating the existence of El Bulli. Don't lay your trip on them, maaaaaan.



These peanuts were another technical dish, since they were thin, frozen shells filled with peanut butter. Clever, nutty (did someone say nutty?), eat-in-two-seconds-or-else...I tried and failed to perform the necessary, and ended up with peanut butter on my hands when the shell flash-melted and sort of exploded. Fortunately not on my pants.

Someone said 'nuts' again. These are sesame with sesame. I don't remember the technical details or texture; they weren't outstanding, but were a nice snack.

And this is vanilla film. The play between salty and sweet continues throughout the night, and is a bit unsettling for normal eaters (including me). Come to think of it, this may not actually have been sweet, and I may just be confused in memoriam by the fact that it was vanilla.

This was the first of several 'Asian moments', most of which were slightly disappointing to those at our table who are or who live in Asia. Which was everyone. Thankfully the course was not the unmitigated Japanese-fest of some prior years, and these nuggets were also a good idea. They're actually cherries, pickled like umeboshi. More sweet, less sour, refreshing (it was actually getting a bit hot on the terrace already)...would be worth trying at home if you could get ready access to a lot of cherries. And these cool bent-metal plates.





So that's it for the 'approach shots'. I'm not counting courses, but I think those were about 35% nut-oriented. Most people who are expecting the Meal of Their Life start keeping score around this point; the corn paper handkerchief was a terrific combination of flavor and technique, while the drinks were fun and the cherries were a neat twist. I didn't like the vanilla film, but others did. And that's fine - those are the expectations you should have.

Some people will be puzzled...

While others will be overjoyed.

At any rate, we were having plenty of fun, and more than ready to get into the serious food.