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EL BULLI, Summer 2003
12 months waiting, a table for 9 assorted newsgroup and slow food friends, 25 plates served, 9 wines tasted during 6 hours of culinary exhibition, that is how I sum up our evening at El Bulli. Surrounded by the wild nature of the beaches and rocks of the Cala Montjoi, El Bulli is a truly unique laboratory of culinary creation, a place that has attained such a reputation that it can open for only 6 months and only in the evening, for a short season that is entirely booked up on a single day in January.
The kitchen is all wood and stainless steel, magnificent and populated with strange machines. The dining room is rather classic. In order not to miss each wave of new sensations, one must make an effort to learn the vocabulary of this contemporary culinary art.
Think of it as a pedagogical exercise on taste balance and textures, one that enables us to discover new ingredients and novel techniques. The dishes are remarkable in their presentation, it is pure pleasure for the eyes, sometimes only for the eyes…
As in a taste workshop, there is an element of risk that is clearly announced by the staff at the beginning of the meal: “You don’t HAVE to like everything”. This defensive attitude seemed very strange to me, a first alarm signal… And yes, the risk is in fact taken too far, of 25 dishes served, we experienced 3 or 4 truly stunning ones, but we also had to deal with 3 or 4 that were not easy to swallow, totally unjustifiable in a 3-star establishment. At this level of cuisine, top of the world according to some, at these prices, a famous artiste should have enough discipline to chose the works of art that are worth exhibiting. At the very least, he should not serve those dishes that might have an emetic effect…
The major fault with this meal is that, paradoxically, despite the wide spectrum of sensations, after a promising debut one settles quickly into monotony. After a few pleasantly crunchy and tasty appetizers, texture temperature and aromas don’t vary much, almost everything is cold, mushy and gelatinous and not particularly flavorful. Adrian Ferrà is a virtuoso of the four senses of taste, of presentation and color, but he forgets the texture, aroma, and warmth that are so important in revealing flavors. I would say these are fundamental flaws.
Repetition is also a problem, and the excessive reliance on technological oddities. Too many times we tasted mousses produced with the Pacojet machine, and all those jelly balls. Once mastered, a technique should be used in a more subtle fashion.
The notion of terroir is strangely absent at El Bulli. The ingredients are merely a medium subjected to all these artifices. Some rare ingredients such as sea cucumber (espardenyes) and truffles are used in preparations that do nothing to exalt their unique characteristics, on the contrary, they are transformed into something else. It is the simple ingredients such as carrots and lentils that end up receiving the best treatment by the chef.
We regretted that the culinary creativity of Ferran Adrià does not extend to wine, wine seem to have no place in this restaurant. With 25 dishes, it is impossible to match wine and food. Yet the wine list is superb, and the prices are quite reasonable compared to the price gouging often practiced at restaurants over the border in France. But how does one choose? We drank wine, but in a way divorced from the meal. The sommeliers are relatively passive, their advice does not amount to much, but what can they do, what can they suggest to match peanut butter? A more coherent approach would have presented 25 test tubes of various drinks (including wine) chosen to accompany each dish.
The desserts are totally uninteresting.
The next day, everyone agreed, we had to do it once in our lives, but nobody had any desire to repeat the experience. We had better memories of the previous evening’s meal, a truly excellent seafood meal at Rafa’s, a small restaurant hidden in the back streets of Roses, where the absolute freshness of the fish and the skillful simplicity of their preparation a la plancha delighted everyone.
The American press announces loudly that Adrià is the best chef in the world, a title that he allegedly stole from France; but this, I am afraid, is old news, unsupported by the current reality. Friends that went there 3-4 years ago reported that the experience was sublime, At Adrià’s the creativity is certainly there, but it lacks generosity and the entire meal is compromised. El Bulli wants to break with bourgeois culinary tradition, but it forgets the pleasure of a tasty and inventive modern cuisine based on good fresh ingredients. El Bulli proposes a techno-aesthetic formalist cuisine that is serious even when it wants to be humorous, considering itself above pleasure and nutrition. Sometimes humor transgresses its limits, and the nauseous joke is at the expense of the customer. Is this decadence?
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The evening in detail:
BRUT NATURE Gran Reserva 1998 Magnum, D.O. CAVA-PENEDES, Agusti Torrello i Mata. We started with a magnum of cava, but we quickly informed the sommelier that we all preferred to taste many regular sized bottles of wines from the excellent wine list. The cava was well made but not very interesting.
FRAPPE DE AGUA DE PINA VERDE – a glass of crushed ice flavored with pine water. The quality of the service is excellent; the young team works precisely and without fault. This first “dish” is resin-flavored water that is neither sweet nor salty, the cold sensation is dominant with a pleasant tactile feeling in the mouth from the finely crushed ice that seems to “keep its shape”. Very subtle flavors.
PATATAS CON ACEITUNA NEGRA Y ACIDO CITRICO – potato chips with black olive paste. Crunchy, salty and bitter. The chips are bronze colored, they almost look varnished. Superb presentation, on sculpted geometric slate tiles.
OBLEAS DE FRAMBUESA – raspberry medallions. Moving on from crunchy to soft, and a new balance, totally opposite, sweet and sour. These medallions resemble red hosts with an intense taste of raspberry that melt on your tongue. Delicious.
CREMA DE CACAHUETES CON TOSTADAS – toast and peanut butter. You get a white toothpaste-like tube of peanut butter, you pierce the end with the lid and put the peanut butter on toast. The toast is crunchy, the peanut butter is greasy, and you can clearly separate the tactile feeling in your mouth. The balance swings back to bitter and salty-fatty-sweet. There is just one problem. It tastes terrible, I would have preferred toothpaste. A joke surely, a mockery of a rich blasé clientele that has seen everything and needs to retch in order to feel anything?
TEMPURA DE LIMON CON REGALIZ – tempura of lemon zest with licorice. Back to acidity and a different texture, with a fine crunchy tempura. A relief after the peanut butter, all is back to normal, excellent.
RUIBARBO A LA PIMIENTA – rhubarb with chili pepper. And back to sweet-bitter tastes, the rhubarb slices covered with spiced sugar crystals give a nice crunchy effect.
OREJA DE CONEJO CRUJIENTE – crunchy rabbit ears. We had not seen the menu yet, luckily, because we thought we were eating a kind of deep fried zucchini flour, but a little tougher and with some strange vein-like lines. Disgusting, now I am sure that he is making fun of his customers, by serving them cartilage. Horrible.
TORNADA DO SAPO 2001, D.O. RIAS BAIXAS, Valsegar de la Muelas. A brief journey through the world of Spanish grape varieties, starting with an albariño: the Rias Baixas is fruity, but not as agreeable as, say, a Terras Gauda O Rosal. Great match with the rabbit ears? This wine is sold by rich Madrid négociants that buy the wine from Gerardo Méndez Lázaro, a small producer with 150 year old vines; Tornada do Sapo is the brand name of certain cuvées Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas.
JAMON DE TORO – fine slices of tuna fish, served on a sheet of paper. Cut like Parma ham, but feels fattier and not quite as salty. No more crunchiness, gone for the rest of the meal, and it’s too bad. So evident is this lack of crunch and chewiness that we find ourselves making up for it by eating a lot of bread. This is one of the main criticisms of this extraordinary meal: after the appetizers with their superb variety of textures, everything becomes mushy and shapeless. We eat a LOT of bread.
CAVIAR DE MANZANA – spicy apple jelly beads served in a real Iranian caviar box stamped ‘imitacion - El Bulli’. Technology plays an important role in the preparations of Ferran Adrià. Nobody knows how he manages to make these perfect 4mm spheres of gelatin, but the result is pleasant and amusing. Imitation invokes memory: this is conceptual art at the table. And it even tastes good...
SARDINAS BRONCEADAS – bronzed sardines. Again back to visual arts, with these very fine sardine fillets barely cooked or marinated in flavored and colored oil, served with their skin on a square slate tile and covered with a square piece of paper that sticks to the sardine and created the illusion of a drawing of two copper colored fish on a transparent background. More visual than tasty.
PLACET 2000, D.O.Ca. RIOJA, Bodegas Palacio Remondo. We continue our voyage of discovery of Spanish grapes with viura: a Rioja white made by the old family property of Alvaro Palacios, managed since 2000 by Alvaro and his brother Rafael. Mineral and maybe buttery.
NIGUIRI DE SEPIA – nigiri-sushi of cuttlefish
Back to jokes, we are handed a plastic tongue-depressor with a slice of cuttlefish placed over a lump of gelatinous tapioca. Too big to swallow in one bite, the sensation is gluey, pasty and one must swallow fast in the hope that the thing will not come back up… my wife becomes pale as she tries to suppress the need to vomit. To cleanse the palate, we are handed a stick of cotton candy spun around a mint leaf, this is really good and we quickly forget the revolting viscous sushi.
AGUA DE LENTEJAS CON FOIE – lentil water with foie gras. A cappuccino cup of foie gras jelly covered with an airy mousse of lentils. Rich and delicious.
SOPA DE POMELO CON SESAMO NEGRO – pomelo soup with black sesame. And again back to visuals, a round plate of red soup with black streaks of grilled sesame oil, creating a contrast of colors and tastes, the acidity of the pomelo and the bitterness of the sesame create a strange unpleasant mix. Nice to look at, but leaves your palate puckered and ruined. Don’t even think of drinking wine with this…
PAIRAL 2001, D.O. PENEDES, Can Rafols dels Caus – this time it is the Catalan grape xarel.lo, a nervous wine with good acidity and grassy aroma with lots of fruit, powerful.
AIRE DE ZANAHORIA CON CONCENTRADO DE MANDARINA – carrot air on a concentrate of mandarins. In a glass vessel, an ultra-light carrot mousse seems to emerge from the mandarin juice at the bottom. Visually stunning, interesting taste, but it’s just a gimmick,
that Pacojet machine is working overtime.
RAVIOLI DE GUISANTES – ravioli of peas. A Chinese spoon barely manages to hold a kind of bubble of thin green pasta filled with pea juice. A technological marvel.
GRANGE DES PERES 1998 BLANC, VdP HERAULT, Dom. Grange des Peres – one word: superb. Delicate yet powerful, complex, fresh, this rarest of wines is in fact affordable at El Bulli, intense explosive bouquet, I could not keep track of all the aromas …
PURE DE LIMON, ESCAROLA Y HUEVAS DE MUJOL – purée of lemon, escarole and mullet roe. This dish plays with the bitterness of the escarole and the acidity of the lemon, plus the power of the fish eggs. An excellent salad.
MORRALETS CON SUS HUEVAS – baby octopus with their ‘eggs’. A fantastic dish of baby calamari served in a circle around many black beads of jelly, simulating the shape of calamari eggs. Same technology as the caviar, a good imitation. Again, the investment in technology is being well amortized.
OSTRAS CON OSTRAS Y TRUFAS DE NUEZ MACADAMIA – oysters and macadamia nut truffles. Two excellent oysters perfectly married to the nuts, very complex.
LES TERRASSES 2000, D.O.Ca. PRIORAT, Alvaro Palacios - Grenache Carignan and Cabernet, as we move to red wines with a ‘négoce’ wine from Alvaro Palacios, modern, oaky, hints of cassis and licorice.
TORO DE ATUN CONFITADO EN ACEITE DE ATUN – fillet of fat tuna stewed in oil
PINZAS DE BUEY DE MAR CON CACAHUETES Y SANDIA – crab with peanuts and watermelon. Peanuts again. Too bad.
VIGNES QU’ON ABAT 1998, A.O.C. Cx DU LANGUEDOC, Domaine de la Marfée – You can tell the presence of carignan in this wine, very concentrated chocolaty, beautiful wine from Thierry Hazard. I heard he started off being the accountant for Grange des Pères.
ESPARDENYES, MENTAIKO Y RUIBARBO – sea cucumbers, mentaiko and rhubarb
Rare sea cucumbers served with spicy cod roe (mentaiko) and rhubarb. We tasted better espardenyes the night before in a simple restaurant.
CANELON DE TRUFA DE VERANO CON TUETANO Y SESOS DE CONEJO – cannelloni of summer truffle with rabbit brains and bone marrow. A slug of bone marrow wrapped in truffle chips, actually not bad despite the strange texture, served with four little rabbit brains done a la plancha, very strange and disagreeable. The chef is trying to shock us. I feel like vomiting again, I hold it down by eating bread.
2M DE SPAGHETTO DE PARMESANO – 2 meter long piece of spaghetti made of parmesan
One used to put parmesan on spaghetti, here it is used to actually make spaghetti. Too bad it does not hold and breaks, because you are supposed to slurp it up in one piece. Good thing it breaks, because the consistency is again that sickly jelly-like mush that makes us all wish for a piece of real meat or something we can chew. But there is only bread on hand to keep our teeth exercised.
GRANDE CUVEE No 10 1998 Trockenbeerenauslese, Alois Kracher – total pleasure. Great concentration of acidity and sugar, yet light, low in alcohol, full of apricot vanilla and butterscotch flavors.
YUBA DE COCO CON VINAGRE BALSAMICO – coconut yuba with balsamic vinegar. Yuba is tofu skin, just like the skin on boiling milk it is enough to make you vomit (the theme of the evening). And the coconut only makes things worse.
Oloroso Dulce MATUSALEM, D.O. JEREZ – Manzanila de San Lucar, Gonzales Byass – superb solera wine very dark, spicy, powerful, silky, sweet with the characteristic aromas of walnut, fig and licorice of the PX grape, but apparently is 50% palomino, and I am told it is 30 years old.
MORAS, CHOCOLATE BLANCO Y YOGUR – blackberries, white chocolate and yoghurt. The ying and the yang in black and white on our dessert. Uninteresting.
MIGNARDISES
To end the meal, little nibbles. A piece of bread that is actually a mousse covered in cinnamon. Take pity on me, another mousse, the fifth of the evening, the Pacojet is giving a good ROI. Then a hollow thin shell of bread spiced with anise and served in a white paper bag. Finally some crunch, but it’s too late, it’s all over.
The end.
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