15 February 2010

CLOSING EL BULLI

With dismay I read over the weekend that Feran Adrià and his restaurant partner Juli Soler are to close El Bulli, on Spain’s northern Mediterranean coast. (The kitchen itself is far more impressive than the actual restaurant. The chefs cook in an airy space with stunning work benches and art on the walls. The diners eat in a relaxed well decorated series of dining areas that have a distinct country feel.) The report I read suggested that Feran and Juli had been losing up to half a million euros each season, and so at the end of next year, El Bulli will serve its last degustation meal. I am not surprised about their cash flow, as when we ate there the pair were exceedingly generous, plying us with an almost never ending flow of superb Spanish wines all evening, and only charging us for the food! They are two lovely men, each bringing something truly unique to the art of dining, creating an experience that has seen El Bulli named top restaurant in the world for the past four years. I wrote about our experience there at the time, calling the story, ‘My Culinary Pilgrimage’ and I share that here:

“The road to el Bulli restaurant twists and turns through uninhabited hilly Mediterranean coastal land near the summer resort town of Roses. The journey is a culinary pilgrimage to this Spanish temple of dining where Ferran Adrià and his kitchen team of 35 chefs and 15 front of house staff deliver an extraordinary experience to 55 privileged diners each night for six months of the year. It is a meal like no other on the planet, an adventure of feasting on an array of more than 30 innovative and original tiny courses (with no meat) that left us happy and satisfied but neither groaning or overfed. Adrià is a master of taste and texture, a magician who creates truly remarkable food that had us intrigued, amazed and sometimes puzzled. A large scented red rose (to excite the senses) accompanied by a tall glass of hot and chilled Roses ginger, honey and peach tea kicked off the meal. Paper thin crisps of lemon and black olive, brittle toast with an accompanying tube of peanut butter, rabbit ear crackling, a tin of caviar fashioned from ripe melon so that it looked like salmon roe, and lemon rind tempura with the aroma of licorice followed in quick succession. The chefs spend their winter devising and dreaming up these culinary quirks of imagination and each season open with a menu that is more inventive than the previous. The ninth course, four perfect fresh almonds: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, presented on a granite slab with accompanying shot glass of ice cold water really focussed our attention and brought the realisation that Adrià was literally playing with our senses. We tasted mint, coconut and curry candy floss, foie gras ‘water’, crab cannelloni that was shrouded in thin avocado slices, ‘sunburnt’ sardines, veal bone marrow with black pepper, parmesan cheese spaghetti where the pasta was made from cheese, and gnocchi made from water on a bed of lychee soup. But it was the foam that he has perfected, a glass cylinder filled with carrot froth like sitting above a spoonful of bitter coconut milk that captured our attention most for the sheer brilliance of colour and intense flavour. Desserts were equally stunning and the frozen loaf of white chocolate and yogurt was unbelievably standout, rather like a sophisticated version of pavlova. In a world where dining experiences are measured by Michelin stars, this added up to an experience that deserves the invention of an fourth star as it is unprecedented and worth every penny of the round the world air ticket to get there.”

Even now as I sit at my desk five years later and look over the menu from that evening, I can conjure up most of the colourful dishes. As you can see, at that time the foam impressed. It is probably Feran’s gift to the world which has been the most emulated and the most abused. But, sadly, we won’t be going back, and foodies who dreamed of such a pilgrimage will not have that experience either.