Fat Guy

It was about 5 hours. The caviar/hazelnut course was probably the peak moment for me.

It was indeed the thrush. Partly deboned (the main leg bone was still in).

It's the stuff from inside the head of the prawn. Probably not technically brains. But delicious. The blood was seasoned and sweetened -- it wasn't straight blood. It was quite tasty.

Me too. I'm assembling a list of items for follow-up. Everything came so fast and furious there wasn't sufficient opportunity to gather the kinds of details I wish I had.

Finely textured, not dense at all. I'll see if I can get one of the MC guys to elaborate.

That was the only course where I actually didn't enjoy the food. There were two or three others -- the ice chips with soy come to mind -- where I thought the dish wasn't so amazing. But the dishes were almost all great.

I think most people were having in the high 40s. We only got a couple of extra things. Most people dining there took a tour of the kitchen at some point, so they saw our table. I think some thought it was cool and others were happier to be in the dining room.

Ferran Adria is going to ascend to the ultimate expression of the culinary arts: he's going to become a food blogger. Actually he's going to become more like Nathan M.: head of a kitchen lab and creator of dishes, without a restaurant. The foundation will foster creativity, host chef-fellows, publish lots of stuff on the internet, produce books, etc. They may serve some meals, but far fewer than they do now. That's what the word is at this point.

Dinner at elBulli, 9 April 2011 (Nathan Myhrvold, Max Bilet, Tim Ryan, Thierry Rautureau, Johnny Iuzzini and Steven Shaw) 1. “Pillow like a cocktail.” The flavors were of pina colada. The dish was such a strong start by virtue of being better and better-executed than any cocktail I've had in the solid genre. This is one of a few dishes where the photographic image doesn't come close to capturing it, because so much of the drama involves tearing off pieces, exposing the interior and experiencing the varied textures and flavors. 2. “Mojito and apple flute.” Nathan and Max understood exactly how the wafer/meringue/whatever was engineered. I did not. Throughout the meal they had insight into the techniques at play. I did not. 3. “Almond fizz with Amarena-LYO.” 4. “Nori seaweed with lemon.” This was the first of several Japanese-inflected items that appeared here and there throughout the menu. 5. “Hibiscus and peanut.” 6. “Pistachio ravioli.” 7. “Parmesan cheese macaron.” 8. “Parmesan cheese porra.” These last four items arrived together in a wave. This would be a good place to note that the meal encompassed several sub-themes, where Adria explores an ingredient or cultural theme or both. Nathan M., who has been to elBulli quite a few times, reports that this started last season. I'm surprised it took that long, not that I thought of it or anything. But it made the meal much more of a composition to have “movements” of varying types and levels of coherence within the overarching structure. 9. “Olive-oil chip.” This was one of a few that had the aim of having us taste a familiar ingredient in a new way. The chip was a super-thin sugar wafer, brushed with superior olive oil. The sweetness and texture of the wafer definitely succeeded in supporting and enhancing the olive oil. 10. “Bloody mary.” 11. “Codfish crust.” By crust they mean the skin of the cod. 12. “Shrimps tortilla.” 13. “Boiled shrimp.” 14. “Sea urchin niguri.” There were actually two pieces of “sushi” here, one topped with urchin and the other with bone marrow. This was probably the most delicious of the first group of 17 courses, but I say that with some hesitation because the experience of elBulli happens so quickly and so much is going on that it's very difficult to remember the elements in isolation. It's like trying to remember individual frames of a motion picture. 15. “Thai prawn brain.” 16. “Prawn two firings.” The legs of the prawn were deep fried, the body was left raw – though there was probably some conduction as it didn't seem absolutely raw. 17. “Roses with ham wonton and melon water.” The wonton skins were rose petals. All our dishes up to this point were served on the terrace and characterized as cocktails and snacks. We were then led to the kitchen table. The table is not in a room overlooking the kitchen. It's actually right in the kitchen. The elBulli kitchen is quiet enough to support that. It's not totally silent, but our table was on many occasions the loudest thing in the kitchen. Once we got into the kitchen almost every course involved multiple elements or some kind of at-the-table finishing. One of our servers was one of the cooks, who not only worked on the final stages of our dishes but also made himself available to answer technical questions. A lot of them. I should say, the service at elBulli is phenomenally good. There was never the slightest bit of downtime, except when someone would leave the table to use the rest room. Beverage service was impeccable, with the sommelier and his people always appearing at the exact right moment to discuss, suggest, open, pour, remove, etc. It's not really possible to pair wines with elBulli's food in the traditional sens of the word “pair,” but the sommelier guided us through five bottles each of which worked very well with the 7-12 courses it accompanied. So, we're in the kitchen now. Time to get serious. 18. “Marrow and belly of tuna sushi.” The piece of suhi was constructed at the table. First a substrate of gooey stuff that Nathan and Max understood, then a top piece constructed of marrow and toro, and finally a brushing of soy and dollop of wasabi. 19. “Soya matches.” Placed on the table at the same time as the sushi. We were instructed to eat them in three bites starting at the big end. 20. “Soy cristal.” Another dish where the idea is to taste a familiar ingredient in a new way. Here they delivered ice chips and wasabi to the table and poured soy over them. 21. “Tiramisu.” A savory tiramisu-like dish made from tofu foam and assorted other things. 22. “Caviar cream with hazelnut caviar.” I think this was the most revelatory dish of the night, and that's saying a lot. I think the goal here was to use shape, color, texture and an unexpected coincidence of flavor notes to confuse the palate. On first taste of the actual caviar from fish you taste actual caviar from fish. Then on first taste of the engineered hazelnut “caviar” you taste hazelnut. Then as you go back and forth you notice surprising similarities – so much so that after four or five tastes of each they merge into one set of flavors. It is no longer possible to tell one from the other. 23. “Liquid hazelnut porra.” 24. “Only truffle.” Apparently this is the first season during which elBulli has served truffles. This makes me feel a little better about waiting so long to come to elBulli. The series of truffle courses were almost overwhelming, in a good way. 25. “Truffle cake.” 26. “Endive in papillote 50%.” Each pair of endive pieces consisted of one raw and one cooked, in an elaborate tableside preparation. With truffle grated on top for good measure. 27. “Fir/truffle/pine.” 28. “Germinated pine nuts.” In other words the hearts of pine nuts. To say this must be a labor-intensive dish seems like an understatement. They also presented a couple of in-progress specimens to illustrate. 29. “Steamed eels.” These baby eels were reinforced with a sauce that amplified their inherent flavor several-fold. A good thing if you like that flavor, which I don't. Others did. 30. “Octopus shabu-shabu.” 31. “Lulo ceviche and mollusk.” Lulo is some kind of fruit I've never heard of. Two of the sections had the fruit itself prepared as sort of a ceviche, and the other two had creamy stuff and a little oyster. 32. “Oaxaca taco.” This was one of a handful of dishes that Nathan M. reports were “greatest hits,” in other words he had them in previous elBulli meals over the years. 33. “Gazpacho and ajo blanco.” 34. “Tomato tartare.” 35. “Hare bunuelo.” Here we were asked to smell a pouch of toasted cardamon while eating the bonbons filled with hare. This kicked off a game-meat progression that was totally not what I expected to see at elBulli and totally wonderful. I speculated at one point that Ferran Adria was channeling a little bit of the spirit of Santi Santamaria in this series of dishes. Nobody thought it was a particularly apt observation. 36. “Thrush.” This was one of a few courses that presented challenges for our counting-and-numbering system. Was this one or two courses? Is “course” even the right word for the unit of food served at elBulli? I'm counting it as one. 37. “Game meat cappuccino.” 38. “Oyster with woodcock.” 39. “Blackberry risotto with game meat sauce.” 40. “Hare ravioli with bolonesa and blood.” Yes, a glass of blood on the side. 41. “Wild strawberries with hare soup.” 42. “Mimetic chestnuts.” Somewhere around here we've made the transition into the the pastry progression. 43. “Yogurt blini.” 44. “St.-Felicien dollar.” 45. “Gruyere with kirsch.” 46. “Sugar cube with tea and lime.” Frozen cubes of sugar with pipettes of tea-lime oil meant to be squeezed over. Another new way to taste familiar ingredients. 47. “Coca-de-vidre – crystal cake.” 48. “Mini donuts.” A frozen bitter-coconut filling is coated in bitter chocolate and then the filling is allowed to melt. So when you pop a donut in your mouth the liquid center gushes out. It's surprising not only for that but also for emphasizing the bitter rather than the sweet aspects of the chocolate and coconut. 49. “Apple rose.” That's a very thin slice of apple coiled around there. One of the best desserts I've had. Johnny Iuzzini seemed on the verge of tears. Back out to the terrace for 50. “Box.” A tour de force of avant-garde candy making. First you think it's a pretty impressive assortment. Then they pull out a side drawer. Then they pull out the other side drawer. There were at least six and often more of each thing. I ate my share of every one. We then had a discussion of one of the wrapped chocolate bars but they were all eaten. Our server offered to bring more for us to try. He returned with a whole additional “box.” Most everyone else had coffee but I asked for tea. The tea service involved herbs from the garden, dried herbs and honey. Ducasse does this too, though not on the terrace of elBulli. Eventually there were no more excuses to stay at the restaurant. We said our goodbyes to Adria and everyone else. As we left and drove away I felt a profound mixture of euphoria and sorrow. I'd been shown the pinnacle of dining in our time, yet I knew I'd never visit it again. Perhaps after 2014 the elBulli Foundation will do something that allows a few lucky people to have Adria's food, and maybe I'll be lucky enough to have friends with access. I can hope. But on 3 July 2011 elBulli will close its doors forever.

That table is the pass. The photo was taken from a seat at our table. Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk

Here's an attempt to upload a cell phone photo of the elBulli kitchen. More later. Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk

I wrote everything on the plane. It's just a question of finding a wide enough pipe for the photos. Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk

The line at passport control is staggeringly long. It may be a little longer than I thought. Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk

I've landed back in the land of CDMA. Now it's just a question of clearing customs, getting home and doing a little editing work. Give me about 3 hours. Posted from my handheld using the Tapatalk app. Want to use eG Forums on your iPhone, Android or Blackberry? Get started at http://egullet.org/tapatalk

JB, trouble is when you shrink a group shot down to eG-avatar size the details are not clear enough. Ellen has been telling me for a while that I need a new avatar photo, and has agreed to take said photo, but we were waiting for me to get a haircut. So maybe we'll attend to that soon. I'm in the process of preparing for departure now. I'm going to meet Johnny in the lobby in about an hour and we'll travel together to the airport. If I get through check-in and security in a timely manner, and there's a wifi connection, I'll start posting elBulli dinner material.

It was more than a culinary weekend and less than the creation of a life. Somewhere in between those things. As I mentioned when I started this topic, I had made peace with never making it to elBulli. Now that I've been, I realize that I shouldn't have made peace with it. Saying that elBulli is the best restaurant I've been to fails to capture the order of magnitude that separates it from every other restaurant I've experienced. For example, last night we dined at Can Roca, which is among the best restaurants in the world. I think the various ranking systems mostly put it in the top dozen or so. It has three Michelin stars. Those San Pellegrino/Restaurant Magazine people (actually I have been part of that process) say it's something like number four in the world. And I'll say for sure it's an absolutely first-rate Michelin three-star restaurant serving exquisite, creative, artful food in a gorgeous setting with impeccable service. Yet elBulli is so categorically better it's not even worth making comparisons. I'll try not to unload too many superlatives or say sui generis too many times, but elBulli is that and more. For me personally, having put about a decade of my life into eGullet, with much effort being devoted to tracking the development of what we're now calling modernist cuisine (we have designated our decennial year our year of modernist cuisine), visiting elBulli represented the logical conclusion of a journey, or at least an important juncture. Visiting with Nathan M. added another dimension to the experience, since his relationship with eGullet was an important input for the development of the Modernist Cuisine treatise, which is sure to be one of the most important happenings in culinary modernism for the coming decade. He's also good company and he paid. This is what it looks like when you drive over the mountain separating the town of Roses from the beach where elBulli is located. We arrived early so walked around on the beach a bit. A couple of our group waded into the Mediterranean. I did not. Here's our group in the obligatory pose in front of the elBulli sign. The sixth member of our group, by the way -- the guy with the hat -- was Thierry Rautureau. He's the chef from Luc and Rover's in Seattle under whom Nathan M. apprenticed back in the day. We started with a tour of the kitchen and a brief chat with Adria. (He is so frenetic that it was foolish to try to photograph him without flash.) We had our first bunch of courses on the terrace -- the weather was ideal for it -- then we had the main part of our meal at the elBulli kitchen table, then we finished back out on the terrace. There are a lot of photos to deal with here, because so many courses came in phases that required more than one shot to capture. It's also going to take time to type up the dish descriptions and make a few comments. I'll attend to it all tomorrow.

It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime, few-and-far-between, peak experience. Maybe on the second notch after things like the birth of our son. But very high up.

I counted 49, Johnny and Nathan counted 50. Once I review the photographic record we'll know for sure. Somewhere around course 41 when they switched to desserts I was disappointed because I knew that meant the end was near. I wanted it to go on for 100 courses. That's how good it was. I've just rolled (waddled) into the hotel and will post something shortly, though I doubt I can do a full photo-processing project tonight. I may have to do that on the plane in the morning and post when we land back in New York tomorrow morning.

I should add, Nathan did give the Roca brothers a copy of Modernist Cuisine, which somehow I wound up hauling across the cobblestones into the kitchen.

I kept joking that I liked the old one better. I think it eventually, as I ran through the permutations of the joke ("This dish was better at the old one..." "Before they sold out to the Man...") had the desired effect of annoying everyone. Today after a little sleeping and forums posting, I hit the Santa Caterina market (again) with Nathan and Johnny (the others slept, except for Max who went running). Santa Caterina is not as nice as Boqueria but is more of a place where locals shop. Still, the inventory is amazing compared to most other things in the world. Johnny got a kilo of ham. The candy selection, sadly, was terrible. Then we actually went to a museum (pre-Columbian) We finished up with the breakfast of champions: orange juice and three rapid-release Extra-Strength Tylenol gel-caps.

Our wine choices were not outrageous. They poured an organic cava to start, Privat Nu 08. We ordered As Sortes 07 D.O. Valdeorras, Nelin 05 D.O.Q. Priorat (an awesome white Priorat and my favorite wine of the evening), and Pagos Viejos D.O.Ca. Rioja (good but not a revelation). I have no idea about the theoretical bill. Nathan M. tried to buy us dinner but the brothers Roca wouldn't let him. So all we could say to him was thanks for Saskia.

Nathan added commentary throughout. He knows a lot about a lot. I didn't note any of the specific enhancements. Dinner was about 4.5 hours.

A partially candied raspberry. The stuff on the outside is sugar. "Palet d'or." Basically a really well-made chocolate bonbon with a little gold leaf. The rest of my day is basically over. I'm going to walk around the block to try to establish a small caloric deficit and then at 4:30 we're back in the van with Saska and the "constellation" (as she calls them) of chefs.

The tie was a little short. Johnny actually packed quite a wardrobe. He's the reason we ran into Docsconz's kid at the baggage claim. I just came with a backpack. He packed like he was going for a transatlantic crossing on the QM2.

We assembled in the lobby of Nathan's hotel in order to meet our van and driver. Saska, mentioned on the itinerary, turned out to be German, blonde, and female. She's a tour guide as well as a driver, so on our way to Girona she spoke about Catalan history, which Nathan later reported she got "mostly right." We then drove around the old part of Girona, and I brilliantly proposed that since we had 20 extra minutes we should go for a little walk. Girona is beautiful and the walk would have turned out to be a pretty good idea were it not for two issues. First, the stairs. Because we somehow stumbled upon an unexplained festival with large crowds filling the old plaza and hundreds of candles lining the main stairs, we had to divert to an alternate walking route that had us climbing up and around the crowd. It didn't actually work out so after all that climbing we wound up having to push through the crowd anyway. Max acted as a wedge and I opened the hole wider, then the rest followed. Second, Can Roca is not exactly easy to find, even for professional tour guides and even for former Microsoft executives armed with GPS. After about half an hour of trying, said GPS finally got us to the restaurant's former location. Luckily this was only about a kilometer from the new one. Upon our arrival, we were shown around the kitchen and wine cellar. The kitchen is as nice a kitchen as you can imagine outside of Nathan's house, and the wine cellar is gorgeous too. There may have been some disagreement in our group about whether the different styles of music playing in the storage areas for the different wine regions was money well spent. A hint: I thought not really, but I guess I'm unsentimental. We then had 29 courses of wonderful food -- 29 if you count each amuse and consider each of the 6 bonbons (served at once) separately, more like 20 if you do the math differently. To break it down as unsentimentally as possible: Of the 29 dishes, 27 were excellent. Of the 27 excellent ones, there were 6 or 7 that I'd feel comfortable matching against the best dishes I've had at any restaurant anywhere. I'm not sure if I got a usable photo of every course. Let's see now. 1. "Caramelized olive." They bring these out hanging on hooks from little trees. 2. "Campari bonbon." A solid cocktail that you pop in your mouth and it then liquifies. 3. "Anchovy bones." 4. "Chicken cracker." 5. "Ring calamari adaptation." 6. "Vegetable salad." This deconstructed riff on the awful "Russian salad" was, I thought, the best dish of the night. 7. "St. George's mushroom truffled brioche and pot au feu broth." 8. "Manzanilla-steamed oyster, iodine juice and caramelized Sherry essence." Probably my second-favorite non-dessert dish. 9. "Escalivada with anchovies and smoke of ember." 10. "Charcoal-grilled eggplant, pepper onion and tomato." 11. "Charcoal-grilled king prawn with acidulated mushroom juice." 12. "Artichoke flower, foie gras, orange and truffled oil." Come to think of it, maybe this was my favorite dish. 13. "Onion soup, Crespia walnuts and Comte cheese." 14. "Sole, olive oil and Mediterranean flavors." 15. "Baby squids with onion rocks." 16. "Red mullet with Catalan seafood stew and lard." 17. "Steak tartare: spiced tomato, caper compote, pickles and lemon, hazelnut praline, meat bearnaise sauce, Oloroso-Sherry raisin, chives, Sichuan peppercorn, Pimenton de La Vera (D.O.) smoked paprika and curry, small scoops of mustard ice cream and mustard leaves." Okay maybe this was my favorite. 18. "Lamb with mint and peas." 19. "Hare a la royale." The last savory course. I give credit for serving it looking like a dessert, to fool you into thinking you're starting the dessert phase of the meal. But I didn't love the dish. 20. "Green colorology." My other least favorite item. 21. "Sherbert lemon distillate." 22. "Caramelized apricot." Absolutely fantastic, one of the best desserts I've ever had. 23. "Milk dessert." 24. "A goal by Messi." I have some video of this for later. 25 and on. Various bonbons. Time constraints mean I've got to list the dishes then run all the photos together. Sorry if I missed one, but I've got to prepare for another death march.