Fat Guy

I'd say one thing you should not buy for them, or buy for yourself if you are in my situation, is a prefab spice/herb set. Much better to get the individual products from a good purveyor. I intend to visit a place in Little India -- maybe Kalustyan's -- and stock up in that department. I also want to turn over a new leaf, no pun intended, in terms of keeping a good variety of frozen herbs in inventory.

We're likely to move into a new apartment next week. Because we've been in temporary accommodations for so long, we haven't got many surviving kitchen staples. Maybe we'll keep the old salt. So, if you're starting from scratch, what do you need? I'd like to get it right this time around. In our old kitchen I think there were a lot of things we didn't need, and I felt like too often I had to run out for a single ingredient that I should have had in-house.

I really do. A not-insignificant part of my enjoyment of culinary experiences comes from sharing them with all of you. While I don't necessarily intend to provide an exhaustive real-time catalog of every dish we're served, I'd love to be able to put out the occasional tweet or eG Forums update. But since I only have a CDMA Motorola Droid, wifi is the only way I can pull that off in most of Europe.

Anybody know if they have wifi at elBulli?

Let me introduce the fifth member of our party of six: Max Bilet. Max is one of the lead authors of the Modernist Cuisine treatise and has been running the kitchen at each of the Modernist Cuisine events I've attended. There's a bio of Max (his full name is Maxime) on the Modernist Cuisine bios page. You have to scroll down past the Nathan Myhrvold and Chris Young bios.

I will say that one of the worst dishes I've had in the past two decades involved a foam component. Specifically, salt-water foam. It tasted like I'd been pulled down by the undertow. I just can't blaming that on foam in general, though. I've certainly had more delicious foams as a percentage of the total than I've had, say, delicious steaks.

Yes, I think I'm totally out of the loop on the menu discussions. Which is just as well. I'm going with people who have much more experience of these places than I do, and luckily I have no known allergies or intolerances.

Yes I am on calorie restriction this week! Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

That's the problem: so many things I need to see and eat in order to cure my cultural illiteracy about Spain; so little time. Every hour I learn about ten more days worth of stuff I need to do. So far I've accounted for three of our party of six: me, Nathan M., and Johnny I. Let me also introduce Dr. Tim Ryan, the president of the Culinary Institute of America. Dr. Ryan's list of accomplishments is overwhelming, but for me personally his great contribution has been producing the ProChef series of books (the full, correct title of the current edition is, I believe, The Professional Chef). ProChef in its various editions has for years been the most heavily utilized cookbook in my collection. I'm looking forward to spending a little time with Dr. Ryan.

There has been a lot of email chatter about the daytime plans for Friday and Saturday. La Boqueria and Pinotxo seem like high priorities for everyone. Two of the others in the party are on my flight tomorrow night, so I'm sure we'll coordinate schedules. Also mentioned has been Calpep, which Johnny calls "every chef's favorite seafood restaurant in Barcelona." We also may try to look in on Albert Adria's new tapas bar if the schedule allows. In addition, I'd like to try to do some walking and I need to carve out some chunks of computer time. I guess I'll sleep when I'm dead.

I woke up this morning thinking omigosh I'm going to Spain tomorrow. It all seems so surreal, which I guess is appropriate for a visit to Adria in the land of Dali.

I have indeed been resisting the temptation to see what's being served there this season. I've been told this thing and that by various people who've been there but most of it will be a surprise for me.

The nice thing about Can Roca is that if I love it I can go back some day. I'm still disoriented from the suddenness of these plans. Tonight when I was out parking the car I couldn't even perform basic navigation around a neighborhood I've known for 40+ years. I don't really know what my expectations of elBulli are or should be. I think it's probably good that I won't have much time to think about it in advance.

Why is it that when foam is mentioned in a culinary context it's so often pejorative? I love the stuff. From its modernist applications (though it's pretty old-school at this point) to its traditional ones (e.g., cappuccino), I enjoy foams in all their forms. Why is there so much hating on foam?

I'm tempted to try! But, I don't think they've served foam at elBulli in years.

I keep thinking about what I want to ask Ferran Adria to sign. I'm actually thinking about bringing a silver paint pen and having him (and the others in this group) sign my Toshiba laptop computer.

I mentioned that there will be some other people on this expedition. Out of respect for their privacy I won't release any names until I give each person the opportunity to opt out of the coverage. One guy consented immediately, though: Johnny Iuzzini. Johnny is executive pastry chef of Jean Georges and Nougatine here in New York City. He's also the author of the book Dessert Fourplay, so named because his desserts at Jean Georges usually arrive on four plates containing four variations on a theme (at some point I'll make Johnny tell the group the story of the aprium tasting). He's often on television, in part because he's easy on the eyes and in part because he's so talented. I don't really go in for declaring a favorite restaurant, but Jean Georges is in the core group of great restaurants I love the most. I think it provides the best value of all the NYT four-star restaurants, especially at lunch, and Johnny's desserts always leave me wanting to come back. (As an aside, the more casual dining area, Nougatine, serves the best breakfast in New York City). Johnny's website is http://johnnyiuzzini.com/ and on twitter he's http://twitter.com/johnny_iuzzini . We're on the same flight out of JFK so I hope at least to get his feedback on the airline meal.

Right. You've got to specify beef tallow to be technically correct. Though it seems that in common usage in the food-geek subculture people assume beef.

My itinerary is as follows: April 7 Depart 6:00PM New York (JFK) Arrive 7:55AM +1 day Barcelona (BCN) Delta Flight 94 7 Hr 55 Min (+1 day) April 8 – 9P dinner at El Celler de can Roca 6:30P Meet in front of Hotel Palace. Driver’s name is Saskia 6:45 Depart Barcelona – drive through old town Girona 9:00 Dinner April 9 – 7:30P dinner at El Bulli 4:45P Meet Saskia in front of Hotel Palace 5:00 Depart Barcelona 7:30 Dinner April 10 Depart 11:20AM Barcelona (BCN) Arrive 1:59PM New York (JFK) Delta Flight 95 8 Hr 39 Min

Unfortunately, Santi Santamaria passed away not long ago. That's another experience I kick myself for missing out on. But this particular itinerary emphasizes modernism, which is not really part of the proffer at Can Fabes.

I'm planning to pack two cameras -- the one I'm going to use and one for backup. I guess there's also a third camera on my phone, which I might use for some tweeting. I only wish I didn't suck so badly as a photographer.

You are the unnamed friend who offered me the opportunity. I've been kicking myself about it for years.

"want to go to elbulli ?" That was the subject line of his email. A couple of days ago, Nathan Myhrvold, the author of Modernist Cuisine who is known in these parts as "nathanm," invited me to dinner. In Spain. At elBulli. This weekend. The proposition: if I can get to Barcelona by noon on Friday he's got a van waiting to take us (there are some other folks coming too, and I'll get to them in a subsequent post) to El Celler de can Roca on Friday night and elBulli on Saturday night. Well, sure I want to go, but I can't. We've been renovating an apartment in Harlem and living in a temporary situation slowly losing our minds for almost a year, and our move-in date is Friday. I politely declined. "What are you crazy?" My wife, Ellen, said when I told her about the exchange. She immediately got on the computer and emailed Nathan: My husband is not thinking straight. Let me talk to him about this and he'll get back to you in half an hour. We can move after the weekend, she told me. You don't say no to this kind of offer. What can I say? I have the world's greatest wife. I got on Expedia and booked a ticket to Barcelona. I leave JFK this Thursday at 6pm and will be in Barcelona on Friday morning. I had given up on ever getting to elBulli. This is the restaurant's final season -- soon it will end its run and be reimagined as some sort of culinary foundation (I've read several accounts, like this one and heard Ferran Adria talk about it, but I still need to clarify exactly what's happening there). Reservations are absurdly difficult to get (the number I've heard is 2 million reservation requests for 8,000 seats per year), and the one time someone I know offered me a seat a couple of years ago I just couldn't make the travel arrangements work. But thanks to the eleventh-hour intervention of Dr. Myhrvold, I'll be celebrating our Year of Modernist Cuisine in style. Now I just need to remember where my passport is.

A quick Google search turns up several references to The Martin Yan Culinary Arts Center in Shenzen, China, but I'm not sure what exactly goes on there.

I thought tallow was rendered suet.