Richard Tan

I am also very fond of the cooking of Loubet; I agree with Cabrales that he is among the strongest of the 2-star chefs (although a gut feeling tells me that Chibois is going to be the next one elevated: he's made all the right moves in recent years, for instance investing heavily in upgrading his main property). I know quite well that they are doing very different things and are therefore not comparable, but if I had to choose strictly only one of Loubet or Reine Sammut, I would go with Loubet without hesitation. In Lourmarin, make sure not to miss Albert Camus' grave at the cemetery. Incidentally, I think that Gilles Pudlowski (Le Point etc) is also a fervent supporter of Loubet and has written some very beautiful passages about Lourmarin, if I remember correctly, in his early (1984?), youthful, very passionate, very fine "Le devoir des francais". Agnes Varda made a deeply-moving film recently (2000?, 2001?) called "Les glaneurs et la glaneuse" which was released in the US as "The Gleaners and I". She takes the notion of gleaning-of picking up what someone else has refused/does not want-examines the most varied and extraordinary manifestations of this practice and makes it resound almost as a metaphor for her life and her art. She visits second-hand stores, investigates the salvaging of unwanted furnitures left overnight at a street corner, follows a man who rummages in the garbage piles at the market (it looked like Marche de Belleville in the 11th) for perfectly edible but unsellable vegetables...Of interest to food lovers are those scenes in rural France where she films gleaners who, by law, are permitted to move freely into any farm (even those on private property) after the formal harvesting is over and glean whatever remains of grain (there is that famous image of Millet of grain gleaners), apples, of grapes...There is even a scene of oyster "gleaners" at (I think) Noirmoutier, waiting to move in and harvest "free" oysters once the legal signal is given. She visits Jean Laplanche, the great psychoanalyst who recently sold Chateau de Pommard to the Cathiards of Smith-Haut-Lafitte (this was the biggest news of the wine world last spring) to interview him about this practice of gleaning in the vineyards of Burgundy. THEN there's the scene with Loubet himself, looking like a perfect maniac (wild hair and all), out frantically searching the fields of weeds for creative material. From his almost vehement defense of this practice, one gets a sense that this man uses foraged herbs/"forgotten vegetables" in his cooking not because it is all the rage at the moment, not bec his master Veyrat does it, but almost as if he needs to, desperately, to nourish his soul...

***Hi Jinmyo, Re: Have you seen…thread on Steingarten and terroir Thanks for the link. I see that the war against the infidels ;) ;) is being waged on other fronts. I have been up to my neck in work and have not had a chance to read through it carefully. It seems to be a discussion of epic proportions and the ideas/observations on this subject articulated there seem to be among the best thought-out and refined to be found anywhere today. I have also just found the extraordinary "Chef of the Century" thread (after leafing through a hundred different pages looking for it) and am grateful to be able to learn the "pre-history" of this El Bulli thread here. I noted that this thread took several months to unfold and to reach a certain grandeur: this is really the proper way: "hard" ideas in a conversation often need time, thinking and rethinking to reach a "critical mass". Again I must say that I am quite awed by the twists and turns those threads have taken. Now if someone would kindly point out the so-called "Foam on the range" thread to me: I have not had any luck looking for it. There was also a reference above to a certain discussion on Alain Chapel in 1987…? ***Robert Brown, Re: Stan Brakhage I don't think that any experimental filmmaker working today can escape the monumental shadow of this great artist. I have to check my references but if I remember correctly, Brakhage was once an instructor at the Art Institute and Gatten just left a teaching position at the school, so there is THAT connection at the very least. Coincidentally, the city is celebrating a sort of Brakhage festival at the moment. There was a presentation at the U of Chicago last week and for three nights this week (starting last night), three different institutions (Filmmakers, Film Center, Columbia College) have put together programs of works chosen from his oeuvre of 400+ films. I was at the viewing last night, which included the great prelude to "Dog Star Man", "Visions in Meditation #2", "Interpolations 1-5". At the same time, the Chicago Review (humanities.uchicago.edu/review) has just released its latest issue (Winter 01/Spring 02) which is devoted to Brakhage. I have not had a chance to look through it carefully but the discussions seem to be far-ranging and substantial. It also includes selections of his correspondence with Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Guy Davenport, Charles Olson etc. Leafing through the volume just now, and looking at Eirik Steinhoff (editor's) introduction, I see an assessment of his work that can almost be applied to Ferran Adria (substituting a few words of course) as well and am reminded that a discussion of Brakhage may ultimately not be completely irrelevant within the context of a discussion of Adria: "(Brakhage/Adria)…has forcefully expanded the boundaries of film (Adria: cooking), turning it into a medium that can sustain intensive epistemological inquiry and visionary insight…(it is an) extensive body of work…that intransigently frustrates the mimetic habits we've slipped into by the "movies" (Adria: by "received" techniques) and reorients his audience to the elemental roles that light and time (Adria: taste and the primal ingredient) play in film. Re: do you think Adria is a "fad or aberration" Robert, the answer should be even more apparent as this thread unfolds. I think you must have an inkling by now that I am in the Adria-for-Chef-of-the-Century camp. And yes, I agree with Steve Klc: "his technique is nothing special, it's his palate". More later. Re: Duchampian sensibilities in Adria. I would invoke the works of Raymond Roussel who was a major influence on Duchamp. The procedes (accents on the 2 e-s; how does one put accents on this forum?) with which Roussel created his strange "novels" are clearly the forerunners of "Conceptual" practice and are very reminiscent of Adria's playful reworkings/undermining of "mimetic habits". But then, as I argued, Adria's techniques (despite that "Conceptual" dimension) really can be abstracted as "techniques" only retrospectively. To see it apart from the original impulse (to rethink a certain food) that led to it is to misunderstand Adria's art. These are not technique-for-technique's-sake. Which leads us to the question of foam in Adria. Re: Foam in Adria//Quote: are there antecedents? 1987 Chapel mushroom cappuccino I have not read this thread (can you refer me to it?) so do not know the context of this "previous discussion". But I must say that there is so much BS being said and written out there about Adria's foam that obscures the true nature and the true significance of this innovation. There was a ridiculous Chicago Tribune article about 2 weeks ago on the subject of "foam" that starts by interviewing Rick and Charlie Trotter on their visits to El Bulli and ends by talking about Chef Charlie's "frothed" "emulsions" (!!!) on one hand and Starbucks foam (!!!) on the other. A lot of people think that they have "experienced" Adria just bec some recent graduate of culinary school put the word foam on the corner bistro menu. Adria's foam in fact was a solution to a very specific problem: how to capture the intensity of flavor/maintain the "truth" of a certain taste in a form that is also expressive of a certain lightness/airiness/evanescence of texture and being. Here and elsewhere (more later on this re: Cigalas en texturas and on the fermenting/rising soup) he rejects the classical solution (cf souffles etc) which relies heavily on butter, cream, eggs to cause the mounting and which does not, in his opinion, quite approach the "essence" of the taste…No, I would say that there were no antecedents to Adria's use of the siphon: it's a true innovation from every perspective… Re: Grids in Sol Lewitt The most obvious parallel development to this to someone living in Chicago (with our wealth of sublime International-Style architecture) is the "gridding of the world" by Mies van der Rohe. Re: "I did not adhere to my original plan to dine at El Bulli" + "Steve Plotnicki changed his travel plans" + "become a parody of himself" + "post-Fluxus food event" I think you gentlemen should give it a chance. El Bulli will never be a travesty even if, as Lizziee's 2001 experience suggests, Adria might be pushing some envelopes in a major way of late. There is so so much more to that experience than those "techniques". Judging Adria on the basis of his followers' works or on the basis of the "techniques" is like saying one does not like Shakespeare on the basis on a reading of Cliff Notes. If anything, go for the extraordinary quality of the seafood (more on this later) which is some of the finest to be found anywhere in the world. Re: is this an endorsement of the internationalization of cuisine? No! Re: "gastronomic landscape" is a more legitimate phrase than "terroir" This deserves another thread but I think "landscape" is too vague (but then "terroir" is too "loaded"). "Landscape" does not quite capture that interconnection, that matrix of Man + Nature//Culture + Primary Material that "terroir" does. Re: Adria and Italy//Pinocchio in Borgomanero There are now several little restaurants in dusty provincial towns with young 20-something "rebels" fired by the example of Adria and producing dinners with hookahs, gas masks, cardboards-to-be-licked etc. Davide Scapin is probably the most prominent among them. I don't know if you saw the Gambero Rosso from about 5 months ago. It was the issue with their annual choice for best restaurants of Italy. There were side bars devoted to every selected chef (Nadia Santini, Annie Feolde and so on) and each one was asked what was the most interesting thing you ate all year. Shockingly, every one of them listed a dish by Adria-even those chefs-like Romano Tamani-who are exalted by working within the context of an ancient tradition. (By the way, I have seen your posts in the Italy board: for me the greatest, most evocative, most unforgettable Italian restaurant is the Tamani brothers' L'Ambasciata//for this matter, Pinchiorri is the most grotesquely overrated). I would love to see someone write a study on the wide influence of Adria in Italy and its relation to the collective memory of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's exhortations in the "manifesto of futurist cuisine". Re: Hookahs and gas masks and so forth What these guys, or Liebrandt or Heston Blumenthal are trying to achieve may not have anything to do with Ferran Adria-except perhaps on the superficial level- as a brilliant example/forerunner, an inspiration and a model for procedure. Re: coddled egg + Beluga caviar + yogurt foam + crushed almonds Sounds yummy. And sound like a play/reworking of Savoyard flavors. Egg + caviar is a classic of course but could the presence of brininess/caviar here in relation to the presumably "cheesy" yogurt foam (think "fonduta" + other butter- and cream-based sauces) also be a reference to the use of anchovy in Piemontese cooking (cf bagna cauda)? ***Patrice, Re: Michel Bras in Japan Hi Patrice. I asked around but no one seems to know anything about this. Can you supply more information? This is exciting news. ***Robert Schonfeld, Re: Signora wagging finger and saying "I knew that calf. He was no good." That cracked me up. Thanks. I also loved that reference to Picasso's "I've spent my entire life learning to draw like a child." I think this also applies to Adria's attempts to learn/invent new ways ("techniques" if you will) of making food new and fresh once again. ***Steve Klc, Re: Being provoked Heh heh I was just kidding of course. If I had truly been provoked I would have eviscerated myself in the melodramatic manner of the sea cucumbers as described by Alan Davidson. THAT would be quite messy. ;) ***Jennifer, Re: the use of the word "espardenya" in menus Thanks again for pointing out the Oxford Companion entry. I have read it many times in the last few days and have chuckled each time. Such clarity and simplicity and precision in the writing! How does one learn to write like that? I thought about what you said. Given Catalan national pride, I really doubt that Adria (or anyone else) would feel the need to justify the use of the word "espardenya" with quotation marks specially since the alternative is the rather grotesque sounding Castillian cohombro (although note: Catalan cogombre is cucumber). In all the Castillian versions of Adria's books and menus, the word is translated with the Castillian cognate "espardena" (tilde ~ over the n). Adria also lists "llongos" and "pastissos" as other words used by the locals along the coast to refer to Stichopus regalis. ***Steve Klc again, Re: "bleeding edge of a trendy post-Adria backlash. A has-been parody that never was" Yes. The 2001 season saw a deluge of media-attention and the full hysterical force of the media-circus…Hundreds of renowned chefs finally made the trip during this season-not just those listed (for instance) in Dornenburg/Page's new book. One unfortunate upshot of this "American" invasion may be the decision to close for lunch and serve only one meal per day. Apparently they founded the rhythm of serving late lunches to Europeans (decent Spaniards don't dine before 9) and continuing on (virtually without a break) to serve early dinners to Americans too punishing. See next post on this. ***News flash: A friend sent me a link (I've lost it but will try to find it again) to a surprisingly comprehensive and substantial recent interview (in Spanish) with Ferran Adria published in…(gasp)…Hola! Yes, the society magazine! The most prominent bits I remember: they ARE closed for lunch for the 2002 season and Adria specifically mentioned cultural differences in dining times among their guests from the two sides of the Atlantic as putting too much of a burden on the staff. He also cited the need to spend more time thinking. Also: (gasp again) they will be opening their first "Fast Good" place in Madrid in 2003. "Fast Good" as in: neither "Fast Food" nor "Slow Food"… ***Tech question: Would someone kindly show me how to add accent marks on this forum. My usual html codes don't seem to work. Also: is there a way to edit for typos? ***John Whiting, Re: suffering We MUST talk about this some day. Why this philosophy of suffering? Why this ideology of poverty? This is a specially poignant question when one considers the horrible deprivations in Europe in mid-century. Given the promises of modernity, why the choice to follow a certain difficult path? Why, in the midst of hunger, prefer the low-yielding? Was it mere cussedness? Or is it a part of the European spiritual heritage? (You understand of course that I am talking about something else apart from/beyond the unequivocal superiority of vines/lobsters that have "suffered") I saw your reference on the other thread to Pig Earth and Life and Food in the Dordogne. Have you read Camporesi's Bread of Dreams? I don't think that you will find a more horrifying exploration of the history of hunger in the whole literature of food. ***Bux, Re: pairing This is a very complicated subject which I would prefer to argue elsewhere. But briefly: I think that this idea of a perfect match has been fetishized to such a point and the pairing process has been standardized/streamlined to a such an extent (yes, SPECIALLY within the tight rhythms of the all-degustation restaurants) that people have forgotten that wine and food are about time and flow and process and mood and individuals…and that that Wow moment, that magic comes, not as a preordained selection for each dish but as a function of a certain meeting (presided over by a truly great sommelier I would like to think) of food, of wine at a specific moment of its being and of the guest at a specific moment of his enjoyment. I was reading an interview with Max McCalman somewhere recently and he was asked which wines are the perfect choices for each one of his cheeses. And his answer amounts to (my paraphrase) "We taste cheese and wine every day and have attempted to find perfect pairings for years yet still have not arrived at a formula. One finds oneself humbled again and again in the face of this challenge." This is truly refreshing and contrasts so sharply with those (even on the highest levels) who train their waiters to pair by rote… ***Lizziee, Re: "Therefore, Steve, I honestly do not agree with you that Bras would be Bras anywhere else" Yes, Lizziee, you go girl! ;) You tell that Steve, make him understand! ;) Lizziee, you put some beautiful quotes on Bras re Aubrac on that post. The landscape of the Aubrac has an almost spiritual quality to it. The range of plant life and the specific quality of the herbs, seeds, flowers from here are incomparable. Michel Bras supposedly uses a repertoire of over 150 of these plants. And he doesn't just pluck them: only certain parts or even sub-parts are incorporated into the different dishes. And it is not just the volcanic soil, it is the also the headiness of the altitude. This is one of the basic philosophies of the whole "sotto il cielo" movement in Italian cheesemaking: the conviction that milk from cows pastured at high altitudes and on a diet of the rich diverse botanic life that could only flourish at such a height is fundamentally superior. Re: great chefs are connected to their childhood Hmmm…there's something very true to this isn't there? Even without psychoanalyzing the chef… Re: wines I found two TYPOS: should be GranBAZAN Ambar: a superb wine from Galicia incidentally. And Eloi should probably be spelled Eloy. I was thinking of the occitan/Provencal spelling. The wines that Eloy chose for me were "geekier" and far far more obscure choices than yours but then that's a thing between sommeliers ;). The wines of Telmo Rodriquez when he was at Remelluri and of Jose Luis Perez at Mas Martinet are reference points for the "new wines" of Spain and I adore their work very much. What…no whites? ***Steve Klc again, Re: Bras' cookbooks. Enjoyed your expressions of admiration for the achievement of these cookbooks. Must try to find me my own copies. Re: "I could have picked Newark or Trenton or Hartford" + Lizziee's "but why oh why did you pick Providence" ;) And you claim not to be provocative? ;) ;) Re: Jose Andres' salad Steve, I'm not done with you yet ;) but just to show you that we're friends despite your provocations ;), let me offer another passage from Piero Camporesi which your beautiful description of Jose Andres' salad reminded me of: "The marvellous creation of the salad-a jewel box in which the mysterious virtues of its interlaced herbs were mixed-constituted a small treasure for hedonism and pharmacology: a miniaturized masterpiece of ephemeral art, overelaborate and affected and which, like the apothecaries' prescriptions, required shrewd experience in the "art of manipulation" (Francesco Formica) and the ars combinatoria ("art of arranging") of infinite variety. In an age when just the composition of a salad required a great knowledge of herbs, their flavors and combined tastes, it was commonly said that "In herbis et in verbis et in lapidibus sunt virtutes". (There are powers in herbs, words and stones.)" From Bread of Dreams Richard

Trying to catch up here with this thread (pant, pant, pant) between tasks. I am still trying to find some quiet time so that I do not lose my above line of thought and so that I finish to shape/expand the argument. I felt so provoked however (yes ;), by you, Mr. Steve Klc ;) by you!) that I just have to jump back to the fray if only for a few minutes... First, to Jennifer and also to Bux, re: Espardenyes Yes, thanks for the reference to Davidson: truly delightful piece of writing. Espardenyes is Catalan plural for Espardenya: sorry for the carelessness. I was up at Northwestern University yesterday and stopped by the library to look up on the anatomy of the class Holothuroidea (the class of sea cucumbers) because it is not at all very clear in Davidson (and in Colman Andrews) exactly which parts of the Stichopus regulis are eaten. My own impression is that, in high-cuisine/restaurants, the leathery body-wall/epidermis is not served. It is the inner layer of circular muscles and specifically the longitudinal retractor bands that one cuts out for use. Ferran Adria uses the word "filamentos" to refer to these retractor muscles which work just like rubber bands and allow the animal to stretch and contract at will. Found other carelessnesses/typos in my posts. One little clarification: the Aubrac is of course technically just outside the official boundary of the Auvergne but geologically it extends the volcanic terroir of the Massif Central which is why I identified it loosely above as Auvergnat (instead of Rouergat) in terroir. Robert Brown, Thanks for your very interesting questions. I will try to organize an answer for you in a separate post. Steve, Quote: "High-end modern cooking today is global...terms as limiting, deceptive and obscure as terroir..." About three weeks ago, I saw a compelling work by David Gatten, a young experimental filmmaker who used to be based in Chicago (he's now teaching in Rochester; his other films were selected for this year's Whitney Biennial). It is called "What the water said, 1-3". He took raw unexposed film stock and threw it into crab traps located in various parts of the Atlantic Coast: I think part 1 in North Carolina somewhere, part 2, 3 in New England (?) Altered chemically by the different salts of the ocean and by the osmoregulating/biological processes of the crabs, the films became extraordinary abstractions/washes of colors. The most remarkable thing is that each film stock at each location registered a completely different spectrum of colors, completely different patterns based on the specific composition of salts/minerals in each place and based on the pattern of waves specific to that area etc. Moreover, these colors/patterns also changed from day to day for each location depending on other factors such as the tides etc. For Gatten, it was probably just a fortuitous discovery that turned into an fascinating artistic procedure, but for me it was the most amazing VISUAL objective correlative of this idea of the specificity/sanctity of place. We know that marine animals (crustaceans, mollusks, fishes etc) alter their body mechanisms (their weight, the salinity content of their body, the texture of their tissues etc) to adapt to changing aspects of their environments (tides, turbulences etc). Many food (and wine!) cultures have learned to read and to understand such "differences" within the natural world (and I have some more to say later about this re Ferran's "Cigalas en texturas"). Yet we pretend that anything shipped in, next day air by UPS or FedEx, is consequently "fresh" without regard to whether or not any kind of harmless little commercial compromises ("Oh, its such a small difference, it shouldn't matter") have been made in the process that deviate from that intimate, local understanding. No, I am not trying to subvert the system here: yes, we understand this necessity for pragmatism in our modern world etc etc-but to say that the idea of terroir is "limiting, deceptive, obscure"!!! In fact, it should be the absolute horizon, the ultimate reference point for any kind of thinking about food and wine. Believe, Steve, believe!!! The truth will set you free. Richard

Continued from above (I apologize for my rudeness in leaving in mid-sentence): Ultimately, a meal at El Bulli cannot be reduced to a mere sequence of "concepts". I would argue that the specificity of Ferran Adria's own "performances" (to extend the conceit I developed above) is just as untranslatable, just as uniquely individual, and-yes-just as profoundly involves "terroir" as the work of Michel Bras at Aubrac. The sensational novelty of his many unorthodox methods has led to the foregrounding of this "conceptual" dimension in his art, but an insistence on "techniques" has unfortunately led to a flattening-to the point of caricature ("oh, the foam guy?")-of our understanding. I look back on that meal I had there and do not know how to begin to articulate the sheer emotion I experienced. Many of the dishes continue to have a haunting effect: their power to disturb and to transfix, the endless web of thought that is opened up, the breathtaking inevitability of his gestures-all these elude replicability. Encountering these dishes on hand, one sees the problematic nature of assuming the priority of "concept". In context, the techniques (so easily "detachable" retrospectively) manifest their logic as elaborations to work through and solve some prior dilemma of thought or perhaps even personal (psychosexual?) obsessions; they acquire their resonance and their afterlife as "replicable concepts" after the fact, in the wide world beyond the realm of Cala Montjoi. I propose to reconstruct two of these dishes and try to analyze the nature of my emotion. I have chosen two works that have not received any comment (as far as I know) in the media. Both works involve remarkable technical achievements which I do not fully understand as I have not seen any recipes/explanations. These "techniques" are not foregrounded and have not been reduced to easy "handles" perhaps never will be bec of the almost personal, "quiet", thoughtful, non-extroverted nature of these dishes. Both dishes are apparently conventional in nature and their sheer radicalism emerge only after a second look. Moreover, the first work "Cigalas en texturas" has the dour, monochromatic (browns!) scheme that we associate with certain (older, traditional) cuisines of Spain and seems to retire behind this facade. The second work "Sopa de levaduras" (Yeast soup, or perhaps better translated as "Fermenting soup" "Soup of ferments" or even "Leaven"; this is in Lizziee's 2000 menu) occupies the position that corresponds to that of "pre-dessert" (or "dessert-amuse-bouche" as Gale calls it) in a traditional degustation and gets lost in the shuffle probably bec of this transitional position. Neither one has ceased to haunt my thoughts since that day. (Need to take a break; will be right back) Richard

Steve, I was told that Jose Andres came to collaborate on a special dinner with Rick and Gale (Bux, does this answer your question?) right after I left to start an exhaustive, exhausting year-plus-long period of study/travel and wine-"stages" through Europe (I returned recently). I wish that I had the chance to meet/work with him as the staff found him very inspiring and enjoyed his visit very much. Quote: "very Bras by way of Adria with a little bit of Jose" Heh heh, this is as suggestive and intriguing a description as it gets, yet perhaps a bit misleading. For me, Michel Bras' is without a doubt a cuisine of terroir. When I imagine a salad of his foraged wild herbs (and his tanaisie, his chrysanthemums, his borage flowers...), I remember the extraordinary persistence of flavor of each leaf or petal that he chooses. I remember the salty minerality, the almost surreal hard metallic vividness that could only come from plants that grow on the granitic/volcanic soils of the Auvergne. And then there is something of a medieval botanist in him, rich in the culture "de re herbaria" practicing a subtle "ars combinatoria"...Piero Camporesi seems to be writing about Michel Bras himself in one of his most beautiful passages: "The mixing of a salad required subtle dosages of smell and taste of an alchemistic sort: thought-out sophistications, heavy with wise meditation and creative inventiveness etc" It is bec of this specificity of Bras' relationship to a land, and to a tradition that (for all his culinary innovation and for all the modernism in the glass-box architecture of his restaurant), he is, to me, among all the great French chefs (think: Passard, Chibois, Gagnaire, Veyrat etc) the only one who is essentially UNTRANSLATABLE. Untranslatable to another branch in New York, Paris or elsewhere. Untranslatable "by way of Adria with a bit of Jose". Superficially, Adria's way of doing work is exactly the opposite of Bras'. It is a very different way of relating to the world. A universal translatability/replicability is a fundamental aspect of his art. This is how we see him from afar: thinking up and shaping his "new tricks" to perfection in his ivory tower; these would then be swallowed up and replicated endlessly in infinite variations by an eagerly-awaiting world. Thus, we have, already as part of our collective gastronomic past, the foams, the sorbets, the "raviolis", the layered "soups", the injected puff pastry etc In a way, Adria's methods remind me very much of those of the minimalists/conceptual artists who worked in New York (and elsewhere) during the late 60s and early 70s. In their practice, an abstraction (a "concept") embodied in a simple set of instructions (cf John Cage's "Stand" "Sit" "Walk" etc) or as mathematical formulas (Sol LeWitt's grid calculations) already exists in the realm of art, independently of any actual expression/performance. We go and see and touch the "Earth Room" on Wooster or the "Broken Kilometer" on W Broadway but there is a sense that the "idea-concepts" that determined these forms (in the case of Broken Kilometer: "Take 500 rods...etc") have a priority of importance. Similarly, Adria can be seen as a brilliant perfecter of procedures: reinventing a whole new way of thinking of the world, a whole new way of denaturing the world and then coming up with as simple and economical a formula as possible so that this rethinking and this denaturing could be performed again and again-expressed as sea urchin foam in Chicago, darjeeling foam in Atlanta, truffle foam in Philadelphia etc. Unfortunately, this supreme simplicity and clarity of his "novelties" also make it very easy to reduce his work to the status of "gimmicks": how many times have we heard of him referred to as "oh, the foam guy?" Ultimately, a meal at El Bulli cannot be reduced to a sequence of "concepts". I would argue that an experience here is just as profoundly about the place where the restaurant is located as is a trip to Aubrac chez Michel Bras//Muntanya e mar in Adria//Master of salt//WILL CONTINUE LATER (Bux/Lizziee, will reply later) Richard

Lizziee, Thank you very much for a wonderful report. I was at El Bulli in April 2000 and had a menu that is very similar to the one you had on the "first day, 2000". I was also quite "blown away" by that sequence of dishes and by the whole experience. I dream often of making it back but have not found the time, so it was wonderful to hear news from someone who has been able to. My visit was completely unplanned: I did not even have a reservation. I had just spent 5 days at the annual wine fair in Verona (Vinitaly) and had driven with a sommelier-colleague to the wine region of Friuli (virtually on the border of Slovenia) when I was suddenly possessed with this all-consuming desire to GO THERE at once to dine. I made a mad rush in one day from Cormons to Nice (stopping in Genoa just long enough for farinata at my favorite joint), had a wonderful lunch at Louis XV the next day, slept on the night train from Marseilles and at 20 minutes to 1 (El Bulli starts lunch service, Spanish-style, at 1) was tapping on the big picture-window of the kitchen and looking into the staff at their company meal. Ferran looks up, comes to the main door with Juli Soler (not Solter) and I explained that I was a sommelier at X and that I was hoping that they could squeeze me in for lunch. Without blinking an eye, he smiled and said in a most quaint and charming way: "Ah yes, but we would like to welcome you properly, not like this (i.e. not completely dressed and prepared). Take a little walk and at 1, we will open the door to welcome you." I did so with a pounding heart, trying to let this amazing seascape sink in (perhaps the most breathtaking in the world), while trying (vainly) to avoid getting mud on my just-polished dress shoes. And they did as they promised, giving a junior-sommelier from what was then a newly-opened and relatively unknown restaurant the most lavish of welcomes that he will never forget. Ferran himself took me on a tour, introduced me to Alberto (the brother/pastry chef), explained the whole organization of his "laboratorio" which seemed to me at first not even like a kitchen but more like groups of men huddling around different tables...I speak idiomatic Spanish and maybe there is something about men speaking the same language (and therefore, presumably, sharing the same perspective) that makes them put down their guards: without crossing any lines, Juli spoke with me with a quite warm chumminess, offering at one point a very perceptive...and ahem...quite frank assessment of the state of the restaurant in France (as in: you may be from the US, but you speak our language so you see what I am talking about). I spent several hours with Eloi, the sommelier, exchanging notes about winemakers, wine people in Spain, about the profession (to be accredited, a sommelier in Spain must know his cheeses and jamon as well), learning about their buying strategies at El Bulli, their plans for a new cellar etc. It wasn't until nearly 6 that I left, laden with an armful of Ferran's books (some of them gifts from Eloi) and with a huge blissful smile on my face. Bux, Espardenyes (Stichopus regalis) IS sea cucumber or sea slug but a completely different species from the more familiar Chinese black sea-cucumber, which is sun-dried, smoked and reconstituted before being used for cooking. Apparently there are several hundred species, only very few of which are known to gastronomy. Espardenyes is found only on the Costa Brava (the very waters where El Bulli is set) is supposedly not similar even to the sea-cucumber found south from here, on the coast of Valencia. It used to be harvested accidentally by fishing nets and the fishermen would then simply throw it away until it showed up one day on the menu of some fancy restaurant in Barcelona during the 80s (?) and became all the rage. It has of course become very very expensive, quite rare and may even eventually be protected. Out of the water, it is (flat; deflated) oblong is shape, has some reddish mottling on the outside and has some of the limp sliminess-of-feel of, say, a squid. Before cooking, it is usually cut into thin translucent strips-oh say-3 inches long, which makes it look remarkably like the meat of the very succulent local razor clams (which can be ordered in the food stalls at the back of La Boqueria market, where they will grill it right there for you). A "sheaf" of these strips, "tied" together with a long piece of mango, was served to me at that meal at El Bulli. In Lizziee's case, I'm just wondering if it were not a case of another one of Ferran's visual puns: young tender young ASPARAGUS in "drag": disguised as sea-cucumber. This would explain Lizziee's criticism of the asparagus as "overcooked." I note that Ferran is very fond of these little games of words: for instance, the "couscous" on Lizziee's first menu (and mine) was actually "crumbled" cauliflower, attempting an approximation of the texture of "real" couscous. I was also served a so-called "paella" which had no rice in it but instead some kind of vegetable stalk (I never found out what it was) cut and shaped to look like little grains, Steve, Yes, that last "board" of sweets (which Ferran calls "Pequenas locuras": silly little things) is quite amazing isn't it? All those little stainless steels sculptures (looking like origami or like the early works of the great Brazilian artist Lygia Clark: the "bichos")...on which all kinds of cones, lollipops etc are perched. That presentation really left me quite speechless... *** I really doubt that Eloi would deliberately bring expensive bottles for matching. First of all, this is not the kind of wine list that emphasizes huge pointless verticals just for the sake of it and it is not the kind of place where they push Petrus on you the moment you walk in. In fact, the cellar is a quite wonderful treasury of lesser-known/up-and-coming Spanish wine regions. And although wine people bitch day-in and day-out about how Spanish wines have become SO expensive, the fact of the matter is that, from a global perspective, Spanish wines are still relatively underpriced, which means that (unless your taste runs towards Vega Sicilia) you can have stunning, stunning bottles for a fraction of the price of yet-another California chardonnay. I had Eloi choose my wines and he brought out for me a breathtaking Mencia (the grape variety of the Bierzo appellation), the Rueda from Jose Pariente, the Gran Ambar and a most intriguing wine: the then virtually-unknown Anima Negra from Majorca, made from 50/50 Callet (rare variety)/Cab Sauvignon. I ended with a suite of Pedro-Ximenez/Montilla-Morileses from progressively more ancient soleras (the oldest from 1830). He must have comped off a few things here and there bec the wine part of my bill came out to only about $30. Although wine is not really the main priority for most of those who make the trek (dare I say: pilgrimage?), I would suggest that reading up a little about some of the many new developments in the world of Spanish wines before going would pay off in many big ways. By the way, I spent quite a while discussing with Juli (who is the main wine man) and Eloi how you even pair wines for this cornucopia, for this wild tumble of flavors, textures...We all agreed that you just don't: you maintain the dignity and the integrity of the wine apart, without subscribing to this misguided, naive and hubristic ideology of the chef/sommelier holding the magic key to PERFECT sips with PERFECT mouthfuls. We agreed that the art of wine pairing as it has evolved in 20th c gastronomy is really travestied by this late-century practice of the tasting-pour-in-the-degustation, which assumes perfect non-variability (of temperature, of the dining situation, of individual taste), which does not account for individual quirks/palates but instead seeks to legislate WHAT-IS-PERFECT, which does not allow wine to evolve and change through the course of a meal but imprisons it in its small window of opportunity within the sequence etc etc etc but then all of this stuff is for another thread... Richard