Word: adri
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...cold, the edible "paper" dotted with flowers, the frozen parmesan "air" that comes packed in a Styrofoam tub, and asking: Is it art or is it dinner? "We aren't saying that cooking is a new art form," says Ruth Noack, Documenta's curator. "We're saying that Ferran Adrià shows artistic intelligence." That distinction was lost last summer when director Roger Buergel announced that Adrià would be part of this summer's show, which opened on June 16 and runs through Sept. 23. Skeptics complained that embracing a cook signaled the banalization of Documenta. "Both Adri...
...each of the 100 days that Documenta lasts, Noack and Buergel select two people to send for dinner at Adrià's restaurant. "We go into the exhibition space and watch for someone who, figuratively, speaks to us," says Noack. Franziska Flögel became one of the chosen after she happened to strike up a conversation with the curator about the exhibition's audio guides, and let slip that she and her husband had been coming to Documenta since 1968. "We had read that two people were being sent each day," says Flögel. "But we thought...
...Franziska is the Charlie who won a golden ticket to the Chocolate Factory, Adrià is Willy Wonka. For all his influence and renown, the chef still clearly delights in his work, and his enthusiasm for the joy that food can bring is contagious. "This is the most beautiful thing I've done," he says about hosting the Documenta visitors. "You have to see their faces to understand it. It's not just something conceptual - they live in their flesh. It's a magical experience." Although Adrià is quick to point out that other media, such as photography, encountered...
...course, Adrià's cooking isn't like anyone else's. He and his team spend six months of the year traveling and tasting, trying new ingredients, inventing new techniques. For the Flögels and El Bulli's 48 other customers on Monday night, the result of all that investigation and inspiration took the form of "spherified" olives that, when put in the mouth, exploded with a gush of intensely flavored olive oil. The liquid yolk of a quail's egg came wrapped in a hard burnished shell tasting of candy. Citrus pulp turned into a tangy risotto...
...they hadn't been invited to El Bulli, the Flögels' dinner there would have set them back nearly $500. By the end of their meal, Franziska, an architect, and Gerhard, a civil engineer, had succumbed to Adrià's peculiar magic. "I was astonished the whole time I was eating," says Francisca. Her husband added: "This is a new way to create taste. When you're here, it's clear that it's art." Perhaps. But by the time Adrià's diners have worked their way through those 33 dishes, such abstract questions tend to fade into...