Word: el
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...El Bulli may be the most fussed-over restaurant in the world, its 33-course meals the object of countless gastronomic pilgrimages, its 8,000 reservations per season snapped up in a single day, its edible foams and spheres now part of the contemporary culinary vocabulary. But since its famous chef, Ferran Adrià, was named a featured artist in this year's edition of Documenta, the provocative contemporary art show held every five years in Kassel, Germany...
...El Bulli has also become the center of a lively debate about the aesthetic value of avant-garde cuisine. Suddenly art critics and foodies alike are scrutinizing the gin fizz that manages simultaneously to be hot and 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...
...next thing Franziska knew, Noack was asking if she would like to have dinner in Spain. A car picked the couple up at 8 a.m. on July 2, and drove them to the airport for their flight to Spain. By 7.30 p.m., they were seated on the patio at El Bulli, enjoying those hot-and-cold gin fizzes. They returned to Kassel the next morning...
...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...