Superlatives fly around Ferran Adriá like bees around spherified acacia honey caviar. As the driving force behind Spain’s famed El Bulli, he’s been called the world’s greatest living chef, the inventor of culinary foam, and the man behind modernist cuisine – or molecular gastronomy, depending on your choice of words. Two hours from Barcelona on the Costa Brava, the 50-seat property’s high-tech “cocina de vanguardia” has been globally recognized on best restaurant lists for the last decade.
Under Adriá’s guidance, El Bulli’s experimental menus, sometimes running to 40-plus courses, were elaborated over the course of months by a team of apprentices in an atelier wielding syringes and siphons. Conceptual au bout – I’ll drop Gorgonzola balloons and air baguettes here and let them hang – it was for mortals a once-in-a-lifetime experience, twice for the culinary cognoscenti. (El Bulli was the No. 1 answer among the subjects interviewed for this Amuse Bouche column when asked where in the world they would dine if price were no object.) Despite the thousands-strong waiting list and $250 prices, the restaurant operated at a loss and closed earlier this year.
In 2014, it’s slated to become the El Bulli Foundation, a centre for culinary research and development.