Menu of the month El Bulli
Here's a funny thing. What nationality is the chef whom the Italian food writers think of as the chef of the 21st century? Where do French food lovers flock to when they want something challenging and innovative? If Paul Bocuse was the chef of the 70's, Freddy Girardet of the 80's, Joel Robuchon of the 90's, then who would most people agree is the chef of the Noughties?
Ferran Adria, of Spain's El Bulli. That's who.
El Bulli is a fairly simple restaurant, at the end of an unmetalled road on the coast in Catalonia, southern Spain. And here, Adria and his highly praised staff (some people say the service is even better than the food!) run what is virtually an experimental restaurant. They turn everything on its head. What do Spanish chefs do with tomatoes? Make gazpacho. What does Adria do? He makes them into lollipops. You make pasta with flour. Adria makes pasta with mangoes. His work seeks to overturn our expectations of what food can achieve. At any given point and with any given ingredient, Adria is trying to show how a food can be transformed into another tactility, another conception. ''I'm not confined by French techniques,'' Adria says, and that simple quote is the key to his culinary liberation. Let's draw an analogy: most chefs paint landscapes. Adria is doing Cubism and Abstract Expressionism all on the one plate. Parmesan ice cream sandwich to begin, anyone? Quail egg in caramel? Hot and cold soup of fresh peas?
Hors d'oeuvres
Cocktail of fresh apple juice with Calvados
Parmesan ice cream sandwich
A cannoli of corn wafer filled with guacamole
Black olive bread shaved and twisted into crispy flowers
Puffed quinoa served in brown paper cone
Tomato juice sorbet thickened with bread, topped with a crisp ball filled
with peppered olive oil
Poached quail egg in crisp, pale sugar caramel flavoured with black pepper
Parmesan straws
Appetizers
Hot and cold soup of fresh peas with mint
Iced polenta with Parmesan custard and olive oil
"Tagliatelle" noodles of jellied consommé served warm with bacon,
cheese dice, and cream
Oil of charred truffles with quail egg yolk in a baby onion cup with bread
flowers
Sea cucumber batons, fresh mango with caramelized black olive puree
Hot and cold chop suey with raw chilled clams
Ravioli of squid with coconut milk and ginger
Pineapple sorbet dotted with dried pineapple
Main Courses
Foam of tea, barnacles in a jelly
Sauteed red mullet, ravioli of red beet with blackcurrant and port
Cube of foie gras with basil mousse and pine nuts
Yeast soup with cream, cinnamon, lemon sorbet
Desserts
White chocolate granita with mango puree and caramelized
black olive
Puree
Deconstructed tiramisu
Follies
Lollipop of dried yogurt with dried strawberry granules
White chocolate wafers marbled with black olive puree
Oval white chocolate wafers flavoured with truffle
Passion fruit meringues
Gingered pineapple kebabs
Eucalyptus chocolate truffles
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text © John & Sally McKenna
illustrations ©
Ken Buggy
