Is El Bulli the best restaurant in the world? There’s no question that's what the world's food establishment thinks. In April, Ferrán Adriá's restaurant in northern Catalonia was again voted the world's number one eatery by Restaurant Magazine. I decided to take my girlfriend to the restaurant to find out whether the hype is justified.
After a drive up and down the curvy, narrow roads from Cadaques we arrive at El Bulli around 7.30 in the evening, slightly ahead of our 8 o'clock reservation. Although the signs clearly say this is the right place, the Bay of Roses – so lavishly described by several food critics - would not rank high on my list of beautiful places. In the centre is a caravan park and Spanish campers are capable of making a lot of noise. So we are actually quite pleased it is too cold for the terrace to be open.
Entering El Bulli, we are greeted by maitre D Luis who leads us into the kitchen to meet Señor Adría. He explains how everything works, while behind him some 40 chefs are busy preparing tonight's dinner for the 50 guests who have managed to reserve the world’s most sought-after restaurant table.
Back in the bodega-style restaurant, waiters are buzzing around like demented flies. There are, apparently, 30 of them. Our table is in the far corner with a view of the bay. Around us only a few places are taken, but soon all are filled with people.
Since my girlfriend is a vegetarian she is supposed to get a slightly different menu than me, but somewhere in the Byzantine booking process there seems to have been a slight hitch – our assigned waitress for the evening thinks that my partner is cool with animal fats in her food. She is not.
While an emergency operation takes place in the kitchen, we are served a welcome drink – a Cosmopolitan Mallow with intense flavours of berries and lime – which we actually don't drink but eat with a spoon. Since neither of us are keen on white wine, which the sommelier recommends as the majority of the 29 dishes to come are 'sea-based', we opt instead for a Gran Claustro 2001 – a local red.
We are both equally surprised by our first 'dish' - ‘spherical olives’ eaten with a spoon - that seem to just disintegrate in our mouths. They taste fine, but pondering over the experience we conclude that we actually like to chew our olives, not ingest them. How old fashioned of us.
As we continue with the rest of our starters we are not sure if we have been given the menu backwards as one sweet dish after another lands on our table: ‘golden nuggets’ - so named because they contain real gold - ‘pineapple frits,’ ‘beetroot and yogurt meringue,’ ‘sesame sponge cake,’ ‘nitro flowers,’ ‘tangerine bonbons with peanut and curry,’ ‘raspberry fondant with vinegar.’ Not only are the dishes sweet, they are all incredibly soft and spongy.
By now the bottle of wine is half-empty, but we have yet to eat anything substantial. My girlfriend, who likes to have bread with every meal, is beginning to mull over the possibility that she will leave the restaurant with an empty stomach to accompany my empty wallet.
A few moments later two glasses of ‘oyster yogurt’ arrive at our table. The over-eager Mexican waitress explains the magic of the yogurt while my girlfriend shudders at the prospect of drinking oysters, particularly with a milk product she usually avoids. So after she's taken a furtive sip I'm suddenly lumbered with two greyish yogurts to quoff.
Apart from the pineapple frits we had at the start of the meal, we are getting more and more surprised by how squishy every dish is. My girlfriend's stomach is in a similar state.
And it doesn't stop with the oyster yogurt. Although the ‘asparagus in different cooking times’ are, well, some hard and some soft, you would expect to be given a knife to cut something that needs to be cut, not a spoon. 'The sea,' comprising different types of seaweed, is a winner though – although two plates are plenty for me. The other sea dishes – razor clams and stone crab – are good, but not exceptional.
Next to our table is big family group that reaches the oyster yogurt moment just when our tastebuds have recovered from the shock. One woman loudly declares she is having none of it. So the silent grandfather is left with no choice but to swallow the slimy solution – or rather his son forces the old man’s head back, opens his mouth and pours the grey stuff in. Although the abuelo doesn't resist, he doesn't seem to appreciate it much either.
'Snails a la Llauna,’ on the other hand, is an altogether more harrowing experience. As soon as the plate is plonked on our table, my girlfriend jumps up and says she needs to get some fresh air. When she comes back, the look on her face tells me I am the only one that will be eating snail-eggs this evening. I am not sure if I will ever do so again.
Having survived the snail-egg trauma, we approach the rest our dishes more gingerly. I order lamb brains in their own juice and a pita of Iberian ham fat and veal bone marrow – enough to turn even the most dogged carnivore into a vegetarian. My girlfriend gets salmon and octopus, more traditional dishes involving less blood and body parts.
After 27 starters and 'main meals' we are served three desserts. Why only three desserts, I wonder. Would it not be a better idea to have a more even proportion of dishes?
After a quick coffee - my girlfriend refuses to imbibe any more liquid - and a chance to listen to the caravan park karaoke, we head back to Cadaques.
I've just spent €500 of my hard-earned money. So was it worth it? Ultimately, yes – although I am not at all convinced the food I've just eaten is the best in the world. There was too much foam, fluff and spongy stuff for my liking and some of the dishes were dire. But at the same time it was one of the most surreal and sensuous culinary experiences I’ve ever had – as befits a restaurant situated a stone’s throw from Salvador Dali’s one-time playground.
The next morning, at breakfast, I ask my girlfriend if she wants to try the world's second best restaurant next year. She says nothing and finishes her bowl of muesli. A week later she dumped me.