Within a decade elBulli has reached legendary status in culinary circles for Ferran Adrià’s daring and inventive cuisine. Only a privileged few each year will find out why.

“Ferran has prepared a personalized menu for you.”

This is how the dining room managers begin when they introduce the menu at elBulli, judged the world’s best restaurant a record four times by prestigious Restaurant magazine. Rather than choosing for themselves, each guest is served a tasting menu of between twenty-eight and thirty-five dishes. The menu has an uninterrupted flow, but it can be divided into four separate acts, each with its own character.

Act One starts with a cocktail. On arrival, the guests are taken into the kitchen to be greeted by chef and owner Ferran Adrià, then served welcome cocktails, aperitifs and snacks, usually on the terrace. The menu might include samphire tempura with saffron and oyster cream amid stemmed brioche with rose scented mozzarella.

The chefs make the cocktails using the same culinary techniques and concepts they use for the snacks, tapas dishes and desserts. For example, a margarita consists of a margarita frappe with a salt air served in a cube of ice. The waiter grates Himalayan salt crystals over the top of the air, and the cocktail is eaten with a tapas spoon.

New dish concepts are explained and guests are told how to approach each dish in order to experience it at its best. “You have to find a balance between what you want to do, what is possible and what the guest would like,” says Ferran.

Act two is the most substantial part of the menu and consists of the savoury tapas – dishes that are eaten with cutlery. Diners may sample Thaw, or a monkfish liver fondue with ponzu and white sesame flavoured kumquat, or rock mussel with seaweed and fresh herbs.

In Act three guests immerse themselves in the sweet world, beginning with the avant-desserts and going on to the desserts. These might include chocolate air–lyo with crispy raspberry sorbet and eucalyptus water ice, or coulat soufflé of grenadilla with toffee and cardamon (pictured).

The final act, during which morphings (an elBulli invention that replace petits fours at the end of the meal) are served, takes place on the terrace. It lasts as long as the after-dinner conversation, the coffee, liqueurs and cigars. This menu might include yoghurt and raspberry mochi or passion fruit trees.

“Creativity means not copying,” said celebrated French chef Jacques Maximin, and Ferran is continually inspired by this philosophy. In 1987 he left the cookbooks behind to forge a unique identity for elBulli. In the same year, the extension of the winter closing period allowed six months to be devoted purely to creating new dishes.

The creative process has evolved over time, with new techniques and concepts investigated at the elBulli workshop in Barcelona. They work not on specific dishes but on developing new techniques that have never been used in cookery before – such as spherification, using siphons to create foams or new gelling agents. At the sessions held in the restaurant kitchens shortly before they open, the new techniques and concepts are used to develop a fresh collection of dishes and the menu for the year is finalized. The process goes on throughout the summer season and new dishes are continually added to the menu.

An example of the team’s creativity is the examination that was made of mango. The team discovered that its flavour perfectly balanced between acidity and sweetness, and because it is reminiscent of peach, banana and passion fruit, it combines well with other ingredients. The skin has a resinous flavour of its own which can be added to the pureed flesh. Because of the mango’s size, it can be cut in different ways and it doesn’t go brown. When it is sliced thinly, its texture resembles that of pasta cooked al dente, which led to the development of new ravioli dishes in which sliced fruit and vegetables are used instead of pasta.

Read the full article in our December 2008 edition.