Dinner at el Bulli: Critical Analysis (Part 3 of 3)

Part 1: Getting There

Part 2: The Experience

Part 3: Critical Analysis

Unlike professional food writers and my fellow foodie bloggers, I’m approaching this epilogue not as gastronome but as an artist and writer. I’m also regarding my dinner at el Bulli much the same as I would regard my experience of an object in a museum. Back in art school when we looked at someone’s work and talked about it, it was called critical analysis. With a little bit of explanation, I hope this approach will make sense here.

By way of example, let me use a painting I stumbled across about a week after leaving Spain. The painting is by Vincent Van Gogh in the museum in Amsterdam that bears his name. It is just one of a couple of hundred paintings by the artist in their collection. I could have divided my time equally among all the works on display, which would have allotted about 30 seconds per piece. Another choice would be to pick fewer works and grant them a little more consideration.

In a similar way we approach food and eating. When our stomach sends the signal to the brain that we hunger, we can shovel food in our mouths until that signal is sated, or we can be mindful of the experience, focusing on the flavors, textures, smells, temperatures, colors, arrangements, and memories that our eating provides.

Like food, the possible avenues of thought when looking at a glass of absinthe and a bottle of water are innumerable. I can think about how post-impressionism (in general) and this painting (in particular) fit into the continuum of art history. I can think about the psychoactive properties of thujone—a component of absinthe—and how it might have contributed to Van Gogh’s struggles with his own mental health. As someone who’s picked up a brush and attempted to render, I can appreciate the way the artist portrayed sunlight reflecting off the horizontal surfaces in the room. The ways of slicing up the work and giving it thought are endless, and the same could be said for an evening at el Bulli.

There was one point during my dinner when I thought, “There’s an incredible about of joy in this food.” I wasn’t thinking of joy in the ecclesiastical sense, but of the joy that is the byproduct of an unbridled immersion in play and imagination. For a small kid, it’s the difference between the joy that comes from a trip to Disneyland and the joy found in the discarded box the washing machine came in; when play transforms it into a pirate ship and the lawn becomes the high seas. In the six months that the restaurant is closed and the team moves to the Portaferrissa workshop in Barcelona, reflection, daydreaming, and play can occur. The following spring, when they return to Cala Montjoi, these essential components become manifest through memories, surprise, and harmony in the cuisine. 

Kant's Critique of Judgement attempts to determine how the aesthetic experience happens. In my inverted view of Kant (as an artist) the making of work becomes an imperative when words will not suffice. Because the experience of a work of art can't be pinned down with precision, transcendence occurs with the realization of multiple referents and associations existing simultaneously and in harmony. Kant refers to this as the free play of imagination and understanding, which could be seen as a core philosophy laid out at el Bulli as well.

Rather than effuse in a general sense, let me give some examples from our menu.

The traditional dichotomy between the sweet and savory worlds are abolished, combined, and variously messed with:

• Sponge cake becomes savory in the Black Sesame Sponge Cake with Miso (sweet technique used in a savory preparation).
• Expectations of sweet are thwarted when biting into a cold chocolate truffle filled with warm truffle oil.
• Likewise with the unsweet mandarin flower sorbet given rich undertones with pumpkin oil.
• The inverse happens with the veal tendon, which became caramelized through low-temperature cooking.

Food memories are invoked in various, unconventional and unexpected ways:

• Not all food memories come from ingredients prepared in a home kitchen; many come from commercially processed and prepared foods that use techniques not readily available in a home kitchen. (Who bakes an Oreo, or puffs a grain of rice at home?) The Shiso Soft Candy (Ume JuJu) or the Honey Pearl with Elderflower are examples of that.
• Childhood memories were alluded to when a bowl of buffalo milk, strawberries, and honey evokes a morning bowl of cereal.

Associations are made between regional cooking and other cuisines:

• The prime example would be between the cadence and pacing of a omakase menu and the Catalan tradition of serving tapas.
• Also, the flavors play out sequentially in similar ways, unlike the fairly traditional blending of flavors and textures of emulsified sauces and stews. As a sushi example, I can think of popping a piece of mirugai in my mouth. It may play out first with the rice, starchy and notes of sweet and vinegar, then the chewiness of the clam (which can play out as yummy or disappointingly tough) then briny then the saltiness of the soy and perhaps a note of yuzu and horseradish (or if you’re lucky, real wasabi). In a similar way the Gnocchi of Polenta played out sequentially, starting with starchy/creamy followed by notes of coffee, then capers, then saffron.

As noted in the previous post, examples of magic and mischief occurred throughout the night:

• Irony was in play with the LYO-cream where alien-seeming nouvelle concoctions were “finished’ through mastication and the result was a classic comfort food like spaghetti carbonara.
• The various flavors and textures were decontextualized in Peas 2008, and then placed side-by-side, startling the eater into the realization of the variety of elements in the lowly vegetable.

Changes in dining wares and presentation helps to mix things up:

• Negotiating a spoonful of soup to one’s pie hole can no longer rely on muscle memory gained over years of mindlessly shoveling glop. With a shortened handle (or using one’s fingers) the process of putting food in one’s mouth becomes fresh too.
• Rather than the traditional tripartite of protein, starch, and vegetable (or food, sauce, and garnish) components of a dish are scattered about, and assembled in one’s mouth—like the suckling pigtail with melon miso soup.

The main component of the dishes often ventured into the exotic or never-before-had. Looking at our dinner menu—animal tendon, thymus glands, and piglet tails don’t often wind up on my dinner table. More so than the average westerner, I eat a fair share of Asian foods, so things like seaweed and shiso leaf do. After reading through some of the other chronicles of dining at el Bulli, the biggest disappointments came from the more exotic dishes. For those folks, I would have to refer back to Luis Garcia’s email:

“You will try many different elaborations and it means many different products. It is very important for his confection to know in advance if some problem exists, like allergies or any other product that we could not include for anyone of you.”

If you don’t spontaneously order offal or “variety meats” off the menu at your favorite bistro, then I don’t think there’s anything the Ferran Adrià, Albert Adrià, or Oriol Castro can concoct that will change your view. Spending an inordinate amount of time outside one’s comfort zone can easily ruin a wonderful dining experience. If you’re afraid of heights, dinner at the Eiffel Tower will not be a pleasurable experience no matter who is slinging hash in the kitchen.

In the world of modern art, many folks made a name for themselves by being the first to pull some idea, concept, or technique under the umbrella of fine art. The novelty of that singular action—be it painting abstractly or signing one’s name on a factory-made object—was enough to grant them a place in the cannons of art history. For my taste, the better artists took what was essentially a trick, and incorporated it into the vocabulary of their artistic practice.

This was my first el Bulli experience. From TV, publications, and websites I have a Cliff Notes understanding of the restaurant’s history and development. It’s one thing to deconstruct a sauce or inject it with so much nitrous oxide that it becomes a foam. It’s something completely different when those techniques are elaborated and expanded upon, as well as incorporated, adapted, and reinvented for new preparations, cuisines, and techniques.

I look forward to a return to el Bulli to have this summer’s surprises become another year’s gastronomic memory—or to have the washing machine box become a spaceship and the lawn the Milky way.

Your comments go directly to my email and are responded to.

Sphere: Related Content