You can’t really do justice to the el Bulli experience, but we will certainly try to tell you about it below (and to remind ourselves of all the fantastic dishes we got to try!). Warning, this is a long, picture-heavy, drool-inducing post!
First, the details
We emailed our request for a reservation last October, at 01:20 on the first day that reservations opened for the 2007 season. Demand far exceeds supply for el Bulli reservations, so we held our breaths as we waited to find out whether we’d gotten it. About a month later, the good news came - we were in! Table for 2, Friday 11 May at 8:30 pm. We planned a trip to Barcelona around the reservation, taking into account Jeff’s visit to Edinburgh. Thank goodness for cheap flights and for finding a cheap hotel too!
We used easycar.com to book a cheap rental car for the 130 km trip from Barcelona to Roses, the town nearest to el Bulli. After walking in circles for a while around Sants station, we finally found the Pepecar office and picked up our Fiat Punto. We then drove around in circles for almost an hour before we finally found our way out of Barcelona. It was quite scary because Pepecar gave us the car with an empty tank and you really don’t want to run out of gas while on a one-way street in central Barcelona!
We made it to our hotel in Roses with enough time left for Ian to have a nap and then an afternoon snack, before we made the 13 km drive to el Bulli. The drive is up a very windy and narrow road through the hills, before reaching the private beach where the restaurant is located. The road dead-ends about 100 meters further down from the entrance to el Bulli. We arrived at the same time as a group of 8 people - but they definitely had the better ride!
We were welcomed (by name!) into the restaurant a few minutes early and led on a tour of the kitchen, where we immediately met Ferran Adrià - the master chef behind el Bulli. I was too overwhelmed to get a photo! The kitchen was very quiet, despite the staff (all 50+ of them!) being in full swing. We got to see the four separate areas of preparation and all the fancy equipment they use - it was incredibly clean and organized, quite lab-like.
We were then seated at a table against the back wall, from where I could watch the entire room easily. The decor was surprisingly unpretentious and there are all kinds of odd and interesting things displayed. Right next to us was a table of 2 French couples who had already started their meal, so we got to spy on their food as we enjoyed our drinks. We were not given menus, as el Bulli prefers to keep the dishes a surprise. We chose to share a bottle of sherry as our first set of drinks, followed by an amazing bottle of 1998 Santa Rosa red which we savoured for the rest of the meal.
The play-by-play: Amuses-bouches (snacks)
After figuring out what language we preferred, the impressively multilingual staff brought our first dish: the cosmopolitan-mallow. A perfectly chilled blend of vodka, cointreau and possibly cranberry juice (not sure on this one) was served in a sleek, steel martini glass dotted with tangy and foamy lime marshmallows.
We were advised to alternate sips of the cocktail with the next dish brought out, the “aceitunas verdes sféricas” or spherical olives. Not really an olive at all, these were drops of olive oil enveloped by the thinnest of skins, which burst at the lightest touch - no idea how these are made, but they tasted great and were an impressive start. We had seconds from the beautiful glass jar.
The next dish was the golden nugget - it looked like gold-coloured popped rice covered in plastic wrap and we were instructed to eat it immediately so we didn’t get a picture. It was followed by an array of tasty bits. I ate the beetroot and yoghurt meringue first and it was the highlight - perfect combination of tastes and a very light, melt-in-your-mouth texture.
Next were pineapple-anise sticks. Looks were a bit deceiving - I didn’t find the pineapple flavour as strong as I was expecting, but it was perhaps overwhelmed by the anise. The texture was also quite odd: think chewy styrofoam.
Presentation was the name of the game for the cocoa-covered walnuts. Top-quality cocoa made this dish very enjoyable.
The rice-parmesan crackers managed somehow to taste fishy, but perhaps my brain was expecting a fishy flavour because the dish looked like fish eggs! The edible flowers were a very pretty and tasty addition.
The final snack was the “chocolate salado” in three flavours: cassis, yoghurt and pistachio. None of the flavours was overwhelmingly sweet, nor did any of them taste like chocolate. I loved the cassis but found the yoghurt chalky.
Stage 2
The pistachio and buttermilk mousse was delightful, melt-in-your-mouth and springy.
It was overshadowed by the next dish however: a black sesame sponge cake with miso. It was too big to eat in one bite and difficult to cut neatly, and it looked like a sea sponge! But the savoury/umami taste combination was awesome.
The next dish was “flores de horchata“, translated on our menu as “tigernut milk flowers”. We each got 3 of these, but in our excitement to try them and seeing as how they were melting as they sat on our plate, I forgot to take a photo again, oops! Some of the surprise was lost on me, since I had never had tigernut (chufa) milk before - apparently it is a Spanish specialty. I expected these to taste quite sweet, but they weren’t really - just somewhat nutty and yoghurty.
We were told to eat the next dish in one bite as the middle was liquid. No utensils were provided, so fingers it was! The first was a chewy peanut and curry caramel and the second a gold-topped tangerine bombon. Very yummy!
The next fruit dish was a real highlight: raspberry fondant, which was a sugar frosted cold raspberry topped with a dot of palate-clearing wasabi, to be eaten in two bites alternating with a raspberry vinegar. Beautiful raspberry flavour, and I really tasted the wasabi but Ian said he didn’t.
For real oyster fans, the oyster yoghurt must have been a treat. I found it way too salty, but I don’t really enjoy oysters normally. I loved the accompanying dishes, lemon yoghurt and a drop of Pedro Ximénez wine in tempura batter - yum!
The next dish provided a good contrast to the oyster yoghurt: icy tarragon and carrot truffle with a side dish of passion fruit raisins. Again, I liked the raisins more than the truffle, although both were beautiful to look at. The raisins seemed to also be made using the spherical technique, as they were held together by a thin and flexible skin which melted away in the mouth - mmm passionfruit!
Stage 3 - the “meat and potatoes”
The next few dishes were what I would call the more traditional part of the meal - but not to worry, surprising flavours and textures were incorporated into each dish here as well.
The el Bulli take on potatoes and gravy was the spherical haricot beans with Joselito Reserve panceta pork fat and black garlic. The thinnest sliver of the best ham Spain has to offer enveloped bean … stuff(?) prepared using a similar method to the olives from the start of the meal. Delicious! The black garlic also had an interesting flavour that I couldn’t quite place, and I’m not sure how it gets to be black.
The next dish was a citrussy and more solid take on gin and tonic: tonic water merengue with pumpkin and citrus fruit. The presentation was beautiful, and the taste quite puckery - it definitely cleansed our palates for the next few dishes.
A mysterious white dome next appeared on the table. We were told it was gorgonzola ice cream, and as we ate into it we discovered it was filled with walnut, celery and apple - a perfect marriage of flavours, and a real “WOW” dish.
The next dish was Ian’s “WOW” moment: anchovy in ham cream with stevia air and smoked toasty almond. You wouldn’t think an anchovy would be that exciting, but it certainly was - the savoury complemented the fishy and the very sweet perfectly. Did you know stevia is 30 times sweeter than cane sugar? Stats like that get Ian all excited.
I didn’t think anything could top that one, and was beginning to get full from all the amazing taste experiences. The next dish was a comparatively mild one, and I’m glad I got over my childhood aversion to milk skin to try it - it was delicious! Polenta gnocchi were surrounded by a saffron and caper sauce, joined by the milk skin.
I missed another photo opportunity for the white asparagus in different cooking times. You’ll just have to imagine 5 perfect, fresh white asparagus spears of varying consistencies and with different subtle flavours. The asparagus was accompanied by tiny yellow spheres, which the staff informed us were egg yolk that had been frozen by being injected using a syringe into liquid nitrogen. Another “wow” dish.
I was a bit wary of the next dish as I had never had razor clams and was expecting a repeat of the oyster experience - which it really was not. The razor clams were perfectly fresh with no fishy aftertaste, and went amazingly well with the coconut, lemon and white sesame sauce.
Exhaustion must have set in at this point, as I missed taking photos of the next two dishes: warm mushroom wontons with seaweed (intense seaweed taste, the mushrooms were quite mild) and hot mackerel sweetbreads with seaweed in vinegar (delicious, melt-in-your-mouth lightly fried mackerel liver and roe).
Continuing the seafood theme, the Marrakech stone crab was served on couscous with fun jellied parsley floating in the foam. The crab was surprisingly sweet and went well with the earthy couscous, although Ian was dismayed to find a piece of shell at the bottom of his. Clearly it happens to the best.
Dots of truffle oil surrounded the apple jello on the next plate, and the staff poured essence of rabbit a.k.a. hare juise over the concoction. I loved the truffle oil and hare juise on their own, but found the apple jello a strident, displeasing contrast.
We had been asked in advance whether we preferred a substitution, but we both chose to try the lamb brains with their own juice, walnuts and daisy buds. Delicious and very smooth, the lamb brains were a great ending to the savoury courses.
Stage 4 - Sweets and Morphings
Creatively titled “the wool 2007“, the banana cotton candy went very well with the whiskey ice cream.
The next dish was as delicious as it was beautiful: a frosted violet flower on a bed of violet salted yoghurt with a frozen blueberry - yum!
The morphings consisted of a blackberry encased in foam with liqueur, strawberry foam on yoghurt bits, chocolate gnocchi envelopping a sweet ice cream filling, and the grand finale, coconut jelly on a chocolate sable with lime and mint.
It was almost midnight by the time we got and paid our bill, and finished our last drops of Santa Rosa wine. I think we were the first to leave, as some tables were not seated until 11 pm! Definitely the most amazing restaurant experience ever, and I would love to go back when and if I can ever afford it again …
[…] Ian and I left Jeff in Barcelona for two days while we drove up to Roses to have dinner at the best restaurant in the world, el Bulli. We returned to Barcelona and then flew (almost without Jeff, but he made it!) to Sardinia. We had a fantastic time traveling around and were sad to go back to Edinburgh. […]