Thursday, September 17, 2009

El Bulli taste alike

El Bulli. This restaurant in Spain is considered the best in the world. Imagine trying to get a reservation! I was lucky enough to score a table at a cooking school for their menu based on the recipes created by internationnaly reputed chef Ferran Adria from El Bulli.
His speciality? Molecular gastronomy! When watching the food network Canada if I see chefs doing weird things with food (mainely foaming stuff) I always feel that it's snobism and superfluous....But when was I going to Spain? And besides I was curious!
The meal started with a Beetroot and Yoghurt ice lollipop. This was fun to eat but not beety enough for my taste! A plate of puffed saffron rice,Quinoa,fried wild rice and crackers came with it. All of those were amazing and fun to eat! I could not fit the pics in this post because of the space and didn't feel like writing a 2 part post. Next came the watermelon,tomato and grapefruit kabob. Tomatoes go really well with watermelon! That's quite a surprise! The green sauce is basil oil, it was nice to drag the fruit in...YUM

Next was a fresh pea soup in a shooter glass...hot on top and cold on the bottom! " totally different tastes and textures. You could taste the mint! Sooo good!

oops! I was too excited about this dish to wait! I had a taste before taking the pic...It was Belly of tuna with blackcurrant and eucalyptus. I never had tuna cooked that way (raw in the middle), it was delicious! The brown sauce is the eucalytus gravy, that was a real surprise and oh so delicious! I could've skipped the blackcurrant, in my opinion it didn't add anything to the dish (I'm no chef of course!)
Then came the breast of duckling with seaweed salt and vegetable scallops. It totally skipped my mind to take a pic of that. The duck was pinkish and I noticed that some of the dinners were kind of scared of that! I knew that was the way to cook it, but never had it that way. It was reminiscent of steak. The veggies were in fact seaweeds of various kinds. Thank god I love the stuff! Some of our neighors were skittish about that as well! We went there to try new stuff and we did!
Another course I forgot to take a pic of was the pre-dessert...rats (I was told that I'm a bad blogger) It was sweet vanilla potato puree! That was lovely yet weird! The mashed potatoes had specks of vanilla and were topped with sweet vanilla milk foam. Very interesting!
Now the dessert! Warm saffron tart with lemon ice cream. More foam! Inside the flaky crust...saffron egg yolk foam. delicious as well, especially when you mixed all the flavours!

AAAaaaaahhhhh! Chocolate surprise! The large ribbon had wasabi in it, the white dome had a black olive and in the small wooden cup sunflower seeds covered in dark chocolate! Need I say more? DELICIOUS!
What a great experience! And for a mini price too! 20$. I don't have the habit of hiding my dining spots,but this time I will. It is so very hard to get a table there, when the schedule comes out, it is usualy totally booked in less than 24hrs....Sorry! :)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

If you ever run into any el bulli cookbooks at sales? GRAB them...check out the prices they fetch on ebay. Crazy high prices for many of the books. I'm not sure why, I only know they do.

That meal sound amazing - and Im totally jealous!

wow, lucky you! the only way that meal could have been better is if it had been served on pink pyrex :) but maybe thats just me :)

Vonlipi said...

Yes! Served on Pink Pyrex would have been better for sure!

I'll keep my eyes opened for El Bulli cookbooks, it's strange they are so popular!

the meal was really an amazing experience and I'm glad I was there and took pics of it!

They also make theme nights like indian or japanese but I haven't been able to score a reservation for those....Maybe someday!

Thrifted Treasure said...

Wow, all sounds fab! The closest I get to experimental cooking was yesterday when I made bolognaise and then realised I was out of pasta and served it with rice instead, ooh risky!