Above I promised that I would post some comments about my dinner at El Bulli (and Celler de Can Roca). I will soon post some photos about my Can Roca dinner. Here are my thoughts:

The End of Astonishment

Every art movement has its lifecycle, a fact that is as applicable to culinary movements as to other aesthetic domains. The middle of the first decade of the Twenty-First century will be remembered as a time of triumph for the Molecular Movement, a trend that I termed Agape Cuisine for its carnal desire to astonish through the creation of new techniques of preparation that taken together had the goal of astonishment. This was the El Bulli moment, a moment that was supported and extended by world-class restaurants such as the Fat Duck and Alinea and El Celler de Can Roca and WD-50 and Moto. But where are we today? What is left after the nitrogenated dust has settled?

Such a question is properly asked in the dawning of this new decade because of El Bulli’s recently announced closure, the new directions (and restaurants) of Heston Blumenthal (in Dinner) and Grant Achatz (in Next) and the incorporationist movement of other chefs and the prominence of some restaurants (Noma, Coi) such as those that some bloggers have termed the New Naturals with chefs as hunter and gatherers and others, such as Chef Josh Skanes at San Francisco’s Saison or Chef John Shields at Virginia’s Town House, experimenting with cooking in ash. It’s back to the future.

Ultimately all art worlds (and the world of high-end cuisine must be conceived of as an art world) have their styles and fashions, and these styles and fashions can be analogized to scientific fashions, as discussed within the sociology of knowledge. When old techniques stop working or stop appealing to an audience, there is a space for a change. We are always looking out for the “next new thing.” We hope to be first movers, revealing what is hot and what is cool. This was brought home to me in a recent visit to Barcelona to dine at two of the world’s great restaurants, the estimable El Celler de Can Roca (in Girona) and “the restaurant at the end of the universe” El Bulli (in Roses).

I was fortunate to dine at El Celler de Can Roca two years ago and, although I was an EB virgin, I dined with a multiple-time diner at El Bulli. Neither chef (Chef Joan Roca or Chef Ferran Adria) has forgotten the techniques that he had pioneered and that brought fame. Both meals were filled with creative nummies. But each seemed to recognize that cuisine is built on a classical foundation. Perhaps this is not Escoffier’s Paris 1906 as Grant Achatz will replicate in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, but it recognizes that new techniques take us only so far, they need to be integrated into the canons of taste. Sauces are there for the rediscovery.

A view of photos from El Bulli reveals distinctive and joyous dishes, but nothing from a different universe, and this is not bad. Adria’s shrimp on a tortilla, wonderful and distinctive, was not mad. The other shrimp dishes were even more classical. Perhaps woodcock is not typically served with guanabana, but it doesn’t take a chemist to figure out how to do so. The San Felicienne cheese blini was as classic and as buttery as could be requested. The quails with escabeche, wonderful and precise, were remarkable in a way that is within the canon of classic cuisine (even if perhaps cooked sous vide). Even the olive oil chip relied on one of Adria’s old-new techniques. Some surprises remained, but nothing that demanded a new vision.

The same should be said of the meal at El Celler de Can Roca. The caramelized olives were wonderful, as was the herbal green colourology dessert, the mullets with stew, the steak tartare with mustard ice cream, and the oysters with cava. All of this was definitely modern cuisine in its best sense, but it no longer seemed straining for effect. Three years ago I was startled and amazed; this year I enjoyed.

So at this moment we seem to be at the ending of a phase of an aesthetic revolution in which chefs – the best ones and the new ones – are rethinking what needs to be saved and what jettisoned to produce delightful dishes.

There is a necessary and joyous tension – a dialogue – between cuisines based on simplicity and nature (the new naturals, “snout to tail dining” and “farm to table” cuisine) and those based upon novel elaborations and techniques (the family of molecular cuisine). With the attention that has been given to new methods, there is a recognition that the past has virtues as well. And so we find Chrono-cuisine, as chefs like Grant Achatz (at Next) and Heston Blumenthal (at Dinner) mine the past, remembering the forgotten.

Chefs are at an inflection point. Molecular cuisine is yesterday. And Yesterday is tomorrow.

DutchMuse wrote:Great pics, GAF, thanks! I'm getting excited--going there for dinner March 17 and can't wait. Your pictures have gotten me even more excited; thanks for posting this. Eager to read your essay.

You'll be there on my birthday. Have a great dinner, DutchMuse!

GAF - a great recap of a great meal. Just one note - I'm pretty sure it was coffee powder (not cocao) served with that rum-flambeed sugarcane.

Arrived in Barcelona and tomorrow night is the night! Can't wait--I'm so excited. Will post after the fact and report!

Thanks, Ulterior. Happy Birthday tomorrow! Have a great birthday.

Will Ferran serve corned beef and cabbage tomorrow - or green beer? Time will tell.

Neither but he and the restaurant were in full form. I have to meet my friends for breakfast in 10 minutes so more later but it was quite an experience. A very intellectual one--probably the most intellectual and high wire culinary acrobatics I've witnessed.

DutchMuse wrote:Arrived in Barcelona and tomorrow night is the night! Can't wait--I'm so excited. Will post after the fact and report!

Thanks, Ulterior. Happy Birthday tomorrow! Have a great birthday.

Thanks, DutchMuse. Can't wait to hear about your meal at elBulli!

So el Bulli is no more. But Slate has come up with an algorithm to generate your own el Bulli menu item names, as well a quiz to see if you can guess which were real items and which were generated by the algorithm.

http://www.slate.com/id/2299834/?wpisrc ... t_redirect

The Legacy of El Bulli - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 37084.html