Over the Foaming Wave

No one would dispute that this culinary era could easily be called the Age of Adrià. Spanish gastronomic sage Gerry Dawes revisits and reconsiders Ferran Adrià at El Bulli nearly 11 years after first illuminating his revolutionary cuisine for Food Arts.

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I first ate at Ferran Adrià's El Bulli in July 1997, when Food Arts asked me to find out if there was anything more than espuma (foam) bulliendo (boiling) out of the isolated Cala Montjoi cove in Roses, where the restaurant is located on the Costa Brava north of Barcelona. Entitled "Foam, Foam on the Range" (see Food Arts, October 1997, page 44), the subsequent article was the first major report about Adrià and El Bulli in an American magazine. This May, I returned for my fourth experience—somehow calling it a meal, or lunch, etc. is woefully inadequate—to assay and essay about what has happened since. In the interim, Ferranismo has overtaken the gastronomic world, flying through light years in a nanosecond, a ride that in many minds has rocketed Adrià to the title of "World's Greatest Chef." In 1997, little was known about Adrià's cooking except that his frothy espumas were beginning to make waves. Literally and figuratively AF (After Ferran), food has been forever changed. His impact continues, as his culinary philosophy, ideas, techniques, innovations, and, yes, artistry, course through the global culinary community.

Even after more than 20 years of traveling in Spain, I still didn't quite know what to expect on that first trip to El Bulli. I was going alone and would have to make up my mind in a vacuum, into which I was about to have foam and God knows what else introduced. I knew that the genius artist Salvador Dalí had lived and worked scant kilometers north of El Bulli in nearby Cadaqués-Port Lligat and that the wild tramuntana winds—which once toppled a train—sometimes blow through this area for days. It's commonly believed that this mighty blow is responsible for Emporda-Costa Brava denizens being a little espumoso, or frothy, in the head. Along the several kilometers of awesomely beautiful but tortuously curvy washboard-rough road that then led to El Bulli, I wondered whether he had been touched by the tramuntana, Dalí's art, or whether Adriá might also be a little touched himself.

Firsthand reports from El Bulli initiates before I left were none too encouraging. Adrià's food was slammed by New York wine importer Michael Skurnik, who told me, "I had the worst meal of my life at El Bulli. I stopped the tasting menu after the sardines with raspberry sauce and before the lamb brains." Scott Bryan, then chef/owner of New York City's Luna and Indigo, said, "He's like Willy Wonka, a mad scientist going wild," and Mario Batali, then chef/owner of Pò (New York City), thought that Adrià was "a genius hooked on being a revolutionary…I'm not sure he's making dinner, but he sure is making a statement."

Upon arriving at El Bulli, I was served a fine Agustí Torelló cava on the terrace, then was invited into the now exalted kitchen, where I was served five of what Adrià's partner Juli Soler called "snacks," themselves a bit off-beat, but none too scary. The rest of the meal was a psychological roller coaster. I sat alone making notes, waffling back and forth with every dish, trying to figure out whether Adrià was a genius or a poseur. I had two recurring thoughts: "This is the strangest food I have ever eaten and, died-in-the-wool Hispanophile or not, I have to get it right."

The dilemma was best framed by the 10th and 14th courses of a menu of two dozen-plus dishes, which I subsequently dubbed "tapas with attitude." The 10th was the exotic, off-the-wall eggplant soup with yogurt-filled ravioli, pine nuts, and eucalyptus-like chips of Fisherman throat lozenges. "Ahoy! What the hell is this!?" But, espuma de bacalao con cebollitas confitadas (the second of the celebrated, much copied and often parodied espumas that day), an inspired salt cod foam with slivers of caramelized sugar scattered on top and imbedded with the superb counterpoint of tiny caramelized scallion bulbs inspired a "Genius!" exclamation. This dish was more in line with what Daniele Baliani of Boston's Pignoli told me: "Adrià is pushing the envelope in a Spanish/Catalan way…he's a great artist and a great individualist. He cooks with a lot of soul and intellect."

Since that 1997 Food Arts article ran, Adrià—at El Bulli, in his El Bulli Taller (workshop) near Barcelona's famous La Boqueria market, and at food conferences around the world—has become the planet's most important culinary force. Every January, food heavyweights and aficionados alike begin flinging thousands of communiqués at El Bulli, vying for one of the 40 possible seats (dinner only, except Sunday, when only lunch is served) available each day from mid-April until early October. Adrià is the major draw at conferences such as Madrid Fusión, held each January, in Madrid, where his annual State of Ferranismo address plays to a packed house and kicks off the season. And, in this country, at The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone's Worlds of Flavor conference on Spain in November 2006, Thomas Keller introduced Adrià, who took the stage with a battalion of star Spanish chefs and received such an outpouring of appreciation from the gathered professionals that the moment is regarded as one of the greatest in Spanish culinary history.

In July 1998, I returned to El Bulli to find all new dishes, though they were still dominated by foams, gelatins, and counterpoint sweet-and-sour, crunchy-and-soft, hot-and-cold. One memorable dish was an ethereal warm potato espuma that served as the perfect flavor conductor for the layer of shaved black truffles on top. I was sated by the time the last savory course—number 23—arrived, callos con puree de garbanzos. Though I do like garbanzos, I am no fan of tripe (I can tolerate a tapa of Madrid-style callos), but I felt duty-bound to at least try the dish, which was perhaps the best tripe I have eaten. And the garbanzo puree was terrific. The dish reminded me that Adrià was not only a brilliant vanguard cuisine maestro, he was a damned good cook, something I had recorded a year earlier about his typical dish of zamburiñas a la galega, Galician baby scallops with scallions, garlic, and pimentón(Spanish paprika).

"By 1998," Adrià says, "I believe the essential philosophy of El Bulli was already established. It was a cuisine principally based on three pillars: the technical-conceptual search; the role of the senses that came into play when creating a dish and when eating it; and the sixth sense, the role of reason and reflection during the act of eating."

On October 5, 2003, I returned to El Bulli for the final dinner before it closed for the season. This was the year the New York Times Magazine cover asked, "Is Spain the New France?" and carried Arthur Lubow's "A Laboratory of Taste" article about Adrià and modern Spanish cuisine. Lubow's article blew the top off the simmering Spanish modern cuisine volcano and caused Ferran's espumas (the cover photograph was of a glowing red-orange carrot foam served in a crystal horizontal vaselike vessel), melon "caviars," mango ravioli made to look like egg yolks, and nitrogen-frozen cocktails to circle the globe like the fallout of a culinary Krakatoa, leaving few places in the gastronomic world untouched by Ferranismo. Although some of his creations, including the melon caviar, the mango egg yolks, a tiny jamón Ibérico "sandwich," and two meters of Parmesan "spaghetto" were ingenuous, downright cute, and tasty, other dishes like the deep-fried rabbit ear and oven-crisped small red snapper skeleton wrapped in cotton candy missed the mark. An otherwise tasty dish of baby sepia topped with squid ink "caviar" and with two mango "sea urchins" alongside was brilliant except for its appearance—the foam made the dish resemble something bubbling from the Black Lagoon.

This spring, I ate my best meal ever at El Bulli. Adrià's creations were still cutting-edge inventive, but my companions and I were impressed by how good almost all the food tasted. Some of it, like the lovely artistic mango "leaf," the ruby-like dried fruits, the jewels of spherified honey, the chocolate appetizer "bonbons" with a pine nut peeking from the center, and the edible "paper" that sandwiched several distinctly different tasting wildflower blossoms looked almost too beautiful to eat. The red beet "coral" was a delightful re-creation of nature, the "grilled" single strawberry with ginger was delicious, and peas with mint (spherified pea puree and real baby peas) were a hit. And, as usual, but not so obvious as before, were a couple of his "swamp thing" dishes that aren't always the most attractive but taste great: a brace of what could have been a pair of bull's testicles but were reconstituted encapsulated pochas (bean puree) served with a translucent pancetta slice from the Ibérico ham producer Joselito.

I was so impressed that I thought, vanguard cuisine or no, the pure cooking was at the level of any top toque's in the world. I wrote Adrià that that meal had given me the most pleasure of any of my meals there. He replied: "In 1997—1998, we offered menus that were somewhat monothematic, showing a specific technique (foams, for example). The difference now is our much broader background. We can do menus on which only one dish featuring say, spherification (mango "caviars," liquid "olives"), appears. Now no one technique or concept monopolizes the menu."

Looking back on that first Food Arts article, I'm gratified I chose to highlight the qualities of Adrià's cooking and not dismiss something I didn't understand, as did the Cornell professor quoted in a food magazine saying something like, "The Spaniards are trying to sell flavored air," about Adrià's espumas, and the Long Island woman whose letter to the Times following Lubow's article stated, "Thanks to him, Spain will never have a national cuisine like that of France…"

Well, thanks, in part, to Adrià, Spain does have a great national traditional cuisine, now even better developed and more sophisticated. Ironically, a multitude of international chefs, American food writers, and food aficionados were drawn to Spain by Adrià and the exciting cooking being done by him and his compatriots. These culinary travelers also ate in local traditional restaurants, came to know markets such as La Boqueria, and learned so much about Spanish products that several Spanish food importers have grown prosperous filling demand. Now, a plethora of Spanish tapas bars, some with Ferranismo twists, have sprung up like mushrooms all across the United States (there are more than 50 in Manhattan alone). And thanks to Adrià, not only has a whole generation (and some members of the previous one) been inspired to expand their culinary horizons by exploring new ingredients, techniques, philosophies, and ideas, they also have learned to be generous in sharing their knowledge and skills with others. Like its predecessor, French nouvelle cuisine to which it has a direct relationship, Adrià's influence has, as a food magazine editor recently said, "left an imprint on the food of every good modern chef in the world."

"The problem with using liquid nitrogen and emulsifiers and all the rest of the tools that define the so-called 'molecular gastronomy' is that they often lead you to overthink your food," says no less a chef than Dan Barber (Blue Hill in New York City and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, NY), who's known more for farm-to-table fare than technical showmanship. "Not with Adrià. He maintains the balance between innovation and flavor. He makes food that's surprising, thoughtful, and delicious. More than any other chef in the past decade, he's responsible for moving food forward."

Adrià and Spanish colleagues such as Juan Mari Arzak, Juan Roca, Martin Berasateguí, and Carme Ruscalleda, as well as a brigade of international chefs such as Massimo Bottura (Italy), Carlo Cracco (Italy), Heston Blumenthal (England), Seiji Yamamoto (Japan), Grant Achatz (United States), and Wylie Dufresne (United States) emboldened by his lead, have all contributed to a style of cooking that may not be everyday fare but is supremely liberating and original. And, while Adrià believes that a chef should draw inspiration from "other creative fields, such as art, science, architecture, industrial design, and even from the world of commercial food preparation techniques," he also says there is much to be gained, "not just esthetically, but philosophically," from other culinary cultures such as Asia's. As he proclaimed this year at Madrid Fusión, when he obliquely replied to accusations from compatriots that the cocina de vanguardia chefs were changing food's natural state, "No one should feel obligated to comply with anyone's dogma, mine included."

Yes, no one's been obligated, but everyone's been enthralled.

Molecular disconnect

The term "molecular cuisine" often used in conjunction with Spanish cocina de vanguardia and its international offshoots, but Ferran Adrià objects to using the term to describe his style of cooking at El Bulli. " I would like to debunk the myth of molecular cuisine. I'm aware that in many countries they say that at El Bulli we practice molecular cuisine. But the truth is there are few qualifiers that define with such preciseness the cooking that we practice, because molecular cuisine is not a style of cooking. First off, the term comes from molecular gastronomy, which only describes the dialogue between cooks and scientists who are trying to understand the chemical and physical processes produced in the kitchen. As I have said many times, understanding what happens when a steak is cooking or how to make a mayonnaise doesn't bring anything into the evolution of the history of cooking in the stylistic sense. All knowledge is good to those who are cooking, but that's not the reason in itself that a new style is created. To draw a parallel, it's not necessary for a great architect to know how to make metal alloys. This knowledge, which is always positive, has nothing to do with what an architect brings to the style. What appears absurd is that the architecture of a creator who know about metal alloy is called 'moldecular architecture.'

The way the theme [molecular cuisine] is being presented, it appears that the kitchen is a place basically to carry out scientific experiements. And this in not the case. I would like to make clear that science for a chef has great value, although, I repeat, always so that he can understand the processes, to know more, to enrich our knowledge. In the same way, it helps to understand the processes of other disciplines."

Because of this misconception about the use of science in the kitchen, Adrià says, "the name 'cocina molecular' is being used as the name to define the cocina de vanguarde that we do at El Bulli and, in general, many restaurants everywhere. With that they want to define a cuisine 'based in science,' when in reality all that vanguard cuisine is trying to do is opening up new fields to understand more about everything. Our contacts have been established not only with scientists, but artists, industrial designers {of kitchen implements, machines}, nutrition experts, the food industry, et cetera. All this is done to procure the best knowledge and to provide tools for each chef's view of his cooking."—G.D.