The Observer's restaurant critic, Jay Rayner, takes the occasion of the publication of A Day at elBulli to do just that, and dine at El Bulli for the first time. My meal there was quite simply the best of my life—the most intriguing, the most entertaining, the most delicious—which is a staggering achievement for a place hyped beyond all bounds of sense or logic. I went nursing a fear that I would be disappointed. I left all those fears by a ragged Catalan beach. Read about the day in the Observer Food Monthly, or watch the video....
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Where do I take
Ferran Adrià, the man who is generally considered to be the greatest, most influential and innovative chef in the world, for a late breakfast or brunch in New York?
Not an easy question, is it? Find out!
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If you're a perpetual doodler, even when taking a coffee break, Spanish artist Julie Mariscal has the thing for you: the Writing Spoon, which features an incision at its tip that turns it into a makeshift fountain pen. You can buy it online at Vinçon (€20.86) as part of Ferran Adrià's Faces Collection of designer kitchenware and tableware. Watch the spoon in action after the jump....
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Chef Santi Santamaría is not okay with liquid nitrogen in the kitchen. In public attacks on Spanish avant-garde chefs, Santamaría has denounced the use of additives like dry ice and methyl cellulose, advocating a return to simpler, more natural cuisine. Santamaría even got personal, saying that he feels Ferran Adrià, Spain's most celebrated chef and owner of El Bulli, "is headed in a direction that is contrary to my principles." Yet Adrià and other Spanish chefs feel that there is no conflict between cooking locally and avant-garde techniques, and even Slow Food Spain agrees with them. Is high-tech cooking innovative or unnatural?...
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