About that amazing dinner in Barcelona

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I had eaten a wonderful, world-class dinner in Barcelona, and I promised to tell you more about it.  I'm writing now to fulfill that promise.

The meal was at Enigma, a new restaurant from Alber Adria (with some input from his brother, the famed Ferran Adria, ex of El Bulli).  Though Adria's name is on the restaurant, its lead chef, Oliver Pena, and his team do the cooking, and they do it extraordinarily well.

As the name suggests, Adria's concept is to lead you from one mystery to another.  For example, they call each of the multiple separate dining rooms an enigma, and you move among them in the course of your meal.  To help with the illusion, they ask that guests not reveal the menu or show any photos of the food, so I cannot do either.

I can show you the imposing door

Click a photo to see a larger version.

and its keypad,

on which you have to enter a special code, which varies from person to person and which they supply only when you've paid your reservation's deposit.

The many, many courses are all remarkable, each one a blend of largely local ingredients and the sort of modernist cuisine cooking techniques for which El Bulli was justly famous.

I can't say more without violating my agreement with the folks there, so let me just suggest that if you are ever in Barcelona and can get into Enigma--it's perpetually sold out, and I ate there only by being on the waiting list--you should.  It is a wonderful, delicious experience.

On the road again: Barcelona, day 4

Behind me in the blackness in the photo is the Mediterranean, its waves beating a slow rhythm on the shore.

My sense of luck and of somehow not quite deserving to be there, as well as my dislike of having my picture taken, account for the expression on my face.

To my left stands the door inside El Bulli.

Inside was the most amazing meal I've ever eaten. I'll write more on it in other times, but as I said to Chef Adria after dinner--yes, I got to chat briefly, via an interpreter, with Ferran Adria--the meal touched both my heart and my mind. I have a lot to process--and not just in my stomach.

I feel very, very lucky for having been able to eat there before Adria closes the deservedly famous institution.

On the road again: Barcelona, day 3

Jamon Iberico de Bellota is a wonderful thing indeed, and as I did my last time here, I'm eating small amounts of it each time I get the chance. Today, this taste treat was part of both my meals, lunch and dinner, and I loved every little bite.

A big chunk of today went to more time with the works of Antoni Gaudi, about whose art I've written before. Suffice to say that once again I found La Sagrada Familia amazing, a work of genius, and deeply moving in many ways. The singular vision behind both it and Parc Guell, which I also revisited today, always makes me think hard about creativity, great works of art, and, of course, my own pale attempts at creation. Gaudi was almost certainly more than a bit of a loon, but he saw the world differently from everyone else and, as Hunter S. Thompson once said of another, he stomped the terra.

Tomorrow brings the dinner at El Bulli, the event that transformed this trip from desirable to mandatory. I'm not looking forward to driving the crowded Barcelona streets or the single-lane country roads that lead to the restaurant, but I am quite excited about the meal itself--which I'll be sitting down to eat in about 17 hours.

Hot damn!

That mysterious trip I mentioned a while ago

starts tomorrow, when I leave mid-afternoon. I'm heading to Spain, Barcelona to be precise, for some research for a special project I'm not going to announce for a while. I won't be back home until late Saturday night.

I'm also going to be doing something extremely special while I'm there: eating at El Bulli.

[insert here an entirely unmanly squee of foodie delight]

If you don't already know about El Bulli, feel free to Google it for a few minutes; I'll wait.

As you'll quickly learn, El Bulli is one of the most famous and highest rated restaurants in the world. It and Ferran Adria, its chef, are legends among foodies and chefs alike (not that the two groups are mutually exclusive). Adria led the development of molecular gastronomy and has continued to innovate throughout his career. A seat there is one of the hardest reservations in the world to get.

Yet it's closing soon, to reopen in 2014 in a new form. I won't even pretend to summarize Adria's reasons for this choice; you'll have to read them (and there seem to be several) for yourself.

Its closing, however, makes it doubly lucky that I'm getting this chance to eat there.

Wednesday night at 7:30, I'll be doing just that.

Two squees would be entirely too much for one post, so instead imagine here a more manly, fist-thumping, "Hell, yeah!"

Food chemistry at home

Ever wanted to make caviar from peas? I have, ever since I first ate them at Minibar in Cafe Atlantico. Well, now we all can indulge in a little bit of food chemistry--or molecular gastronomy, as the fancier name goes--in our own kitchens, courtesy of the Texturas Spherification Minikit from Dean & DeLuca.

It won't be easy. Your odds of success the first time are low, because this is tricky stuff. You have to spend a lot to get started: this kit runs $200 before taxes and shipping. Once you get over those two obstacles, however, you can play with this chemistry set for foodies and try to recreate some of the recipes that come with it--or roll your own. The product is the creation of El Bullitaller, which is the workshop where Ferran Adria, the famous chef of El Bulli, and his brother, Albert, devise new recipes.

El Bulli, by the way, is one of the few restaurants in the world that might cause me to fly across an ocean for dinner.

If you're into food and have the dough, check out the spherification kit before Dean & Deluca runs out of stock.