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Chef Ferran Adrià of elBulli. Photo: SCMP / Sam Tsang

A Day at elBulli: it might be closed, but the Spanish restaurant’s legacy lives on

  • The book A Day at elBulli goes behind the scenes at the influential restaurant opened by molecular gastronomy chef Ferran Adria, which he shut in 2011
  • There are recipes within, but it is unlikely any home cook will be making them

It wasn’t long ago – less than a decade – that elBulli was the destination restaurant for ardent foodies. As with so much else, part of the appeal of the place, tucked away in a gorgeous little spot in a national park on the Costa Brava, in Catalonia, Spain, was that it was so difficult to get into.

It was small (about 50 seats), open for only six months of the year, and opened its books for reservations for just a few days in October, when it received about two million email requests for the 8,000 seats available.

The restaurant closed in 2011 so that its chef, Ferran Adrià, and his brother, Albert, the pastry chef, could concentrate on other projects, including a research lab, museum, culinary encyclopaedia, and other restaurants.

But the myriad elBulli creations remain influential: every time you eat faux caviar, foam, air (lighter than foam), microwaved cakes and many of the other elements involving techniques developed at the restaurant’s research lab, it’s likely that the chef in the kitchen either staged (worked as an unpaid cook) at elBulli, or worked with someone who did.

The cookbook, A Day at elBulli. Photo: SCMP / Jonathan Wong

A Day at elBulli (2008), subtitled “An insight into the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià”, is not light bedtime reading. It’s more than 500 pages and weighs about 3kg. There are recipes within, but I doubt that any home cook will be making them – they are too involved, and often require specialised equipment or ingredients.

Instead, the book takes us behind the scenes during a typical day at elBulli, starting at 6.05am, when the sun comes up on the beautiful surroundings of Cala Montjoi and the Cap de Creus Natural Park. It takes us through Adrià’s arrival at 10am, the arrival a little later of Juli Soler, elBulli’s co-owner, the chef’s business partner and an exceptional front of house man (he died in 2015), and details such as ordering produce, preparing the dining room, testing dishes, and the family meal. Guests begin to arrive at 7.45pm (the restaurant was open only for dinner), and start to leave at 1am.

We discover that there’s a “secret workshop” on the grounds, where ideas and dishes conceived at the larger, better known research laboratory in Barcelona are refined so they can be served in the restaurant. In the short chapter titled “How does the reservation system work” we learn that the team thought long and hard about how to accommodate more guests, wondering if they should open for 10 months a year, instead of six, or whether they should also serve lunch, and how they gave up on these ideas because they would still have to reject most would-be guests.

The book shows us a week’s menu for staff meals daily at 5.50pm – macaroni carbonara and roast artichokes with romesco sauce on Tuesday; green salad with roast beef and mashed potatoes on Friday; and potatoes with salsa verde, poached eggs and grilled sardines on Saturday.

The recipes start about midway through the book, coinciding with the arrival of the guests and proceeding through cocktails and canapés on the terrace, savoury dishes, desserts, then “morphings” where guests can linger over coffee, liqueurs and cigars.

Recipes include samphire tempura with saffron and oyster cream, pine nut marshmallows, spherical olives, steamed brioche with rose-scented mozzarella, monkfish liver fondue with ponzu and white sesame-flavoured kumquat, and pineapple/fennel dessert, which is almost certainly the easiest thing to make in the entire book.

A spread from the book. Photo: SCMP / Jonathan Wong
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