Chef Appeal
17
We are told that Adria works half the year in the Taller with a team composed of
his brother, a chemist, and an industrial designer. They experiment and come up
with new ideas in cuisine, often creating “impossible” dishes such as a bowl
containing both a hot consomme of foie gras and a frozen-powder form of the
same ingredient, both parts retaining their temperatures, and a so-called “pea
ravioli” that maintains its state as a perfect bright-green sphere with no pasta or
encasement other than one created from the ingredient itself
As chemically inventive as the El Bulli team is, it is also pranksterishly
witty. Take, for example, the “cherries with ham” dish that Bourdain featured of
ham-fat glazed cherries masquerading as a more conventional preparation of
white-fondant-covered cherries. Or, how about a play on magic tricks with an
“Englishbread” that Bourdain described as appearing to be a loaf of Wonder
Bread but shockingly vanishing once Bourdain placed it on his tongue?
Each of the courses Bourdain imbibed was not only a proposition made
provocative due to the preparation of the food but provocative also because of
the designer’s engineering of