2006 El Bulli Reservations

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote on 26 Oct 2005 11:56:56 -0700:

m> Has anyone had any luck with El Bulli? I just sent in my m> request today even though they opened up reservation m> requests over two weeks ago and it already says it's booked m> for the 2006 seating. Just wondering if anyone sent in their m> reservations or have gotten a table!

m>

for those who are curious. ;)

Forgive (well perhaps) my ignorance but I've never heard of el Bulli. What is it (a restaurant of some sort I might guess), where is it and why should I want to make a reservation?

James Silverton.

James wrote to snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com on Wed, 26 Oct 2005

16:32:10 -0400:

m>> Has anyone had any luck with El Bulli? I just sent in my m>> request today even though they opened up reservation m>> requests over two weeks ago and it already says it's booked m>> for the 2006 seating. Just wondering if anyone sent in m>> their reservations or have gotten a table!

m>>

for those who are curious. ;)

JS> Forgive (well perhaps) my ignorance but I've never heard of JS> el Bulli. What is it (a restaurant of some sort I might JS> guess), where is it and why should I want to make a JS> reservation?

Ah well! I see it is the "world's second best restaurant" coming after the Fat Duck! I suppose it is sour grapes (a very useful medicament) but my cardiologist would have a fit with me if I ate at any of the top 20 :-)

James Silverton.

Lawrence Leichtman wrote in news:larry- snipped-for-privacy@news.east.cox.net:

but it is a cook book :-)

Nils Gustaf, You recall correctly for the most part, but "To Serve Man" was actually a Twilight Zone episode, not a movie, IIRC.

Actually, it just advertises the book on its front page, but if you click on it you can enter the restaurants website. I only thought this might be interesting, because the food the head chef makes for the restaurant every year is always different. Imagine.. Noodles made out of parmesean.. Cherries with meat sauce.. I just thought it would be an interesting dining experience though I doubt I'll get a reservation since they only have 8,000 spots and 400,000+ requests a year.

The way I read it - with my very limited Spanish - it is a 3 star restaurant... and guess what, these guys publish books. I would not be too astonished if they dealt with cooking!!

Yves

Salut/Hi snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com,

le/on 26 Oct 2005 11:56:56 -0700, tu disais/you said:-

After reading various comments I don't think I want to try El Bulli. The style of modern cooking that seeks to subordinate quality of and fidelity to ingredients, to sophistication in cooking techniques, is not going to get my money. I was lucky enough to get seats (by pulling strings unmercifully) at The French Laundry, also contender for the "Best Restaurant in the World" which must in itself be the title of the most meaningless award in the world. At least there, Thomas Keller showed his deep respect to the ingredients themselves and I learnt a great deal about most of them. Poularde, Lobster, Lamb to name but three.

I have been invited by my brother to "The Fat Duck" where Hestor Blumenthal seems to be leaning towards the El Bulli style in some of his dishes. We are going in December. After I discovered this, I did try out one of his recipes recently - slow roasted beef, where after searing with a blow torch the meat is roasted at 55C for 20 hours. It was the best roast beef I've ever cooked, and arguably the best I've ever eaten. The beef itself was magnificent, and needed to be for this cooking method, which could do nothing to disguise or hide the intrinsic quality of the foodstuff.

All that to say that when you're seeking to book restaurants at this level of renown, you have to expect it to be hard to get a booking. I don't know how El Bulli's booking system works, but in both "The Fat Duck" and "The French Laundry", booking opens 2 months to the day before any desired day. So in other words, to book for the 27th December, boking would have opened today. For the French Laundry, where the chef's tasting menu costs $150 for

9 courses (plus gratuity of 18% =$27 > $177) booking opens at 10am and by 10.15am all tables are booked. At the Fat Duck (tasting menu £98 = $173), my brother was able to get a table for the 13th December without much difficulty by phoning on the 13th October. So I am not too surprised you had some difficulty.

What I find interesting is the comparison in prices between these restaurants with their stellar reputations and those of three star places in France. For example the top menu at Bocuse is at €190 = $230 and Michel Bras is at €152 = $184.

Wh

Shock, shock, horror horror! Given your status as an erstwhile chemist, Ian, I'd have thought that you'd be eager to try food made from liquid nitrogen and inedible polymers ;-)

Do you think that the blowtorch treatment significantly changed the outcome? Might not a traditional pot-a-feu have given you much the same pleasure if the same cut of beef was used?

Indeed. It would be vaguely interesting to cross-reference these "top restaurant" lists with their menu prices and see who comes out as the value-per-money choice. I'd expect that several well-known Michelin deux-etoiles would come out on top.

Mark Lipton

"James Silverton" in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com :

(Saw the followups.) FYI it has been more or less the most fashionable restaurant in the western world for the last few years. Sort of like on a larger geography what the French Laundry (and more recently its Northeastern expansion, Per Se) is within the US.

"Ian Hoare" in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com :

I've noticed the recurring pattern in situations like this, that above some level of acclaim, the fact of being in demand _per se_ helps drive demand. Therefore some people have trouble getting into a restaurant precisely because of what got them interested in it. I've seen this recurrently for

25 years. (Following the usual pattern, there were some earlier years when the French Laundry was not so crowded, but already displayed the same high principles, and with easy access, for people willing to notice it, or seek it out.)

It's a little like the frustrated situation of a wine consumer (bad-mannered, though that's not part of this story) who demanded of a wine merchant in my presence to have some of the good-value Chardonnays trumpeted by a major article in the Wine Sp*ctator magazine. The bewildered merchant tried to explain patiently that the customer could not get those Chardonnays -- no one could, not for the last six weeks, because of the very same article -- and the customer stormed off frustrated, maybe never even noticing that the very factor that sparked his demand also assured its frustration. (Which is a valuable lesson to learn, at least for wines, where there are many alternative sources of info that don't have such side effects.)

Admittedly, I reserved for no other reason than it's hard to get into and it's just another excuse for me to make my boyfriend (who loves food but not travel) to go on a trip to Spain w/ me.

After eating at Bistro V in Sebastopol CA, my dad and I agreed that it was the type of restaurant we were looking for- really well prepared and very flavorful food with attention to the smallest detail. I don't want fish bones with cotton candy, polyester chemistry experiments, and air filled balloons.

Salut/Hi Mark Lipton,

le/on Fri, 28 Oct 2005 01:42:55 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

I'm an _erstwhile_ chemist. Now alchemist.

Yes. There's a very interesting expose of the scientific background to meat cooking on the Beeb.

Quite apart from that, given that normally dangerous bacteria are found only on the outside of a piece of solid meat, it makes sense, if you're going to cook at very low temperatures for hours, to make sure that the outside is heated hot enough to kill any.

No. I don't think so.

Various reasons. Immersion in water will tend to remove flavours, that's how stock becomes tasty. Cooking temperature is significantly higher (water simmers at around 90C, I was cold roasting at 55C) Air transmits heat more gently than water (conduction vs convection, fan assisted). There was surface evaporation, though not much, which also ctended to give different results. I've had poached beef fillet, and thought it was good. This was mind boggling.

It's very hard to assess _how_ pleasurable a meal has been. Tom S will confirm that we found the food at TFL both extraordinary and also fascinating, because we had points of reference. If the food had been so far outside our experience as El Bulli seems to make , we'd have had nothing to judge it by, in effect. I have no idea HOW I could mark - say - Bocuse, or Bras in purely gustatory terms, with sufficient precision and reproducibility so that I could compare the pleasure recieved at the Fat Duck or El Bulli. Muy point in comparing Bocuse/Bras - but I could have mentioned any provincial michelin 3 star restaurant - with these serious contenders for #1 spot, is that despite the success they achieve in terms of waiting list and rapidity in booking up, their prices are of the same order as that of "ordinary" 3 star places, and cheaper than Bocuse.

"Ian Hoare" (self confessed alchemist) wrote ......

Ian,

Thank you very much for the BBC link - most interesting.

I have never cooked much roast beef - preferring lamb (actually, hogget is preferable - I think that we recently discussed this over a certain glass of Esk Valley Terraces, did we not?)

However, notwithstanding the fact that we are now entering late spring, early summer (and roasts will not be on the menu) I am determined to try Blumenthal's recipe.

What wine did you match with your dish? - a nice Burgundy would be my choice.

Ian Hoare wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

You are wrong, IMHO. I dined at El Bulli on September, 13th, 2005, and thought the quality of the ingredients was top notch, starting with the white truffle and following with the espardenyes and several other dishes.

At El Bulli, they open the booking period for a couple of days in mid- october. The restaurant only serves dinners from april to the end of september (more or less).

The menu at El Bulli costs 155 euros + VAT. And comprises about 25 dishes in 2005. Small dishes. Our bill, with a champagne, and two whites (one from the Loire, one from Burgundy) was a bit over 200 euros per person.

Best,

S.

At the risk of misrepresenting Ian's statement, it seems to me that the issue is not the quality of the ingredients, but rather the philosophy with which the chef approaches those ingredients. In other words, does the chef showcase the quality of the ingredients by letting them "speak for themselves" or does the chef value artifice above ingredients such that the manipulation of flavor, texture, etc. becomes the primary goal? If this is the issue, we see the same dynamic in the world of wine (a la "Mondovino") with some producers using biodynamic farming, indigenous yeasts and minimal intervention, whereas others use the latest technology such as spinning cone dehydration, reverse osmosis, microoxygenation, etc. In neither case does one side have a monopoly on quality ingredients, but how they treat those ingedients is where the distinction lies.

Mark Lipton