El Bulli was a Three Michelin star restaurant situated in
Spain and ran by chef Ferran Adrià, who is widely considered the most
innovative chef in the world (the restaurant sadly closed in 2011 after being
open since 1964). This film explores the process of ElBulli and how Ferran
Adrià and his team create and explore new dishes and foods.
I decided on watching El Bulli as I was intrigued as to how
the 'best restaurant in the world' plated their food and came up with their
plating ideas. I was especially intrigued due to the short seasons of the
restaurant- each year the restaurant closes for half a year, which is when
Adrià and his team to retire to his Barcelona cooking laboratory and recreate
their menu. For this year, the restaurants focus is water. The team explores
hundreds of ways in which they can use water for their 35 course menu which
will turn into a four hour long dining experience e.g. pressure cooking using
different types of vegetable waters and putting ice cubes in a fish dish (a lot
of this process is very experimental and there is no rules or boundaries to
create these dishes).
One of the most interesting aspects of this film to me was
the process in which they recorded their findings as it is very complex:
they record every findings good or bad both written and on a computer then
analyse them as well as also photographing everything with a DSLR camera. Once
coming to the ending of experimenting they put all of the dishes they tried up
on a wall with diagrams and the staff rate each dish out of 3 stars and whittle
it down to 35 dishes. In particular I enjoyed how the film showed how their
food is all about surprise, emotion, texture and colours not just taste. I also
liked how it showed the process of choosing plates for the dishes based on the
elements of the dish e.g. jagged and uneven if a food is crunchy. I found that
my favourite dishes were the needle tree, ice vinaigrette and the vanishing
ravioli.
Overall I would rate this film 3/5. I liked how it went behind the scenes of food plating and showed a side to it that a lot of people don't usually witness, however I do wish there was more explanation, as I believe that would of been more valuable to the research I needed to further my knowledge in this field.
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