El Bulli Restaurant, Montjoi Spain

El Bulli, a seaside restaurant in Montjoi Spain, has been so fabulously sought-after for so long you'd assume it would have already become somewhat "passé" to the "in" crowd, those select "few" who choose to be pleasantly bored by the wonderment of an intrinsic feast. Yet every year it gets far more difficult to book a table without a high profile publicist and an entourage of A-list actors— a problem made even more difficult by the fact that this exquisite "jewel" of a dining fantasy is only open from April to October.

This year, about 500,000 hopefuls tried for a mere 8,000 seats. Why all of the to-do? Chef Ferran Adriá is perhaps the most important motivational force in gourmet food in the 21st century. After a classical culinary upbringing, he now actually shatters more rules than he has become skilled at following, harnessing new technology and old-fashioned showmanship. A "typical" meal is far removed from conventional and consists of 30 courses of reflective revelation, and even a few pleasantly delightful shocks. There could easily be a redefined margarita, black olive cup cakes, seaweed croquante, freeze-dried foie gras, parmesan "marshmallows", "sniff and crack" ceps, corn and guacamole cannoli, or cauliflower couscous in the midst of the unexpected.

A visit to El Bulli restaurant requires a willingness to suspend the reality that eating is merely a basic fundamental part of life, something we do in order to survive. There is little about a meal here that bears any relationship to notions of merely eating for the “functionality of living. It’s an experience that will give you sensual and intellectual pleasure, as far removed from eating to live as following a set of instructions on how to program a DVD recorder. The connection is there but it’s not immediately obvious.

In a world where many people struggle to get the calories they need just to survive, it is a luxury to eat just for the pleasure of a series of tantalizing tastes, where the satisfaction of hunger doesn’t seem to have any part in the motivation for preparing and offering the meal. Once you accept all of this as the "El Bulli philosophy of dining" it doesn’t take long to move with the "flow" of delightful aromas because from the moment you arrive it’s so beguiling. You are inevitably in for a memorable experience - one that the restaurant staff appears to enjoy almost as much as those who dine at this palatable delight.

At El Bulli restaurant if you choose the degustation menu, and on a first visit (almost everyone does), you’ll experience a surfeit of different tastes, each one more memorable and some beyond anything you can delineate. Take up the suggestion to begin your meal on the terrace overlooking a piercingly blue, sheltered bay. You will be offered a welcome, a refreshing ‘cocktail’ of orange juice and grenadine with a tiny ball of carrot sorbet and then five ‘cracklings’, including fish skin, thin shreds of pizza dough, and pine nuts with caramelized beetroot. This collection is followed by two jellies. One is a spoon of apple jelly drizzled with a highly concentrated balsamic vinegar— a rich, intense flavor balanced by the lightness of the jelly; the other strawberries and Campari. The next dish in El Bulli’s version of tapas, a cornet of creamy quail egg yolks topped with salmon caviar. Served perched in a bowl of sesame seeds, these stick to the outside of the cone. Its twin, for many dishes are served quite deliberately in brackets, is a cold tempura, coating grape, orange and salmon caviar. The meal is a progression of over eleven courses. In all, you’ll dine on twenty-five different dishes. Every element of El Bulli restaurant appears purposely designed, not least being the streamlined and beautiful kitchen, where each diminutive masterpiece is constructed, and in which Chef Ferran Adriá beams rather knowingly with pride... and rightfully so!