Mollusc jelly and frozen foie gras: farewell El Bulli

El Bulli, the restaurant that has been voted the best in the world a record five times, is to serve its last ever meal this Sunday, after nearly 50 years of challenging the tastebuds and preconceptions of foodies.
 
Although it opened in 1964, the restaurant only really started to make its mark with the appointment of Ferran Adria as head chef in 1987. Within 10 years, El Bulli had added two Michelin stars to its first, joining only six other Spanish restaurants in the exclusive global three-star club.
 
Over the years, critics from across the world have made the arduous journey through the hills of Catalonia to reach Adria's purposefully isolated lair of molecular gastronomy. Only a few have come away disappointed, with some accusing the 40-strong team of relying on the shock factor of their creations.
 
But for most, words seem barely adequate to describe the 'meal', which consists of dozens of bite-sized courses accompanied by instructions on how they should be eaten.
 
For those who haven't yet made the culinary pilgrimage, however, words will just have to be enough.
 
Writing in the Observer, Michael Paterniti talks of, "a gelatin with rare molluscs trapped inside (the cool, sweet jelly parting for salty pieces of the sea, primordial and transcendent at once) [and] tagliatelle carbonara (chicken consomme solidified and cut into thin, coppery pasta-like strands that, once glimmering on the tongue, dissolved back into consomme that poured down the throat)."
 
"Then came paquetitos de sepia y coco al jengibre," wrote Gerry Dawes in New York's Food Arts magazine. "Little ravioli-type packets made from thin slices of squid and filled with a coconut/ginger/soy sauce. They're eaten whole so they can burst in the mouth."
 
The Sunday Times's AA Gill, notoriously hard to please, wrote: "A dish of tagliatelle that turned out to be frozen shavings of foie gras in the mouth was a heavenly surprise, and an olive that was a balloon of agar jelly full of olive oil made me laugh out loud".
 
And the Willy Wonka approach to dining doesn't stop at food. "It begins with a glistening, olive-coloured sphere, wobbling on a spoon as you raise it toward your lips, exploding in the mouth to unleash a bath of intense olive-flavoured liquid," wrote Jay McInerney in Vanity Fair. "Then, as the waiter has instructed, you lift the silver atomizer to your mouth and spray the gin-and-vermouth mixture on your tongue." In other words, a martini.
 
The restaurant is scheduled to reopen in 2014 as a creative centre whose aim is to be "a think-tank for creative cuisine and gastronomy", leaving the foodie community hoping that it won’t be long until another Adria is spawned. ·