Archive for August, 2009

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El Bulli chapter 4: the sweetest things

Relief, when it arrives at course 30, is in the form of a frozen pond. Just when I thought I could physically consume no more I’m faced with a shimmery lake of weakly flavoured ice. It’s been caught in a thin meniscus across the mouth of a bowl. Over the pond raw sugar and a […]

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El Bulli chapter 3: the main event

Someone very wise once said; life is a marathon, not a sprint. The key being it’s important to pace yourself. It’s not a bad principle to take with you to El Bulli. The emotional ‘incident’ with the coconut sponge came at course nine, of 35. We realise now that it’s time to settle in and […]

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El Bulli chapter 2: the experience begins

It starts with a cocktail on the terrace. You would be hard pressed to conjure a more magical location to commence a journey to the food equivalent of Never Never land. At 8.30 pm the Costa Brava sun is surprisingly soothing- by now its stick and sting have slipped away. On the terrace the white […]

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El Bulli chapter 1; the anticipation

It started with an email. Flushed with a torrent of optimism, for the third year running The Hungry One typed out the request, Babel fished it to both Catalan and Spanish and sent it into the ether. Actually it started years before that, with a dessert. A boy who loved to surf and a girl […]

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Bras

If flowers say I’m sorry and sweets say I love you, anyone in the dog-house would be well pressed to schedule a visit to Bras. The Hungry One is rarely in trouble, so our nine hour detour to Michel and Sebastien Bras’ famed place in Laguiole can only be explained as another step in our […]