From the inception of new recipes, through experimentation and creation, El Bulli: Cooking In Progress gives audiences the chance to experience the process behind the wide tapestry of cuisine developed each year at El Bulli by master chef Ferran Adria.
El Bulli has been called the best restaurant in the world and Ferran Adrià, its creator, deemed a brilliant innovator, the father of molecular gastronomy, or sometimes just a crazy chef. The restaurant, located outside of Barcelona, closes each year for 6 months, as Adrià and staff sequester themselves to concentrate on creating the new culinary wonders that will become their next 30-course menu. (The restaurant accommodates only 50 for dinner, despite two million annual requests for reservations.) This is cooking as avant-garde art: a cocktail composed of hazelnut oil, salt, and water or a dessert of freezedried peppermint and ice shavings. Surrounded by bizarre hi-tech equipment, elaborate containers, chopping blocks and knives, they experiment with making mushroom juice and sweet potato meringue. Gereon Wetzel’s elegant, observational documentary captures the razor-sharp, science-fiction sensibility at work. Adrià exclaims: “The more bewilderment, the better.”
