The world according to Ferran Adria

A Day at elBulli: an insight into the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adria is one of those intimidating tomes you don’t want to carry around for too long in your bag. The damn thing feels like it weighs about 10kgs! The folks at Phaidon have gone all out in producing a spectacular and aesthetically interesting book on the culinary maestro. The book is broken up into a kind of a diarised-day-in-the-life of elBulli, down to five minute intervals in the day. The day starts at 6:05am and finishes at 2am. A Day at elBulli charts Adria’s creative processes and development stages of his dishes. The book is visually appealing and kept interesting with the interspersion of smaller inserts of text and photography. Staff are even named and photographed. It even goes as far as describing Adria’s criteria for choosing his produce and the provenance of produce. Foodies who want to know how a successful restaurant runs its reservations systems will be fascinated to discover that elBulli receives 2 million requests each year; and only 8000 places are ever released. The reservations manager explains how a complicated preferential system for new and old customers, considerations for diners who will travel around the world to eat at this gastronomic temple. Having said that there is no prejudice against local Spanish diners either, a percentage of places is set aside for the locals who want to dine at the temple. Just reading about the amount of emails and phone calls they receive about reservations boggles the mind.

The photographs of Adria, his brother, Albert and their staff in the kitchen and dining rooms feel authentic and impromptu. A lot of the shots look untouched and everybody looks natural, like no camera was present. Foodies with a penchant for food porn will no less find this, extremely pleasurable! Come closer for intimate shots of the making of pistachio freeze-dried foam, ogle at the caramelisation method of encasing pumpkin seed oil in an edible caramel vessel. The shots are amazing and the experimental techniques used in this high-tech kitchen are even more amazing. There are even shots of several of the lucky 8000 guests who have managed to score a place. Extremely happy people embarking on a culinary once-in-a-lifetime adventure for the night – lucky bastards! For those who have a kitchen laboratory at home and a liquid nitro tank on hand, there are recipes to be read very thoroughly and made. For those of us who don’t have access to a kitchen laboratory, or 200 pounds to spare, or incredibly lucky to score a reservation – this is probably the next best thing to being there. A Day at elBulli is 527 pages of pure indulgence and a good insight into what makes Ferran Adria tick.