This week marks the end of El Bulli as we know it. Or at least as some people know it. For those of us who never went, there has been plenty to feast on: blow-by-blow descriptions of 40-course evenings; journalistic debates about whether Ferran Adrià’s kitchen performances are food or art, “molecular gastronomy” or “techno-emotional cuisine”; cookbooks; day-in-the-life books; descriptions of staff meals; presentations at Harvard.
Just in case you haven’t had enough, now there’s a movie, too. The Film Forum in New York City is celebrating the restaurant’s closing with a two week run: “El Bulli: Cooking in Progress,” a documentary by German filmmaker Gereon Wetzel (and his Catalan wife Anna Ginestí, who collaborated on the script). Fittingly, Wetzel says his approach was influenced by that great silent observer of prisons, schools, zoos, and “hospitals for the criminally insane,” Frederick Wiseman.
Two clips that tempt me show that Adrià does actually have ideas about how things taste. He doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who uses language to express himself, but he makes himself clear, recoiling nastily when he’s served up an experiment he doesn’t like. Later, he squirms with demanding delight when his minions hit on something that’s right.
Colman Andrews, the former editor of Saveur and one who pointed Americans to Catalan cuisine when Adrià was a mere dishwasher, is speaking at the August 5th showing. See you at the movies.
The Manhattan User’s Guide recently published its selection of Spain-oriented reference points of the moment in New York City, The Spanish Dossier. Their seductive advice for armchair travelers starts with the New York Botanical Garden’s faux Alhambra Palace, complete with date palms, pomegranates, and fountains, and ranges to Jaume Plensa’s sculpture in Madison Square Park. They like the one-woman show, “My Audition for Almodóvar,” and list the best places for Spanish food in New York City, too.
Lluís Plà, age 87, is the host of La Carbonera de Forallac, part country barbecue, part Burning Man Project, a wonderfully odd happening that runs 24/7 for nearly three weeks every October. A sign on the road connecting La Bisbal to Palafrugell, hardworking inland towns near Catalonia’s Costa Brava, points the way to the celebration. My friend Assumpta and I showed up mid-morning last Thursday during a lull in the action that allowed Sr. Plà to tell us about what appeared to be a woolly mammoth, alive and snoring steamily at his feet––the centerpiece of La Carbonera. (more…)
I believe the announcement about the new “Pequeño Museo del Escritor” in Madrid is meant to appeal to “writer fetishists,” but the news of its opening today went straight to my translator’s heart. (more…)
Now that I’ve told everyone not to go to Barcelona in August (same old reasons you’re not supposed to head for Paris or Rome: nobody’s here except everyone from elsewhere, and all those lovely shops that close), I see the Palau de la Música Catalana has a reason to be in town every single night this month. (more…)
Wait a minute, I remember that face from somewhere. Yes, he’s back, hanging on subway walls and lampposts in Barcelona, sometimes staring out alone, sometimes looming amongst other scoundrels like Berlusconi, Aznar, and Putin. W is now part of the Catalan socialists’ red-hot, retro-designed, European Parliament election campaign. The copy: “Poden treure’ ns de la crisi els que ens hi van ficar?” Do you really think the ones who got us into this mess are going to be the ones to get us out of it?
The New Yorkers I’ve shown around Barcelona always seem to connect easily to the energy of the Catalan capital. They get its contrasts, I think, of seediness and elegance, of old and new, and its palpable creative and mercantile drive. When they return to the Big Apple, they invariably find themselves jonesing for more. For a while, that big screenfull of lovesick images in Vicki Cristina Barcelona provided a fix. But now what? I might have suggested heading downtown to eavesdrop on vacationing Catalans as they ransack Century 21. But the Institut Ramon Llull, a Catalan language and culture organization, has come up with something far more tasteful: Catalan Days — an arts mashup spanning music, dance, literature, and food. April 15 through May 20 at venues around New York City.
As far as I’m concerned, you don’t need scientists prying into DNA samples to prove that Columbus was no gentleman from Verona. All you need is a day with Joan Santolaria, a geographer from Barcelona who captains the antique Catalan fishing vessel El Rafael out of the port of Palamós. The man possesses precisely the sly charm, curious intellect, quick step, and wildly curly red hair one would expect from a Catalan pirate of Columbus’s magnitude. (more…)
I love Barcelona in the winter. There’s plenty going on, and fewer hoards of visitors to share it all with. “Un cos sense limits — A Body without Limits,” through January 27th at Fundació Joan Miró is where I’d head if I were there right now. (more…)
