Review: El Bulli: Cooking in Progress

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Opening with a headshot of chef Ferran Adrià sampling a luminescent fish popsicle in the dark, El Bulli: Cooking in Progress immediately lets you know this isn't just another food documentary. The movie returns to Austin after screening at SXSW this year for a run at Violet Crown Cinema.

A pioneer in the molecular gastronomy movement, Adrià is a controversial chef whose legend is based on the extreme re-imagining and deconstruction of food both common and exotic, and whose restaurant was considered the best in the world. While some dishes are as visually sensual as a Georgia O'Keefe painting, some are more remiscent of an Edward Weston photograph, transcending the commonplace. What looks like a peanut in the shell may actually be completely edible, with a salty "shell" enveloping a liquid peanut, or a mojito cocktail contained within sugarcane.

At the beginning of the film, Adrià and his staff are packing up the restaurant at the end of its typical six-month season. But Adrià and his three head chefs are not off for a vacation; instead they head to Barcelona and the laboratory where they meticulously document their experiments to create new dishes. Starting with something as simple as the lowly sweet potato, the chefs painstakingly try different methods to bring out the flavor in a juice form, which will become a meringue.

What ends up on the guests' plates at El Bulli may seem like the creations of a mad scientist, but every experiment is meticulously documented to achieve the perfect combination of textures, fragrance and appearance as well as taste. Adrià constantly refers to "magical" and "emotional" and rejects the commonplace for the startling, as "bewildered is best."

Like molecular gastronomy itself, El Bulli: Cooking in Progress is is not for everyone; this is not comfort food, and there is nothing meant to be reassuring in the dishes they serve. The film provides no explanation about what Adrià and his team do until late in the movie, and even then it's only glimpses into his genius. Don't expect to come away from the documentary understanding his techniques. And at times director Gereon Wetzel relies too heavily on cinéma vérité, especially when he lingers over papers with scribbled notes in Spanish.

With three Michelin stars, Adrià has secured his place in culinary history, but as El Bulli demonstrates, he didn't earn his reputation by working alone. He leads a team of over 40 chefs to deliver 35 dishes a night with the precision of a general leading an empire's invading army. Each night that we see El Bulli open, 35 dishes are sent to each table, and every one is designed to create a transcendental dining experience, with no detail overlooked. But El Bulli: Cooking in Progress is not a biography in any sense. The focus is on the process, with only teasing glimpses into the man behind the legend.

If El Bulli makes you want to book a trip to Spain to eat at what was considered the best restaurant in the world, it's too late. The avant garde restaurant officially closed its doors in July after running at a loss for over a decade. However, Adrià plans to reopen the location in 2014 as a creativity culinary academy.

While it may be too late to experience El Bulli in person, Wetzel has captured the paradox of food porn and excruciating research that goes into some very imaginative food.

[For a slightly different viewpoint on El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, read Jette's review from SXSW 2011.]