Gastronomy's Promised Land

YOUR NEXT DESTINATION Barcelona gastronomy’s promised land TEXT BY UNA MEISTERE, WWW.ANOTHERTRAVELGUIDE.COM | PHOTOS BY AINARS ERGLIS 34 / AIRBALTIC.COM YOUR NEXT DESTINATION Barcelona is in some sense the ideal city. A city containing a little everything, it has beaches, hills, around 320 days of sun each year, its own variant of the Champs-Elysées – the Passageo Gracia – a charming medieval old town, the Barri Gotica, with its cosy taverns and small shops (and an enticing Mediterranean chaos). Then there’s the alternative district Raval with Pakistani immigrants, pickpockets and ladies of the evening, incongruously joined by art lovers flocking to MACBA, Barcelona’s museum of modern art. There’s Gaudì and there’s the latest symbol of the Catalonian capital – Torre Agbar, a steel and glass tower designed by the renowned French architect Jean Nouvel. This is an open- Bad luck, somebody has already minded, cosmopolitan, and intensely democratic taken the Anothertravelguide metropolis. It is also blessed with a human scale – brochure about Barcelona, but don’t worry, all the you can get almost everywhere on foot. Until last information is also available at March, you could even walk naked. Not long before ANOTHERTRAVELGUIDE.COM in cooperation with airBaltic. the last city council elections, however, competing with the socialists (who lost), the Catalan nationalists who won decided that some limitations were necessary – it’s no longer permissible to wander La Rambla, the principal tourist artery, naked, half- naked, or in a bathing suit. You are still allowed most any attire – meaning no full nudity – on the city’s beach, in nearby bars, and along the promenade. Even this minor insistence provoked protests, as if it were a major human rights violation. Though one can no longer strip down entirely, don’t worry – this is still a city open to most an idea, even if it’s crazy. One of the main fields for experimentation is that of gastronomy. The alma mater of the culinary arts Though a couple of weeks have passed since I returned from Barcelona, I still see a moving scene in my mind’s eye – two elderly ladies elegantly seated at a table covered with a white tablecloth, visibly savouring the arrival of their meal. More precisely, I picture them as part of a performance, imagining them at El Bulli – the legendary restaurant, a star of the contemporary culinary stage, that closed its doors last July. Wholly in thrall of the mythic and iconic, the ladies I envision would sit and smile whilst one plate was exchanged for another, the contents becoming an endless stream of surprises. Their hands folded solemnly in their laps, they would watch other hands deliver what is now no longer available – this would only be a scene from the exhibit “Ferran Adria and El Bulli – Risk, BALTIC OUTLOOK / APRIL 2012 / 35 YOUR NEXT DESTINATION The El Raval neighbourhood Santa Caterina Market (Mercat de Santa Caterina) Freedom, and Creativity”, on view at Palau Robert until February textures and forms, providing a unique experience and tastes that of next year. This show, which will travel to New York and London, had hitherto been utterly unknown. One of the most remarkable begins here in Barcelona; the virtuoso of culinary arts and the aspects of Adria’s alchemy is that few things taste like what they luminary of late 20th and early 21st century restaurants began life in look like, giving the adventure unexpected turns. If, in the past, Catalonia, and Barcelona is above all the capital of Catalan cuisine. eating would at best involve the stimulation of all five senses, then El Bulli was recognized as the best restaurant on earth for five El Bulli stimulated a sixth, drawing it out of another world. The years in a row, receiving pretty much every imaginable award and otherworldly aspect included guessing exactly what it was that renowned the world over as the most unusual culinary adventure you were eating, the uncertainty of it calling forth metaphors, irony, one could possibly enjoy. In some sense it is among the few fresh analogies, and even traces of childhood memories. Technology legends the globe has had to offer in our postmodern chaos – and poetry, a striving for stylistic purity, and total freedom within a El Bulli not only led to a global explosion in extraordinary cuisine; creative process were the hallmarks of El Bulli. it changed the relations mankind has to food. Ferran Adria, the The restaurant had only 15 tables and 54 seats. It was open for conductor of this explosive music of taste, is a Spanish genius of only half the year, from April to December. Tables were reserved gastronomy and one of the most influential people in the world a year in advance. There was no menu – El Bulli served tapas, of cooking. The exhibit at Palau Robert offers insight into both the providing about 35 unpredictable appetizers over the course of history of the El Bulli phenomenon as well as a grand tour of the four or five hours to every diner. world of the senses. The tour begins with a thoroughly romantic The exhibit allows you to watch the innumerable foods invented story – the love of a German doctor and a young Czech girl against at El Bulli in a seemingly endless series of small TV screens. You’d the background of the ruins of the Second World War. They met in need at least half a day to see all of the inventions come into being war-torn Berlin in a brief, intense romance. When he was captured in miniature. Adria was always famous for his perfectionism, and by the Soviets, she saved him. Then they were married. In the 1950s, most of the creations require absolute attention to the tiniest details they bought land on the Costa Brava for 10 000 marks, on a cliff of proportion in their ingredients and arrangement. One of the above Vala Montjoi, and opened a small beachfront bar, naming it most unusual things on exhibit is a glass table bearing countless after the local bulldog. The locals called it Hacienda El Bulli. Hans ceramic replicas of what went into the food, some composed upon was a gourmet, and in the 1960s he invited French chefs down to plates so that you can decipher every part of the composition. Spain – the small bar soon obtained its first Michelin star. When the Only the most stellar creations ever reached the diners’ tables. Adria marriage broke up, he moved back to Germany. Meanhilw, young gave lectures at Harvard and received a slew of honorary degrees, Ferran Adria had heard of the place from a ship’s cook whilst serving including a doctorate from the University of Barcelona. In 2007, in the military. At the time, he didn’t know the value of a Michelin Richard Hamilton – a loyal client of El Bulli – invited Adria to stage a star – though El Bulli would earn three once he came to run it. solo exhibition at the 12th Kassel dOCUMENTA. Adria took over El Bulli at age 25, in 1987. His goal was as simple The El Bulli exhibit’s adventure ends with a waltz – the farewell then as it is now – conjuring up culinary creations that are neither dance of the chefs at El Bulli. One can’t really call it the end, variations nor interpretations but something completely new, not however – in 2014, El Bulli will be reborn in another form, as a copied from old recipes or created ever before. In 1994, Adria came centre for culinary research and innovation. up with a concept that turned received ideas about cuisine on their heads – the priority was not particular dishes but techniques El Bulli for mere mortals and visions that would turn eating into a bright adventure. The In reality, El Bullihasn’t actually disappeared – it has simply taken fundamentals of Adria’s art involved intricate play with the physical on another life. The Adria brothers (Ferran’s brother Albert being and chemical properties of foods. Complicated manipulations, a genius in the realm of pastries) opening a new tapas bar in barely to be believed, resulted in a cuisine with unutterably different Barcelona last year. It’s called Tickets, and there’s also a cocktail 36 / AIRBALTIC.COM YOUR NEXT DESTINATION The W Hotel’s glass tower resembles a sail and has become a new symbol of Barcelona City panorama from the rooftop of the Hotel 1898 bar called 41, next to it. Once again they were pioneers – this is cultivated as carefully as that of El Bulli. Arriving is part of the time not only in gastronomy, but also in transforming an entire adventure – a crowd teems at the entrance before Tickets opens, neighbourhood. The Poble Sec district where Tickets is located is and while waiting you get a show through the windows, the team known for its proletarian past, stretching back into the 19th century. of twenty receiving its last instructions before the hour strikes. The The factory chimneys of La Canadenca still stand, and the area still interior and the waiters’ uniforms are in homage to the “Broadway” retains part of its industrial aura – but as with any such quarter, past of the neighbourhood. It’s like a carnival. The entryway is like once a place is affected by the alternative scene in a certain degree, that of a circus, with the maître d’hôtel, wearing a top hat, checking total transformation cannot be far behind. In the 1940s, the main reservations under a sign that says TICKETS in lights. Hams and artery in Poble Sec, Paral-lel Avenue, was known for its nightlife, strings of onions hand nearby, as they do in any classic tapas bar.

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