EL BULLI: COOKING IN PROCESS
Directed by Gereon Wetzel
Released by Alive Mind Cinema
Spanish with English subtitles
Germany. 108 min. Not Rated
 

El Bulli: Cooking in Progress pulls back the curtain behind the three-star Michelin restaurant El Bulli to reveal creator Ferran Adrià and his teeming staff of wizard chefs at work on the sense-bending art-show-meets-science project that is their menu. Generally regarded as the most influential in the world, the Spanish restaurant will be closing July 30th  (to be transformed into a “think tank for creative culture and gastronomy”), which means unless yours was one of the two million annual reservation requests to gain you entry into this 50-seat Costa Brava hideaway, this film will be as close as you get to the legendary 30 course dining experience.

While the upcoming closing is permanent, the restaurant staff is used to temporarily moving the operation every winter to a test kitchen in Barcelona. Here, the next season’s menu is methodically compiled from a flurry of molecular-level experiments, each photographed, recorded, and, if worthy, spooned into Adrià’s mouth for appraisal.

In fact, at this point in the year, or perhaps in his career, Adrià’s evidently incomparable vision seems to be his main contribution to the cooking process. While his head chefs boil, fry, roast, freeze-dry, and vacuumize to conjure fantastical dishes, like mushroom juice or disappearing ravioli (where the pasta vanishes to reveal the filling), Adrià waltzes in and out of the kitchen, pulling away from his cell phone just long enough to deem something lackluster or nod his head in approval. His chefs eagerly watch for the reaction, returning to the kitchen deflated or emboldened, and so the magic continues.

The documentary paints Adrià as a staid Willy Wonka, whose passion for food is calculating and not primarily devoted to taste. In fact, he preaches that taste is not as important as creativity, justifying a dish of freeze-dried peppermint and ice shavings more for its power to bewilder than to satisfy.

After the long test-kitchen procedural, the film moves back to the restaurant as Adrià oversees 35 new cooks for opening day. Perhaps more impressive is how easily the members of his kitchen brigade recreate each dish, one highly precise technique after another. The results, tantalizingly photographed for the El Bulli catalogue and presented only at the end of the film, display a menu that is as much science and art as it is anything in the realm of food, taste, or culinary satisfaction. Those looking for luscious food scenes will be disappointed, but the backstage experience of a mastermind at work is well worth a viewing. This feast is for the eyes, and the imagination. Yana Litovsky
July 29, 2011