A Day at elBulli, Cookbook of the Day

.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.

It's said that 2,000,000 requests a year come in for just 8000 seats at Ferran Adrià's Spanish temple of molecular gastronomy. The closest many of us will come is grazing through this brand new 528 page play-by-play, A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià. It's not so much the common parlance's "food porn" as it is a post-millennial culinary junkie's process orgy, documenting each staff motion and motivation, every microgram of alginate and liquid nitrogen, and fetishistically breaking down quantity and custom and customer/server semiotics.

The proverbial sausage has never been so obsessively, graphically made for public consumption, and rarely has it been so deliciously presented. There are pleasing pictures and recipes, to be sure (Hazelnut praline air, anyone? Perhaps some Garrapi-nitro pine nuts?), but sans easy access to an Isomalt-R-Us, it's a fever-dream cookbook. It is, however, a deeply heartening food-ifesto.

"There are four levels on which a guest at a restaurant can experience pleasure. First, there is the pleasure of satisfying hunger; second, there is the pleasure experienced through the senses; third, there is the emotional pleasure created by care and generosity with which a guest is treated, the company around the table, the guest's own mood and expectations. Many high-end restaurants create pleasure on these three levels.

Finally, there is a different kind of pleasure: the intellectual stimulation that can be derived from appreciating irony, a sense of humour, decontextualization or cultural references in a dish. This is referred to at elBulli as the 'sixth sense'. When a new dish is created, the aim is that the guest will enjoy it on all four levels and with all six senses, and experience all the pleasures that the act of eating can provide."

A day and a half ago, I had the privilege of sampling but a morsel or two of Chef Adrià's cuisine (crafted by Chef José Andrés). Were they the most delicious things I'd ever placed on my tongue? No - they were stripped of a greater meal context and the rhythm of his home kitchen, but 36 hours later, I am still clearly recalling those several bites. A colleague I encountered at the event noted that "In the end, you're just eating olive oil," which is arguably the case, indeed, but exactly how I came to be eating olive oil is what's still running on endless replay. Generally, it's lubrication and a heat conduit for any number of items I'll consume in a day -- a dressing, a saute, a condiment. It's an essential, but unsung player. In Chef Adrià's presentation, it's a precious fluid, preserved in an alginate droplet with a tasteful adornment of salt crystals. One must destroy this perfect, fragile-stemmed jewel in order to consume its contents. Never have I so craved -- or contemplated -- olive oil. Rarely has it been so rewarding.

Buy A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià


*I made up that stat.