Achieving the level of culinary technicality that some chefs demonstrate is beyond many people’s skill and kitchen but Somerset House’s retrospective of the history and revolutionary cooking tactics at Catalan restaurant elBulli proves that from humble beginnings incredible achievements happen.
At first touching and then mind-blowing the exhibition reveals how, with creativity and unprecedented talent, a beach-side grill house can become a paradigm of haute cuisine earning three Michelin stars.
Food is sculpted in plasticine to perfect the arrangement and portions on the plate, household drills are employed to make contraptions to spin sugar and space-age mechanisms create emulsions, infusions and astonishing taste and texture combinations.
All of these developments were documented meticulously by the chefs, first in creativity journals and later on film. The multimedia span of the exhibit, involving photography, laid-out tables, video, illustrations and even a full musical score successful delivers a picture of El Bulli, but with one thing missing of course, the food.
Details:
elBulli: Ferran Adrià and the Art of Food
Date: 5 July–29 September 2013
Venue: Somerset House Embankment Galleries West, South Wing, Strand, London WC2R 1LA
www.somersethouse.org.uk
Gallery Hours: daily 10am-6pm (last entry 5.15pm), Thursdays 10am-9pm (last entry 8.15pm)
Entry: £10 (£8 concessions), £5 on Mondays (exc. Bank Holidays)
Image ‘The Soup’ © courtesy of Francesc Guillamet.
