El Bulli: Cooking in Progress | Film review

For 25 years, Ferran Adrià helmed the kitchen of a seaside restaurant in Roses, Spain. Food obsessives know all about this, because Adrià eventually became the father of a science-driven brand of cuisine that’s now typically known as molecular gastronomy. His restaurant, elBulli, became the temple where molecular fans worshipped.

Even those obsessives have something to gain from watching this documentary, in which German filmmaker Gereon Wetzel follows Adrià and his elBulli chefs during an annual six-month period when the restaurant is closed. Captured in detail is the intricate—so intricate it’s a little insane—process the chefs go through to develop new dishes, many of which we don’t see in final form until the last moments of the film. At times the kitchen the chefs work in resembles a laboratory, with dehydrators, vacuums and whatnot. But the real takeaway is Adrià’s obsession with his food’s emotional core. His chefs test and test, and Adrià tastes and tastes, but he isn’t ever satisfied until what he’s seen/smelled/tasted has surprised him.

Wetzel’s approach in some ways mirrors the chefs’; he gets consumed in the details, sometimes to frustrating effect. The payoff is a sense of relief, of surprising satisfaction, when we finally see the chefs get it right. Whether this compares to actually eating at elBulli few will ever know. The restaurant closed for good earlier this year.