Ferran Adría may not be a familiar name to you unless you are an international foodie but if you google “elbullí lab” you will see what Ferran Adría and his brother, Albert, are all about today. Ferran is the originator of “foam” that now shows up on many haute cuisine tables. Some of you may remember Ferran’s 3-Michelin star restaurant, El Bullí restaurant. After several years with 3 stars, he closed his place, saying that it’s too stressful to continually try to outdo himself creatively. After two years of a sabbatical, he started his creative elbullí lab and Albert opened new restaurants in Barcelona. Bodega 1900 is the only one we could get into when we were there. It is a Catalan tapas restaurant and hasn’t been “discovered” yet so we were able to get a reservation. Albert’s other restaurants need 1-2 months lead time for a reservation. One is a Mexican restaurant, Hoja Santa, another with Peruvian-Japanese cuisine is his Michelin 1-star Pakta and then there is another Michelin 1-star Tickets Bar with 17 tables with a 41-course prix fix ($275pp) and 41º Experience ….soo many restaurants, so little time. We were only in Barcelona for 3 days….and now have to return! There are 22 restaurants with one or two Michelin stars...let's see, that a 3-week food fest!
One of the Adria’s signature dishes is a “liquid olive” that is like a magical transportational experience…it looks like a yellow green quail egg (see photo) and then you take your bite or I should say slide it into your mouth and it burst into a liquid olive. This photo shows our liquid olives being served with house made potato chips and these wonderful fried seaweed and sesame curls. If you want to see how the liquid olives are made, click HERE. What they did at Bodega 1900, at least for us since we don’t read Catalan, is continuously bring out tapas that they select for you until you say stop. The secret is to go there with 4 or more people (like dim sum) so you don’t fill up on the initial tapas. Alas with just the two of us, we did our best but didn’t get too far.
They serve a bread that is so crispy that it shatters but is soaked in tomato juice and Spanish olive oil, onto which you choose to place a paper thin slice of beef or Serrano ham. Simply deeee-vine! I’ve played around with replicating the bread and the tomato juice and am getting close but I am sure they make their own bread to their specifications that creates this simple yet divine dish.
They brought out a playful shrimp hotdog that I didn’t care for as much as his other dishes.
I really like the fried eggplant fries and could have eaten another plate of them..which they are happy to do, BTW, but we wanted to see what else was coming out of the kitchen so we moved on.
One of Bill’s favorite dishes was a clam stew filled with beans and tomatoes….the photo says it all…homey, filling and so very fresh and savory.
We asked for their uni dish and was brought the entire sea urchin. The uni was dark purple, almost black, instead of the bright orange uni that we get at Japanese markets. We were told that this is the male sea urchin and were given tiny spoons to scoop out the small veins of uni. The flavors were stronger and had a harder consistency than the female uni. They were truly small veins of uni and didn’t even fill our tiny spoons. I think I like the female uni better!
They cure their own meats so to replicate their beef or ham slices would be impossible but you can get pretty close using commercially made cured meats..if you can find any. The Serrano ham is easy but I have no clue where to find the cured beef.
We also had their version of shrimp cocktails and a cheese plate (Manchego and Vacherín) with little bread sticks.
Our desserts were very different. I opted to try a typical Catalan dessert that uses sweet potato with an orange sorbet and Bill selected a lemon sorbet that was served in a frozen lemon rind. His was definitely the better dessert and even looks prettier. Mine was like a sweet potato creme brûlée but I didn’t like the sweet potato flavor as much as I thought I would. I was imagining a sweet potato pie kind of pudding but it didn’t taste like that. It was much earthier and had a strange consistency that wasn’t really a pudding nor was it a custard.
We ate at another tapas restaurant (Serviseria Catalana) that was also a delightful treat but the attention to detail that the Adría brothers put into their food was missing. I got to try their version of Papas Bravas and Catalan Shrimp, two of my favorite tapas dishes!
We also ate paella on another night but split an order because after 10 days of cruising, we were trying not to “roll” out of Spain. It was good but not memorable…it was one of those “shot in the dark” restaurants that you choose because you’re tired and it was close by.
We are now back home and I’m back in the kitchen, playing around with that crispy baguette thing. If I get it figured out, I’ll bring it to our Holiday Buffet!
Cook on!
