All of us, at some point, would have fine-dined or rough-dined at some esteemed establishment and declared it, fist banging on table and cutlery clanking, "the best".  Well, The Sunday Times (sunday edition of The Times, a UK daily), publishes an authoritative guide to the World's Top 50 Restaurants in February each year.  It is so authoritative that when people (ok, the Brits at least) speak of the world's number X restaurant, it is usually in reference to this guide.  But then for our case-study, this restaurant was also voted the best restaurant by the prestigious Restaurant magazine in 2002, 2006 and 2007.

Ok, blah blah humbug,  I know and you know that you wanna know what is the world's number restaurant? Well, *clanking pots and pans* It is El Bulli in Spain.  And noo, it doesn't mean 'The bully' in Spanish.  "Bulli" is actually the name of a breed of French bulldogs reared by the very first pioneers of the restaurant.  El Bulli is located near Girona, north-east Spain.  The restaurant today is headed by Ferran Adria who has (surprise, surprise) been called the world's greatest chef and a culinary genius.

Thr driving philosopy behind El Bulli is that of fun and adventurous food - freeze-dried foie gras, cucumber gin tonic, parmesan "air", curry-flavoured zucchini seed risotto.  El Bulli is part of the school of Molecular Gatronomy.  Since he started doing it in the 1980s, I believe he may one of the pionners of such cooking.  This school believes in using exact science and applying it to cooking e.g. using vacuums or pure nitrogen to play around with the texture and tastes of food.  Incidently, former World No. 1 and no World No. 2 restaurant, The Fat Duck, run by Heston Blumenthal in England is also part of this school.

Arguably, Adria is famous for two cooking techniques.  Firstly, the more popular one is culinary foam where sweet or savoury natural flavours (e.g. vanilla or even seafood) are mixed with a natural gelling agent.  Then the whole thing is put into a canister with an attached bottle of nitrous oxide (laughing gas!) or more commonly, carbon dioxide.  The gas forces out the foam like-stuff.  Rather nifty don't you think? But not exactly suitable for a lunchbox..  Any Iron Chef fan or a frequenter of fine-dining establishments would have encountered this (When I visited Petrus, they had an orange and carrot foam).  Secondly, Adria is famous for his esferificación technique where liquids are wrapped in a thing alginate casing (like those mouth freshener films).  So when it goes into your mouth, it burts open and all the flavours erupt. 

El Bulli has no fixed menu and the tasting menu changes everyday.  The restaurant is only open from May until September.  (The rest of the year is spent experimenting with food).  Competition for reservation is vicious in this 15-table restaurant - more than half a miilion people apply for 8,000 covers.  When reservations open in mid-October, it is usually completed within a week.  The tasting menu costs about 170 euros excluding wine, water and coffee.  Maybe another 50-80 euros for that?  It goes almost without saying that El Bulli is a three-starred michelin restaurant which means top-class, absolutely top-class, service, atmosphere, food and wine selection.

Great, so now, I've practically told you where to head for the next big vacation.  Enjoy Barcelona, enjoy the med ocean, and then go and enjoy El Bulli.  (make sure you plan it for 2008-9!).  But then again, sometimes, the simple pleasuers of an Old Chang Kee curry puff or a simple Hor Fun (literally: river noodles, flat rice noodles) on a rainy weekday evening will benefit your soul more than tartare of cuttlefish or crispy rabbit ears.

See here for the World's Top 50 Rsstaurants by The Times and of course, see some pictures!