A dinner at El Bulli -- Part III: aperitifs on the terrace

Before being seated at the more formal dinner table, we started with a variety of aperitifs, served on the terrace.

Views of and from the terrace:

 

  

(the restaurant overlooks a small beach on the Costa Brava ... one way to arrive, I suppose, is to sail up in your yacht and take your dinghy to the beach.  It would certainly make for a safer trip than driving up on the narrow, windy road from Roses.) 

I will list the names of the courses (as shown on the printed menus that we were given at the end of the meal) in bold face -- these are exactly as they were printed on the menu, but sometimes we were given a slightly different name with the food.  In some cases, noted below, the printed menu does not exactly match what we got (as shown by the photos and/or our memories).

We started off with a bottle of Cava (I will list all of the wines, with full details, at the end of the meal ... after this point, I lost track of which bottle was opened when.)

cane: mojito - caipirinha

These were sticks of sugar cane, soaked in rum and mint.  We were told to suck on them, but not to eat the sugar cane.  (As far as we can remember, we did not get two different kinds; all we remember is the mojito version.)

handkerchief

 

This semi-transparent, rather crispy snack was made (apparently) from corn.  Some of the little nodules seemed a lot like corn nuts.   On the left side of the tray is a stack of thin pieces of paper, with which you could grab and break off pieces of the handkerchief without getting your fingers sticky.

coniferous

 

(on the left side of the photo): the small metal flower pot contains some real pine needles -- just for decor -- and some edible "pine needles" that were soft and not at all turpentiney.  I'm not sure whether these were constructed from other ingredients, or whether they were real pine needles that had been processed.

[Not listed on the printed menu]

This is a drink which was not listed on the printed menu -- I think they said it contains gin, yogurt, and honey, but my memory could be wrong.

spherical olives

 

These look like olives ... and taste like olives ... and are made from olives, I guess ... but they are basically just liquid,  barely held together by some magic.  You pick up one of the little spoons and slurp the "olive" off of it.

mimetics peanuts

 

Sorry, I didn't get a close-up picture; these are the little peanut-shaped things on the metal dish in the upper left of the photo.  Somewhat like the "olives", these look somewhat like peanuts (in their shells), and taste a lot like peanuts, but are only barely solid.

sesame cracker

 

Not exactly "crackers" since they were soft and airy.

vanilla chips

cherry umeboshi

 

My memory is a bit weak with these two.  As I recall, they were supposed to be eaten together.  The vanilla chips are transparent and somewhat sweet.  The cherries (as I recall) were real cherries, processed somehow to make them even more cherry-tasting.

After we finished these courses, we were invited inside to take our seats at the dining table.

[Humorous story: during our stay on the terrace, a party of eight happy people ascended the steps from the beach to the terrace to claim their reservation at El Bulli for that evening ... only to be told that they were a day early.  Better than being a day late! and they trouped off, still happy.]