Ferran Adria And Ridiculous Food Trend No. 137 - Digital Gastronomy

Reading Ferran Adria’s latest musings on the future of food, I’m left wondering whether he plans to invent the edible computer. Because I’ve read his BBC article about trying to “discover the genome of cuisine”, whatever that is, several times, and I’m still left wondering what the hell he is talking about.

The celebrity chef, who closed El Bulli, widely regarded as the best restaurant in the world, last year, says his next recipe involves a sprinkling of algorithms, a pinch of digital technology, an emulsion of raw data, and a few generous glugs of innovation to create La Bullipedia (catchy name) - an online, curated database that, he claims, “will one day contain every piece of gastronomic knowledge” and change the way people think about food forever.

Or at least that’s what I think he is saying, because when you actually cut through the jargon and nerd speak it all reads like a badly-written press release, typed by someone in the PR office who should have left half an hour ago.

“Cooking shares many characteristics with the internet - both are the sum of many parts and both enjoy the rare gift of limitless potential. Digital technology, when combined with innovation, plays a key role to unlocking this potential,” he writes.

“I firmly believe that as a chef if you only speak to other cooks you'll get bored. Bullipedia uses cooking as a language...” etc etc.

But hang on, haven’t we got this already? Isn’t every bit of culinary knowledge you are ever likely to never need already just a few clicks away on the internet? No, apparently, according to the Spanish chef.

“The internet on its own is limited because information can be found without the need to actually acquire knowledge. We want people to acquire knowledge through the navigation of information,” he says.

So by navigating for information, people will automatically understand it? Is that what he’s saying? Even James Martin?

He goes on: “We are taking fundamental aspects of digital technology such as algorithms and data and applying it to food. We are putting the combined knowledge of El Bulli online where people can adapt and modify it, and draw inspiration from some of the most innovative recipes ever created.

“Technology is now helping to provide future generations of creatives with the tools that they need to be innovative. It is acting as an enabler, connector and collaborator. I believe that it will now sit at the heart of gastronomy and be a fundamental driver of innovation in the industry.

“We have journeyed part of the way to discovering the genome of cuisine. Digital technology will allow us to take the final step.”

Blimey, I’m confused already. Can’t wait for the bandwagon jumping from celebrity chefs and other culinary media whores if Bullshitpedia does become a success. Gregg Wallace leering at MasterChef contestants while tapping his Rolex: “Now, how you doing your nanobytes?”

We’ve had local, seasonal, molecular gastronomy, small plates, big plates, sharing plates, heritage meats, foam, ingredient reversals, deconstruction, sous vide, freshly-foraged weeds, cup cakes, and now this - digital gastronomy.

Hasn’t cooking suffered enough already? Perhaps Adria should stick to advertising Pepsi? That’s an organisation that breeds innovation through collaboration and creative auditing by tracking the developments and inventions of other companies.

El Bulli's Not Quite Dead...

I've never quite understood the fuss on Twitter about El Bulli closing - from foodies with no chance of ever eating there.

When chef genius Ferran Adria announced he was closing the world's top restaurant for two years, there was near Princess Di hysteria.

The streets were strewn with pine-nut marshmallow tributes and a massive sea grape statue was hurriedly built in Hyde Park.

Then it got worse, much worse, with a report in the New York Times on Friday that El Bulli was actually closing its doors for good - in December 2011.

Epicureans the world over lamented even more. Some threw themselves from restaurants with panoramic views.

The paper claimed Adria, 47, had decided to close El Bulli permanently because, despite having 3,000 punters on its waiting list for a table, it was losing too much money.

It said Adrià and his partner, Juli Soler, had been losing half a million euro a year on the restaurant - and enough was enough.

News of the permanent closure was quickly followed up by the international media, with no apparent checks, and the scribes penned headlines like "El Bulli To Serve Its Last Brioche".

But now it appears the New York Times' story was all fecking rubbish - and a furious Adria has been hastily ringing round the Spanish papers, putting the story straight.

He said: "Nothing has changed from what I announced in January at Madrid Fusion, so El Bulli will close its doors in 2012 and 2013 and will open them in 2014."

Blimey. Breaking news!

What a storm in a (spherical lemon) tea cup.

Fat Duck: I'm Not An Oyster Shucker...

I got into the Fat Duck at 7.30am the next day and worked under a Canadian chef called Jon on the amuse bouche section – a tiny area of the kitchen no bigger than a coffin. He was tall with greying hair, and at 34 the oldest chef in the kitchen by a few years, and younger than me by seven.

I couldn’t have wished for a better teacher. Jon was intelligent, mild-mannered, thoughtful, and if he was stressed, he didn’t show it – even when he had to chuck my cucumber brunois garnish for the gazpacho dish.

“They have to be squares, not flattened,” he whispered. “Don’t worry we’ll do them later.”

As any cook will tell you, everything in a kitchen is overheard, or at least everything you don’t want to be overheard is overheard, and a few seconds later Jocky came over and pretended to be busy at the sink. He gleefully examined my ham-fisted work, poking the little cubes with a disrespectful finger, and smirking at his adoring pastry posse.

Our section was responsible for four of the 14 courses on the tasting menu:

:: Oyster in passion fruit jelly with horseradish cream and lavender.
:: Pommery grain mustard ice cream with red cabbage gazpacho.
:: Jelly of quail with langoustine cream and parfait of foie gras.
:: Sardine on toast sorbet with ballotine of mackerel ‘invertebrate’ and marinated daikon.
:: We also had one a la carte starter to take care of: radish ravioli of oyster with goat’s cheese and truffle, and rissole of fromage de tete.

My first job was opening the oysters. They were gnarled, flat native types from Colchester and refused to give up their meat easily. I thought it would be a breeze, and hoped I might be of some use. But any delusions of being a skilled oyster-shucker were soon dashed.

Normally I’d just stick the knife into the hinge, wiggle away, and with a flick of the wrist pop them open. But I hadn’t encountered brutes like these before. I began to wonder whether they picked the native type because of their expense (89p each wholesale), their gastronomic quality - or just because they were fucking difficult to open.

There is a quote by Saki, which goes something like: “There’s nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.” But what the hell did he know?

I prised and chipped away – it was like trying to engrave a gravestone with a lolly stick. After an hour, I had stab wounds in my left palm where the blade had sprung free. On my right, there were three ugly blisters, exposing large circles of red flesh.

Sea water and shell shrapnel were splattered over my board, and I had to wrap my hands in blue tissue paper to cushion the wounds. At least sea water was good for cuts, I thought. But I must have looked a complete twat standing there with my hands bound up like a blue mummy.

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...