Review: The Sorcerer’s Apprentices
How famous and important a restaurant is El Bulli? When preparing for this assignment I typed “el b” into a google search field and El Bulli was the first thing that came up. That’s impressive. If you have dining there on your bucket list but you don’t yet have a reservation then you need to replace it with something else because in just over two months the most famous restaurant in the world is closing it’s doors.
From the El Bulli web site:
First of all we would like to thank everybody who has shown an interest in visiting us to enjoy the El Bulli experience during these fifty years as a restaurant. Also to all the professionals who have been part of the team and helped make it happen.
On July 30th 2011 El Bulli will have completed its journey as a restaurant. We will transform into a creativity center, opening in 2014. Its main objective is to be a think-tank for creative cuisine and gastronomy and will managed by a private foundation.
In 2009 Lisa Abend, Time magazine’s Spain correspondent for the past several years, spent an entire season in the kitchen of the little restaurant in Roses, Spain. She was the proverbial fly on the wall as a staff of 40 sum odd cooks developed the 31 course extravaganza that has made Ferran Adrià the most famous and revered chef on the planet. The result was the newly released The Sorcerer’s Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adrià’s elBulli.
She watched as a team of 32 stagiaires (apprentice chefs who work for no pay) invest six months of their lives just for the invaluable line on their resume, “worked for Ferran Adrià at El Bulli.” It is the culinary equivalent of walking on the moon.
What Abend captures extremely well are the emotions of the stagiaires as they discover that their tenure in Roses is nothing like they imagined. The El Bulli kitchen is unlike any they will work in the rest of their careers. At some point or another every single one of them will be vastly disappointed in the experience and rewarded by it.
Some will get angry. Some will be frustrated. Some will get laid. All of them, at one time or another will be bored. The most exciting dining experience known to man is quite possibly the most boring kitchen a chef could work in. That is but one of the ironies revealed in Abend’s book.
The author introduces the reader to many of the stagiaires who are gleaned each year from thousands of applicants. Another testament to the legend of Adrià, that each year 3000 chefs from around the world volunteer to work for him for free for six months. Their only compensation is sharing a small room with their co-workers and one meal a day.
If you are looking for the scandalous tales made famous in chef memoirs like Marco Pierre White’s The Devil in the Kitchen or Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential you’ll be disappointed. But that does not mean the book is devoid of scandalous revelations.
For all of Adrià’s unquestionable creativity and skill and vision and genius and artistry he is apparently not a very good businessman. With 32 chefs working for free, a large number of servers who also work with out pay and an average cost of $350 a head for dinner at a restaurant with a reservations wait list years long, El Bulli is not exactly a profitable endeavor.
If you are a foodie or a chef you will find this book engaging and eye opening. It is well written by an author who smiths words that are eloquently lucid. It is a must read. And I’m not the only one who thinks so either:
“Abend is successful in conveying the intense pressure felt by the young stagiaires, while providing insight into Ferran Adria’s commanding but beneficent rule over his well-oiled machine of a kitchen.” Leah Douglas, SeriousEats.com.
It’s a fascinating glimpse into a culinary rite of passage, and the incomparable genius behind it.” Dan Barber, chef/owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns.
“This is a worthy addition to the literature of the professional kitchen and a pleasure to read.” Michael Ruhlman, author of Ratio and The Making of a Chef.
Abend and I have Tweeted back and forth since I received my review copy and I have told her that she is the envy of every food writer in the world. She assured me that is not the first time she has heard that and that the experience was a once in a life time event.
Color me green.
My Summer Reading List: Heat
Originally posted on July 08, 2009.
Last time on My Summer Reading List, I reviewed Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Cheflebrity Anthony Bourdain. Beyond all of the hype Kitchen Confidential is simply a book about a chef who becomes a writer. This time around I am reviewing Heat by Bill Buford. All awards and accolades aside Heat is simply a book about a writer who becomes a chef.
Oh those midlifes. In my first 40 years on earth I’ve been a musician, a dot com guy, a writer and a chef. I wonder what 50 holds for me?
I could sit here all day trying to wax poetic about the transformation Buford made from literati to culinarian. but I don’t have to. I’ll just steal Buford’s words, “In the beginning, there was a writer, the ghost was the chef. In the end, there was the chef, the ghost was the writer.” Heat reads like two different books. The first is one of those culinary adventures that are so en vogue and the other a biography of Mario Batali.
The idea for Heat began when Buford threw a dinner party back in 2002. Batali was a guest at that party but by the time it ended the then-editor at the New Yorker had decided that someone needed to do a profile of the Iron Chef. Unfortunately Buford got no takers so he resolved to do the story himself. A fateful decision to say the least.
Buford elected to take six months to work in the kitchens of Babbo, Batali’s three star Italian restaurant located in New York’s Greenwich Village. When the story was done, Buford wasn’t. He resigned his post at the magazine to continue work his way up the ladder at Babbo. Before long he was on a plane to Italy to learn the old ways. His journey would find him hanging with Marco Pierre White in London, hand rolling pasta in Tuscany and butchering a pig in his New York apartment.
Heat is very well written as one would imagine from a writer of Buford’s experience and does a wonderful job of showing his journey from white collar to chef whites. Those thinking of making the career change to the culinary arts would be well served to read this book before turning in that letter of resignation.
Next: The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffery Steingarten.
ICA: Flay vs. Stone
Epic. That is the only word to describe the last Iron Chef America of May 2010. Perhaps this should be called Battle: Celebrity Chef? Bobby Flay is a master of Kitchen Stadium and he welcomes Cheflebrity Curtis Stone for the second of four consecutive new episodes.
If, for some strange reason, you are not familiar with Curtis Stone check out his IMdb profile which documents his more than 100 TV appearances. The fact that he has a profile at IMdb should tell you he’s a pretty big deal. Most known for appearances on NBC’s two popular reality series The Biggest Loser and Celebrity Apprentice, Stone has also hosted over 70 episodes of his own shows Take Home Chef (TLC) and My Restaurant Rules (Seven Network, Australia).
But Stone is as much chef as he is celebrity. He began cooking professionally at the age of 18 at the five-star Savoy Hotel in London. As a young chef he worked alongside Marco Pierre White at The Café Royal and at Mirabelle. From there he moved on to the exclusive Restaurant 301. Stone has also been a part of four top selling cookbooks including Surfing the Menu the companion book to the eight-part mini series Stone filmed with fellow Aussie chef Ben O’Donoghue. The guy’s got chops.
This episode is tailor-made for the ladies as it pits two of the sexiest chefs in the country. Flay’s curly red mop and Cheshire grin have long made him eye candy for Food Network viewers while Stone was named one of the sexiest men alive by People in 2006. Chef Curtis greatly resembles actor Owen Wilson only without the fugly nose.
How cool would it be if Brett Michaels, Summer Sanders and Holly Robinson Peete were the judges? Well they weren’t. Judges for Battle: Skipjack Tuna were John T. Edge, Cady Huffman and Jeffrey Steingarten. A special condition was that each course had to feature a grilled item. Chef Flay was once again assisted by blond bombshell Sous Chef Rene Forsberg (who I believe oversees Flay’s Mesa Grill outpost in the Bahamas). Chef Rene was sporting her signature Pocahontas ponytails. Also adding heat to Flay’s kitchen was the adorable Christine Sanchez, Culinary Director of the Iron Chef’s company, Bold Food.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my exclusive interview with Iron Chef Bobby Flay.
Flay and Stone have now teamed up for NBC’s new reality competition America’s Next Great Restaurant.
Click HERE for the outcome.
Surfing the Menu
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ICA: Flay vs. Stone – Outcome
SPOILER ALERT: The following information is the outcome of Flay vs. Stone. If you want information on the combatants click HERE. If you are only interested in the outcome read on.
Judges for Battle: Skipjack Tuna were John T. Edge, Cady Huffman and Jeffrey Steingarten. A special condition was that each course had to feature a grilled item. Chef Flay was once again assisted by blonde bombshell Sous Chef Renee Forsberg (Senior Chef Tournant at Mesa Grill). Chef Renee was sporting her signature Pocahontas ponytails. Also adding heat to Flay’s kitchen was the adorable Christine Sanchez, Culinary Director of the Iron Chef’s company, Bold Food.
Flay Stone
Taste: 26 Taste: 19
Plating: 12 Plating: 10
Originality: 11 Originality: 8
Total: 49 Total: 37
Winner: Iron Chef Flay
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my exclusive interview with Iron Chef Bobby Flay.
Flay and Stone have now teamed up for NBC’s new reality competition America’s Next Great Restaurant.
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