THE FIVE BEST RESTAURANTS IN THE WORLD
(The Long Version)
ElBulli, The Fat Duck, Noma, Mugaritz, El Celler de Can Roca. It's a menuthat would have any food fan celebrating but how do the five bestrestaurants in the world stack up side by side? Masterchef critic MattPreston hit the road across Europe to find out.
The initialplan was so simple. Reward myself for surviving my first season ofMasterChef, and for signing off on the manuscript for Cravat-a-licious(a collection of my least worst writing from the last ten years), bypopping around the world to eat at the five best restaurants on theplanet as named by “Restaurant” magazine. This influential list iscompiled from the votes of hundreds of leading foodies, critics andchefs each year. The 2009 list has three places in Spain, one inDenmark and one in London at the top making it a fun jaunt.
Theidea, so robust in its conception, was that by seeing the world's topfive in rapid succession I could reach some ringing conclusions aboutthe nature of modern cuisine, which place really was “the best”,whether the list was totally bogus, and whether these gastro-templeswere really worth the money.
Ah yes, money. First up can Iadvise you that losing all your credit cards the day before you set offon the world's most expensive dining trip is not recommended.Especially if it also means having to cancel all the cards yourtraveling partner holds as well. There is however a certain sense ofabandon about getting on the plane with just a pocketful of coins andblind faith in the global banking system (that has not exactlybolstered confidence by its performance in the last 12 months).Somehow, surely, those new cards would find us in Europe so we couldpay bills that could push $2000 a meal. The worry is that the firststop is likely to be the most expensive too.
EL BULLI
ElBulli (pronounced “L Boo-Yee”) dominates the top position in most listsof the world's best restaurants, and has held top spot in the“Restaurant” list for the last four years (2009, 2008, 2007, 2006).
Evenin the strangely self-obsessed world of top chefs, this ranking isseldom railed against by Ferran Adria's peers; a tacit agreementperhaps that he is that rare thing someone who has inspired a paradigmshift in fine dining, a sort of Mozart of the kitchen. For, of theother restaurants in the top five, two are run by disciples who citetime cooking at El Bulli as the ignition for their careers and ideas,and the other two share Adria's principles of innovation; that usingfood as more than just nourishment but as an invocation of memory tocreate a connection between chef and diner at a far deeper and morefundamental level. The woman I love snorts at this as pretension andgood marketing but I liken it to how when we eat our grandmother's foodwe are tasting not just the ingredients but our history, our heritage,our relationship with her, and everything that happened every othertime we ate it. This only lessened the eye-rolling a little.
FerranAdria's cooking is built around the chef's desire to present familiarflavours in new and unfamiliar ways. To achieve this, the restaurant isshut for the months of the European winter while Adria retires to hisworkshop cum laboratory to imagine up new ideas and techniques toachieve a menu that alters radically each season. The question iswhether the result is actually dinner, or just culinary high wireantics aimed at impressing through their very newness and innovation.The question is, “Is El Bulli yummy?”
Adria's restaurant is anondescript three hour drive east along the coast from Barcelona. Thereis a strange “butterflies in hobnail boots” sense of anticipationclattering round my gut as we drive in to Roses, the seaside townclosest to El Bulli. Roses is the most unlikely neighbour for theworld's most out there restaurant. The crescent of coarse yellow sandis crusted with layer upon layer of fading five story family hotels andthe beach is packed with kiddies, solid-calved old ladies paddling inblack and elderly blokes in budgie smugglers preening. It all lookslike a scene from one of those lurid Technicolor travelogues of thesome long lost era. The esplanade is lined with cheap cafés that smellof frying and stale beer.
Our hotel is pure Roses too - a onestar at the wrong end of the beach with matchstick furniture and cheapframed prints of fading fishing boats. It is the only place in townwith rooms left though. Note to self: next time you get a booking at ElBulli in December book the hotel room then rather than waiting untilSpain's peak season of August!
I have wanted to eat at El Bulliever since I started writing about food and restaurants ten year'sback. So much so that when my booking and my role on MasterChef wereconfirmed on the same day, it was the table for four that I rangfriends and colleagues to boast about. It is one of the greatcontemporary culinary myths that in the three days in October that ElBulli accepts bookings, they receive two million emails chasing just8000 seats for dinner. Ignoring the rather geek-boy concerns about howbig their server must be to handle that much traffic, getting a tablehere is harder than any other restaurant in the world and prizedaccordingly. The woman I love is just concerned that the food is goingto be just plain weird.
I suppose this is how players must feelbefore a Grand Final. It is seven hours before dinner so we potter onthe beach, try to siesta, and generally mope around until its time toget ready. My wife and I sit around in the rickety hotel bar waitingfor my friend and Sydney Good Food Guide editor Joanna Saville and hersister to arrive. Then we can leave. I'm nervous like before a firstdate - appropriately a pimple pops up on my forehead that afternoon.
Aftera search for spot cream - how do you say “Clearasil” in Catalan? - anda check for aftershave levels, four of us cram into a little local taxito wend 20 minutes up and away over the headlands towards a farsleepier tourist cove that was once best known a scuba diving location.There, clinging to one side is the low-rise adobe home that houses ElBulli. That busy but goat-track-narrow road of precipitous drops andviews over a shimmering crystalline Med helps distance the tat ofRoses, building the anticipation with every hairpin turn. It was tothis coast that Dali fled the world and it's fitting that it nowprovides a home to the chef with a similar twisted modern bent to hismien.
There's a strange trill that shimmers across all of us aswe turn into the drive past a long scree of artfully piled stones butthe welcome overwhelms any initial trepidation. When in Australia atthe culmination of his world book tour Ferran Adria was tired and quitedistracted. Here he is animated, relaxed and his tan face wrinkles in asmile as we walk into his kitchen. In his chef's jacket and apron,Adria is nuggety. He's wearing jeans and a white chef's jacket. Thiskitchen tour seems to be part of most people's experience of eating ata top modern Spanish place but he has a smart celebrity's knack ofmaking everyone feel special.
It's strange, finally, to besomewhere with someone that is so much in their place. We stand infront of the giant bronze bull's head that has fooled some - yup that'smy hand sneaking up embarrassedly - into thinking that the restaurantis named after it rather than the previous owner's obsession withbulldogs. Adria demands pictures. He crosses his arms over his bellyand laughs as I do the same “It's a good way to hide the stomach,” heobserves in a mix of Catalan and pigeon English.
His modernkitchen, that has the sleek lines of an art gallery, is full of an armyof 45 young chefs. Adria's fame and Spain's culinary training regime,which includes mandatory work experience, means the place is full ofchefs earning little more than knowledge and the honour of working inthe best restaurant in the world. This system of apprenticeship allowssome top Spanish restaurants like El Bulli to run ratios of chefs tocustomers that bubble around one to one!
A meal at El Bullistarts with snacks on the small terrace that overlooks the rough bay ofCaja Monjoi and the path that leads around it. Every so often familiesin bikinis, boardies and sarongs traipse past on their way back fromthe beach and look in. This, and the sort of country pub, wood-beameddining rooms full of bulldog figurines and what could pass as thedodgiest paintings from a Rotary Art Show, makes El Bulli seem like asurprisingly un-elitist spot. It is a world away from the gilt,snootiness, and champagne-chariots of many French three Michelin starplaces.
“Snacks” - it is such prosaic term for the creationsthat arrive first; glassy wafers flavoured with vanilla or with sweettart pineapple studded with unlikely success by the salt-bittercontrast of black olive pieces. Then there are crazy salty candy shellsthat crack sweetly and send shivers down the spine as a filling ofintense buttery liquid peanut splashes across your palate. After thesefaux peanuts more oral fireworks come with his famous olives. Thesevirtual olives are prima facie evidence of Adria's love ofdeconstructing food to reengineer the flavour in different ways. Here asmooth pliable dusky-green jelly-skin holds the olive-flavoured juice.Bite and it explodes splattering intense olive liquor across yourmouth.
We drink a bottle of elite Kripta cava (Spanish winemade in the champagne manner). It is so fine - elusive and bright atfirst, more mellow and toasty as it sits in the glass - that it couldmake a Reims widow nervous, and we “snack-on”. Odd delicate crackers ofJapanese intent; sticks of sugar cane soaked with the flavours ofmojito and caipirinha cocktails that you suck; fat half cherries coatedin the flavour of salty sour Japanese plum. These ooze a combination ofcherry juice and plum wine so much so that after my second one it lookslike I've been hit with a spray of bullets - spreading bright redsplotches across my cream jacket.
It's a disaster spotted acrossthe terrace by maitre d' Luis Garcia. When a similar thing happened ata very glitzy three star in Paris - yes, it's amazing that I ever puton weight judging by how little food actually makes it to my mouth - aflock of waiters in tails descended and fussed over me in that “look atthe gauche Australian” sort of a way that they must be taught in waiterschool on the same day they learn “putting down Americans the de Gaulleway”. Here however Garcia sidles up and diffuses any embarrassment witha matter of fact demand for the jacket. This response breaks anyremaining tension at being here.
So now in to one of the twobeamed dining rooms for the dinner proper; the atmosphere is “libraryreading room” thanks to no music. The only sounds are people going“mmmmmmm”, people going “hmmmmmm?” and waiters issuing instructions onhow each course should be approached. For each one of these littleedible tableaux comes with terse bullet points on how to eat it perhapsas an insurance against customer breaking a tooth on the fluid-linedsculptures that act as plates here: “eat this in one bite”, “suck theflower but don't eat it”, “eat this leaf”, “two bites but don't eat theleaf”.
For chapter after chapter this epic goes on with thesort of breathless enthusiasm of a small child showing off all his newChristmas presents. It's a relentless assault, Adria's current culinaryobsessions with Japan, with the soy bean, with sesame seeds and withthe pine becoming increasingly clear as the meal progresses. There's aplate containing over a dozen different expression of the soy bean fromsprouts and slimy fermented Japanese natto to miso, soy and what tasteslike milky beancurd skin. While young pine needles come candied, pinemilk is used to partner gin in a cocktail and you re-acquaint yourselfwith pine-nuts in little gel packets that you dip in a sort of sweetpine resin tea and then pop into your mouth. The packets dissolve onyour tongue to deliver a pine nut praline, a pine nut butter and a pinenut oil. Wow!
These obsessions make for a slightly unbalancedmeal. Some dishes are wonderful; bursting with flavour and turning yourtongue inside out with unexpected textures and combination like littleparmesan gel ravioli with coffee grains, a fat scampi that's raw at oneend and golden-fried at the other, or a plate of “mimetic almonds”.Here a wedge of black olive dusted apricot sits amongst young greenalmond kernels, toasted almonds and various other similarly shaped“expressions of almondiness” with different textures such as the almondjellies, and even what the waiter confirms are the occasional apricotkernels.
Other jaw dropping moments revolve as much around theproduce sourced as the techniques. A strange raw little leaf,Dutch-grown and dotted with dew drops of vinegar, tastes uncannily likeoysters; petals from a rose imported from Ecuador fool you intothinking that they are artichoke leaves thanks to an artichokevinaigrette. “Here, nothing is as it seems,” says the waiter who clearsthe plates as if quoting an El Bulli motto.
More perplexing isa giant hollow egg of frozen coconut cream where you eat the sweetshell sprinkled with curry powder. It's one of many examples of howAdria likes people to eat their fingers rather than cutlery and alsohow modern Spanish restaurants, like the French, struggle with the useof unfamiliar spices. The curry powder has a raw spice taste.
Overallthe menu of 39 courses or tastes starts sweet and ends exploringiodine-like flavours in dishes like sliced almost raw tasting kidneyand a mix of green tea, caviar and rather wibbly-wobbly heat-wiltedtendrils of sea anemones that look like some phaser-blasted alien fromStar Trek. Interesting maybe but both are distinctly un-yummy. They arenot alone. There are other dishes that don't ring any bells for ourparty, like raw cockles with fennel and the flavour of yuzu, slabs ofcooked jamon fat with abalone and poppy little sprigs of what we takeas seaweed, and that plate of soy which seems far less exotic whenviewed from an Australian rather than Spanish perspective.
Thisis El Bulli's first season after the departure of Ferran's brother andmuse, Albert, from the long-held roll of pastry chef. Compared to therest of the menu, for me desserts lacked lunacy, cohesion and the samebreathless over-excitement. Even if entrees and snacks like thepineapple and olive “hankerchief” or a ice-cold (rather than iced)coconut sponge (made from what tasted like flavoured and foamed cocoabutter set with cold rather than heat into an “Aero” like texture)continue Adria's aim of blurring the lines between the sweet andsavoury worlds. The most spectacular looking dessert - called “roots”because it looks like bonsai-sized tree roots in soil - is a jumble ofchocolate and a Japanese citrus called yuzu never quite gels for me.
Inthe end El Bulli comes across like the culinary equivalent of the Pariscatwalks with a new collection of dishes each year. While you mightappreciate the cutting edge nature of what you see, nothing is turningup on your high street anytime soon. For example only now, almost threeyears after their debut at El Bulli, are Adria inventions like thefoam-gun aerated sponge creeping on to Aussie fine dining menus.
Thisreckless desire to re-invent his menu every year is really what makesEl Bulli special but it also ensures that it will reflect Adria'ssometimes outlandish current culinary obsessions. You could also arguethat his menu of 39 tastes could do with some serious culling to cutout dud dishes but in a way this would be self-defeating because youlearn as much about Adria's approach to food from the mis-steps as thewinning dishes.
What really makes eating here so fascinating fora foodie is that Adria sets the trends with his new techniques andideas and you get to see them first. It's certainly not the décor!
Atthe end of the meal, El Bulli's irrepressible maitre d' Luis Garciareturns with my jacket, spotless. It's a little thing; anotherjustification of El Bulli's status although it has to be admitted thata meal here is still largely about Adria's food - whether it is yummyor not.
EL CELLER DE CAN ROCA
El Celler de CanRoca is an hour back towards Barcelona in a quiet residential suburb ofGirona. It's an unlikely place to find the fifth best restaurant in theworld. Run by the three Roca Brothers it is in a fine contemporarytriangular space of light, glass and wood with a wide light well filleda small grove of trees as its centre. It is the smartest dining spaceof the top five, which isn't saying much given the cramped Englishcottage of The Fat Duck, the kitsch of El Bulli and rugged warehousefeel of Copenhagen's Noma.
Can Roca has however always struck meas whiffing slightly of pretension with little brother Jordi famed formaking desserts modeled of famous perfumes and big brother Joandistilling the flavour of autumnal earth to use in dishes! Strangelyonce there however it turns out to be the most conventional of thefive. It's as if mum, who still runs the Roca family's traditionalplace up the road, has ambled down and delivered a few swifts clipswith a wooden spoon across the thighs to knock some sense into herboys. Not that there is anything mundane about charcoal grilled candiedeggplant as a dessert, or a sealed omelette unexpectedly gushing asmoky Herring caviar-spotted cream when burst.
After snackslike black sesame crackers or wonderful candy-crusted black olives madeusing - shock horror - real olives, the 11 course menu at Can Rocadelivers the most compelling “lick-the-plate” moments of the trip forthe woman I love. Whether it's a slice of sole or an amazinglylife-like apricot that actually turns out to be a sugar ball filledwith apricot ice cream, this is food that delivers the essence of theseflavours as well as maintaining the integrity of the produce it aims torepresent. The fish is especially fine, partnered by five splotches ofrestrained gel-like purees of green olive, fennel, orange, bergamot andpine nut. Each subtly changed the perceive flavour of the fish withoutoverwhelming it.
The woman I Iove is in heaven. She also remarksthat visiting the kitchens here you see real food breads coming out ofthe oven, sausages of goose meat being sliced something that she missedat El Bulli.
Can Roca is also home to the most consistentlyimpressive wine and food matches thanks to middle brother Josep'sencyclopedic cellar. These start with an 2005 Fleurie paired with asimilarly cherry-stained almond gazpacho floating with delicate flanksof salmon-pink eel. Reds from the revered Priorat region west ofBarcelona provide a crescendo paired with a goose sausage and againwith the most spectacular idea of crispy and slightly fatty lamb skinsandwiching cubes of bread soaked with the sweet tang of ripe tomato.This play on the Catalans' traditional love of bread rubbed with tomatois one of my OMG moments.
Two Catalan places and now - after ashort flurry of tapas, Picasso and Gaudi in Barcelona - we fly north toEuskadia and the almost grand English seaside town of Donostia - SanSebastian. Here Basque chefs like Juan Mari Arzak and Pedro Subijanabirthed modern Spanish cookery and for the last ten years Andoni Adurizhas plied his trade in a converted farmhouse in the hills above city asthe standard bearer of a new generation.
MUGARITZ
Mugaritz,ranked at fourth place in the Top Five, is lionized as this greatrustic restaurant where the chefs tend the gardens, using tweezers topick herbs and edible flowers that adorn almost every dish. So it's asurprise to find it surrounded by a car park that is many times biggerthan the restaurant's vegetable plot.
Inside the big diningroom is sparsely scattered with tables of which not all are full onthis Saturday night. This is put down to the last night of a Basquepride festival in San Sebastian and a soccer match between local heroesReal Sociedad and the might of the re-invigorated Real Madrid. This hasseen the streets round the soccer stadium turned into a sea of blue andwhite stripes; the air thick with the sounds of chanting and theparping of jaunty brass bands.
Arriving at 9pm everything atMugaritz in the green hills about the town is far, far quieter. In factit looked like the restaurant might be even emptier than that but thediners here arrive very late by Australian standards. They are aneclectic mix of foodie tourists, genuflecting young chefs from acrossEurope and far less of the posh perma-tanned blazer-wearing types seenat Can Roca and El Bulli.
With pitchfork iconography on thewalls and smooth wooden axe-handles that hold the obliquely writtenmenu, the intention is clearly to anchor the rustic notion that, whileAduriz might have started as a modernist disciple of Adria, he is nowmore closely a follower of the land and the sea that surrounds him.
The11 course menu they prepare for us skips across some of Aduriz'sgreatest hits. Tiny feather-weight gnocchi made with kudzu starch andflavored with tangy local Idiazabal cheese float in a pristine porkbroth. They follow a busy jumble of sprouts, greens and flower petalsdressed with nutty brown butter and with a thin milky soup that tastesof Emmental cheese.
Flowers, wild greens and herbs seem to beeverywhere. A miniscule dice of squid and carrots in a squid brothcomes strewn with delicate white carrot blossoms. I didn't ever knowcarrots flowered. That garden bowl is loaded with different basils andthe surprisingly sweet petals of lily and marigold amongst the buds.Later a fillet of mild white bonito tuna, from the Bay of Biscay thatsnuggles in to Spain's northern shores, comes with strands of succulentsamphire and something called sea chamomile. This love of edibleflowers and foraged wild ingredients is something Aduriz shares withhis Scandinavian counterpart, Rene Redzepi at Noma who sits above himin the Top Five.
Local fish like that bonito abound. There'sturbot served with the fat peeled stalks of an English cottage gardenherb called borage. The Basques also love - in the way that someCantonese value fish cheeks -kokotxa which are fish throats, or lowerjaws - often of hake. Here Aduriz presents a kokotxa of salt cod whichhas all the salty funkiness of the dried fish but in a silken slip thatresembles milk skin. It needs more sweetness from an acacia honeythat's used as a counterpoint on the dish but it is a fine example oneof Aduriz's mantras - so often couched as a question. What can we saywith as few elements as possible ?
The guys at Mugaritz alsoloves a gag. To start the meal a bowl of warm stones is presented. Someare actually potatoes covered in a grey edible clay. A whole battery ofalarm bells go off as you bite into one. Your fingers and your teethboth convinced by the feel that this is a little rock. It is the firstin a number of provocative gags that Aduriz plays on the diner. Themeal ends with a piece of blackened veal that looks like it has spent 3hours too long on the BBQ but which is actually dyed to look burnt butis pink when cut and fine to eat. Then after a selection ofpalate-warmers, what looks like a beef carpaccio arrives but the meatis very sweet under a rubble of walnuts and salty parmesan-like hardcheese grains (Idiazabal). It is another joke. It's not beef at all butwatermelon dehydrated until it is the colour and texture of slicedfillet. After the mandatory trip to the kitchen to meet the chefs,maitre d' Jose Ramon Calvo riffs, “We are a terrible restaurant weserve our guests stones and burnt meat!”
The funniest joke ofall however is not culinary at all. It's the two envelopes every dinerfinds at their place asking them to choose whether they want to “rebel”or “submit” with their choice of menu and that the kitchen will thengive them either 150 minutes of embarrassment and submission or ofdiscovery and contemplation. Making the choice provokes conversationand engagement with the coming meal - only all reviews of therestaurant begin by debating this conundrum - but Andoni is playingwith their heads. I ask Josera how the two menus differ, “They don't!”smiles Jose.
It is just another example of that provoke andjoke philosophy; the real question is however whether the choice madeimpacts on how the menu is perceived differently by either group ofdiners.
Veg quota for the week met at Mugaritz we fill the nextday eating achingly fresh fish adorned with little more than a roughemulsion of oil and vinegar or lemon at two of Josera and Andoni'sfavourite local traditional restaurants. Hake throats, fat clams andwood roasted turbot at Kai-pe overlooking the little fishing port downthe coast at Getaria, and at La Rampa on the quay in Donostia-SanSebastian. Here it is kiss-sweet calamari and grilled groper while noneother that Pedro Subijana sits at the table behind us. Behind us in theold town lines of giant two-storey figurines dance and twirl throughthe narrow streets of the old town fanning the last embers of thatBasque week
NOMANext is Noma; number three in thelist and the fastest rising top restaurant over the last three years.Stopping only in Bilbao to get a headful of fireworks, the giant silvercurls of the Guggenheim and a famous local cocktail of coke and redwine called “kalimotxo” at the Aste Nagusia Basque street festival(where everyone wears scarves round their necks and dances in thestreet; it's my kind of Festival!), we fly to Copenhagen from thebeautifully stark and sleek-lined modern Bilbao airport.
Judgingby the global column inches, Denmark is famous for three things thesedays - design, Princess Mary and their thriving restaurant scene whichlikes to boast of having as many Michelin stars as Rome or Madrid. AsArne Jacobsen is to Danish design, so Danish-Macedonian chef ReneRedzepi has become to a re-emerging Scandinavian culinary culture.
Thishas been a huge year for Redzepi. He might have missed out on his thirdMichelin star but promotion to third spot in Restaurant's World's 50Best list was a more highly prized honour.
Redzepi is a rareculinary inspiration. Smart Danish restaurant kitchens used to be aculinary colony of France but Redzepi's Noma has lead a revolutionelevating traditional Danish ideas and Scandinavian ingredients tonever before seen heights - but setting them against the modern ideassparked by Redzepi's time at El Bulli. Razor clams, black lobster,sweet little shrimp, a whole manner of berries, flowers and wild greensseldom seen outside the North, star. There's even musk ox. This weirdhairy goat of a beast has been sourced from the former Viking colony ofGreenland.
Redzepi's stark restaurant sits in an old maritimewarehouse on the other side of the water from Copenhagen's famousNyhavn wharf. It's an unadorned space of beams, bare boards anddistressed wooden pillars. Some of the wooden chairs are draped withanimal pelts but a meal here is as fresh as the spring breeze off theKøge Bugt. Pickling, icing and just using ingredients fresh ensureseating here is a light experience; as does Redzepi's strong focus onacidity whether provided by green strawberries, lemony wood sorrel,tangy white currants or vinegars. The ingredients are always king indishes that are less complicated than the Spanish places but whichtaste no less complex.
Here too there are jokes and theatre. Alarge warm rock is brought to the table dotted with a malt-dustedoyster cream and one incredibly - to the point of being buttery - softlangoustine. Baby radishes and carrots come in a flower pot embedded inwhat looks like earth. This is actually an herb cream covered with athick layer of rye, malt and beer. There is something rather fun abouttugging these veg out of the “ground” by their green tops and the waythe cream resists you pull the way the earth does.
The openingbars of the meal are the presentation of a battered old biscuit tin.What's inside are a million miles from a traditional Danish konditori -a creamy foie gras biscuit topped with a dehydrated berry powder of nolittle intensity. Yet another OMG moment of which there are many inthis meal. The main theatre however is the way that the chef themselvesoften brings dishes to the table and explain them.
Outside thewarehouse, it's a warm day in Copenhagen, the sky is impossibly blueand the sun is glinting off the water and spotlighting themulticoloured C18th warehouses that line Nyhavn. It's a perfectbackdrop to tackle a lunch that starts with that biscuit tin and aselection of more rustic flavours. These include a soft- yoked quail'segg that been smoked with hay that arrives in a still smoking strawnest, a homage to crisp bread with wafers of crispy dry chicken skinand equally crisp rye bread sandwiching a broad bean paste, and artisanDanish bread. This comes with a funky goat butter and a little pot oflard crusted with a crumble of potato and pork crackling. Damn it'sgood in a “rolling-in-the-trough” sort of a way.
On the moreavant-garde or expensive side there are teeny tiles raw squid servedwith a green strawberry ice, cream and a dill oil, those sweet rawshrimps that come under a seaweed veil with beets and wild beachsiderhubarbs; and black lobster served with tangy currants (red and white),rose petals and a peeled and cooked cos lettuce root.
Withtouches like this root, Redzepi has rather lifted Andoni Aduriz'smantle as king of veg. He too also cherishes local flowers or foragedhedgerow and foreshore ingredients. At Mugaritz the chef's talk in aweof Redzepi's five foragers who keep the restaurant supplied with wildberries, grasses and flowers. Beet slices are paired with the sournessof gooseberry and some little white flowers that have a metallic heatsimilar to Sichuan pepper. While in two other dishes scurvy flowersfeature. These little lilac blooms are so named because the seafaringDanes used them centuries back on long sea voyages to stop their teethdropping out. They jewel a crisp bread dusted with a vinegar powder,and a cheese foam with is matched to the flavours of apple, whitecurrant, celery, spinach and herbs. Another veg dish is a hymn ofpraise to the onions. These comes out as a riot of textures andflavours - sharp and pickled, sweet, unctuous and slow cooked, hot andraw and a little trendily - the juice set into pearls or tears. Simplebut impeccable, intelligent and quite delicious.
The “scrapedbeef” which is a sort of steak tartare made using an old traditionalScandinavian shaving technique is a long-running favorite at Noma. Youeat it scooped up with your fingers along with springs ofmouth-puckering lemony wood sorrel and a smear of a tarragon emulsionand roast juniper dust.
The arrival later in the meal of aleather sheathed hunting knife signals a return to more meat. Pullingit from its tight leather scabbard feels like a suitablyJomsviking-like to do before falling on a chunk of musk ox (thinksomewhere between gamey venison or roo in texture and taste). Thisarrives garlanded with garlic flowers, sweet mellow roasted garlicpuree, milk skin (which is exactly that - the skin skimmed from cookedmilk), roasty-charred leek and zucchini plus some little bobbly seedclusters that provide acidity. I ask if these are traditionalaccompaniments to musk ox and the waiter laughs, “I have been here fiveyears and I am still trying to work that out! Everything here could betraditional or it could be a 'Rene' tradition. He does like to twisttradition!”
There are misses here however like a pedestriancheese course of a sort of fluffy cheese bavarois with cucumber andlemon verbena leaves and meringue or a nondescript ball of shreddedcrab flesh that sits in a loose head cold of jellied stock and pepperyforaged greens they call “sea mustard”.
What is especially niceabout Noma however is that there is little on the menu that is there tobe wacky for wacky's sake. Well, OK the combination of blueberries, abright green and icy pine-flavoured granita, and ice creams or pine andblueberry pine is a bit like falling first into a snow drift in aGerman blueberry forest but the pairing of ice powders and ice creamsin the flavours of walnut and blackberry is on far, far safer ground.
Whileno little effort is put into the wine list - our meal was matched withwines solely sourced from vineyards in the Loire - wine is just not aDanish thing. (It's a story for another place but Redzepi has howeverjust made a white wine using sauvignon, riesling and other locallygrown fruit with a couple of friends. It's named after his daughter andisn't at all bad, if a little spritzy). As Mr Carlsberg likes to tellus Denmark is about beer. Hence the recommended aperitif here is glassof Noma's own ale brewed by a local craft operation using birch sapinstead of water which they like to think accounts for its silkiness.While dotting the menu are suggestions of refreshing juices rather thanwine to pair with dishes. Perhaps a beet juice flavoured with a littlealmondy woodruff (but not so much as it'll make you trippy), or thebrilliant mango-orange of pressed sea-buckthorn berries which havetwelve times the vitamin C of oranges and a flavour that is somewherebetween passion fruit and guava. It's strangely better than wine with abowl of differently and lightly pickled strips of beet, turnip,cauliflower and zucchini with drops of bone marrow with hot brownedbutter. The juice's pep cuts against richness of the marrow and butter.The taste of green, in the form of pure celery or cucumber juices, sitson neighbouring tables. This is the course, along with the cherrygazpacho, that I most often find myself daydreaming about.
ThisNoma lunch is a more of a complete meal than the stunner that I hadhere back in June. This might be because this time I'm sharing it withthe woman I love, it might be that Redzepi is constantly tuning itspitch, or it might be one other major change - the number ofAustralians now in the kitchen at Noma since Redzepi's visit in March2009.
Since Redzepi's inspiring visit to Australia Noma has beenbombarded with requests to come there to work. While Redzepi had aAussie sous chef until last year, subsequently Ayhan Erkoc from TheManse in Adelaide, Tasmanian chef Luke Burgess and Aaron Turner (fromLoam in Victoria) have all passed through the doors. When I was thereJosh Lewis who runs Vue de monde's restaurant in Oman was taking a turnin the kitchen alongside chefs from Quay and Tetsuya. It all makes theexperience oddly familiar - especially when Lewis and anotherDanish-born Vue de monde alumnus bring dishes to the table.
Whilewe don't feel heavy after this epic procession of courses, for dinnerwe can stomach no more than that other Danish tradition; a hot dog fromone of the city's sausage vans. It's processed and fatty and almost theantithesis of the meal at Noma. Yes, obviously I enjoyed it too!
THE FAT DUCKThismere 18cm long dinner was a wise idea given the final furlongs of thetrip approaching. The next day we faced dinner at The Waterside Innwhich is Britain's longest running three-star restaurant (and not evenin Restaurant's Top 100 anymore, let alone their Top 50), followed bylunch at The Fat Duck which conveniently is in the same quaint littlevillage on the upper reaches of the Thames.
Bray - for that isthe name of the village - is only a 15 minute drive up the motorwayfrom Heathrow airport. We again arrive with time to spare so we walkdown the river and study one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's mostbeautiful feats of engineering. His railway bridge over the Thames atMaidenhead has impossibly wide, flat and elegant arches. Dinner at theWaterside Inn is similarly classic; grouse, soufflés and impeccablesilver service (complete with birds carved at the table andchoreographed silver cloche reveals). It's also quiet raucous as groupsconcentrate of catching up, and couples on holding hands, without thegobsmacking, and gob-shutting, awe of reaching a site of culinarypilgrimage oft found at the other culinary shrines.
We sleep in.Then have breakfast in bed trying to stint on the Viennoiserie infairness to our final meal on the trail for the world's bestrestaurant. Currently I'm with the list ranking while the woman I lovehas Can Roca first, Noma second, Mugaritz a close third and El Bulli infifth because she's suspects that The Fat Duck has to be less weird andmore delicious that Adria's place.
The Fat Duck hasperennially been Robin to El Bulli's Batman. While it headed the listin 2005 - the last restaurant to do so before El Bulli's currentdomination - for the last four years chef Heston Blumenthal has had tobe content with second place to his Catalan friend.
If FerranAdria is the technician and visionary of this culinary modernism thenBlumenthal is the showman. While Aduriz and Redzepi might make wryjokes it's as if Blumenthal is after belly laughs. It is something thathe achieved on my first visit when we discovered that what wassprinkled from a fine silver bowl over the root vegetable crumbleserved with guinea fowl was actually popping candy! A second visit wasmarred by aloof French service and equally uptight English diners whichmade the experience more stuffy and reverential rather than joyous.From our previous conversations however I know this has vexed the chefwho ideally wants his customers to arrive with a sense of childlikeexcitement and anticipation. In part this is because he has researchthat shows that - like field-shot game - less stressed customers tastebetter.
On this visit everything seems a little changed. Thecooking was better and changes in plating of classics like the salmonunder a veil of licorice gel has made them less about visual impact andmore about making them eat well. The pointillist storm of grapefruitcarpels that previously spread across the plate might have lookedpretty but were just a pain to eat.
One thing that hasn'tchanges is a long-running favourite. A layered bowl of crayfish cream,jelly of quail, chicken liver parfait and pea remains a classic journeyof different levels of smoothness. This sends your spoon and palatethrough an ever evolving journey through these strata as the differenttextures and well-defined by complimentary flavours of saltiness andsweetness ebb and flow against each other with every mouthful. TheSound of the Sea also remains unchanged but still just as delicious.This is Blumenthal's famous evocation of the seaside that comescomplete with individual conch housed i-Pod playing a soundtrack ofseagull cries and lapping waves.; the choice of a rich old riesling asthe match managed to unfurl other complexities in both the dish and inthe wine.
I'd love to say that the i-Pod dish seems like asideshow; trying to hard to recreate a beachscape on a plate withoyster foam, tapioca sand and slices of seafood and seaweed and I wouldhave if I hadn't taken my final mouthful. An oily fish - possiblymackerel - leaps up and tastes so shockingly vivid I can only put thisdown to the mental impact of the soundtrack. It's a slightly unnervingmoment but nothing as unnerving as watching as the next door tablefalls silent for 10 minutes while they are hooked up to their i-Pods.These two couples have spent the previous hour playing a game ofone-upmanship over who has the most stables on their property. Withclose packed tables, as there are here, you'd better hope for lessdull, self-absorbed people as your neighbours when you go.
Theproximity of others also means that you are likely to be watched as youeat, such is the beguiling performances of so many of the dishes. Thisstill seems a little strange and intrusive to me - inspite of the factthat I now do it for a living on TV. This tendency for people tosticky-beak is thanks to how visually arresting so many of The FatDuck's dishes are. Their famous palate cleanser of green tea and limemeringue “poached”, or more accurately frozen, by bobbing it insteaming liquid nitrogen at the table started this trends a good fewyears back but recently Blumenthal and his team have amped up thetheatricality of his dishes. This reaches it's greatest heights withthe new menu. Now that crayfish mousse dish comes with a bed of oakmoss to which tendrils of mist-like dry ice cling. Then there's the eggcracked into a copper pot at the table and “scrambled” into an icecream thanks to more liquid nitrogen. The trick is the egg shell hasbeen emptied then and re-filled with an egg and bacon flavouredcustard. Even more bamboozling is an accompanying cup of tea that isboth hot AND cold.
Or how about a dessert that arrives in alittle cast iron pot set in a bowl that's upholstered in red leatherlike the wingback in some baronial library? Here liquid is poured intothe bowl prompting billows of dry ice laden with the aromas of thatlibrary - woodsmoke from the fire, leather, etc. As this happens thecast iron pot's lid is lifted to reveal a barley ice cream sitting ontop of a compote of fig, apple and dried fruit. This is all thenflambéed with whisky. It takes a second to realize what is happening;that those are hot flames licking round the ice cream and yet it isn'tmelting. Taste a spoonful when inferno dies down and magically the icecream has remained cold but the pot and compote are hot. Now thatreally scrambles the old noggin and has me questioning whether The FatDuck is a restaurant or a conjuror's parlour.
Personally Ilove Blumenthal's desire to engender a childlike enjoyment in peopleeating at The Fat Duck, it makes for an amazingly unusual and memorableexperience.
There are also other more traditionally deliciousdishes which keeps the wife happy too. Like buttery cubes of roast foiegras set against the relieving bite of a puree of gooseberry, thesavoury saltiness of kombu, sesame seeds and a crisp wafer of crab orpigeon matched with “umbles” (as offal used to be called by the Brits)and a perfectly chosen 2002 Le Dome Saint Emilion.
This is oneof several new dishes on the menu inspired by Blumenthal's increasingobsession with Britain's culinary past. There's also a sort of slushiemade from chocolate and wine and a very pretty Taffety Tart that pairsthe flavours of rose and fennel with caramelised apple and crispypastry. Both take their inspiration from C17th century recipes howevereven such classics aren't safe from Blumenthal's trademark showmanship.
A dish called mock turtle soup might leap up from an 1850recipe but the actual realization is pure Fat Duck 2009, albeit onethat plays on the Alice in Wonderland connection with the mock turtle.A gold-plated bouillon cube in the shape of a pocket watch arrives in atea cup. Hot water is poured over it from a tea pot as a secondreference to the Mad Hatter's tea party. The resulting mushroom,Madeira and beef consommé is wonderfully intense, exact in flavour, andflecked beautifully with gold. This is then poured over a littleassembly of compressed slices of ox tongue and lardo, small cubes ofpickled cucumber, truffle and turnip, plus a faux poached egg (actuallyconstructed artfully from turnip and swede). A matched glass of Madeirais another example of a vey successful wine marriage.
The mealends with wine gums set in a historical and geographical context and,just like at the best children's parties where there is a conjuror,every guest leaves with lollybag full of Fat Duck style sweets. Thisall combines to ensure memories of this meal linger longer, even if thememory of the flavours aren't quite as vivid. A week after we get backmy wife declares she is promoting The Fat Duck to her equal favouriteof the five with thanks to that memorable theatre of giving an edge toBlumenthal's largely delicious dishes.
THE VERDICTWhilenone of these meals is a cheap experience and El Bulli has becomedownright expensive inspite of the fact that the wine list in not tooterrifying. The fact that I can still clearly remember, name and tastemany of 39 teeny courses I had there goes a long way to justifying the$600 a head price tag.
It cost us about $2500 to eatexceptionally well across these five great places - plus another $5000for travel and accommodation. Over the years I have frittered away muchmore money on unmemorable meals but that's the thing about eating ingreat places. They may seem expensive but when they deliver like thesefive they are more than worth it. After all this is a foodie's trip oflifetime to rival touring the West Indies with the Australian cricketteam or following the Socceroos to the World Cup.
And what ofthose memories; what are the themes rifting through these five amazingkitchen. Perhaps most important is the love of the “flavour of green”.This expresses itself at El Bulli in a dried chervil powder whiskedwith water (in the style of Japanese macha green tea powder) to make astrangely unsalty green broth. Or, later in the meal, it reappears asspoonfuls of almost tea-tannic bright green dried mint and grains ofbrown sugar sent skittering across the thin ice of a bonsai-sizedfrozen “pond” of water in the simplest of palate cleansers. At Can Rocait's a complex dessert like Jordi Roca's “green chromatism”. AtMugaritz and Noma it manifests as a love of wild greens and thecontinued interest in fresh herbs and edible flowers.
Therealso seems to be a decreasing focus on traditional red meat dishes infavour of seafood and vegetables. This may be, in part, because four ofthe restaurants are so close to the sea and is thus a reflection of theinterest in dishes that build notions of “terroir” (or reflect therestaurants' sense of place); albeit in ways that aren't quite asliteral as Joan Roca distilling the flavour of the local soil. Some,like Adria and Aduriz, are also starting to explore the notion ofiodine as a desirable flavour profile.
But what of this listitself? Is this Top Five the right top five best restaurants in theworld? Should Thomas Keller's Per Se or French Laundry still be inthere? Yes, for sure. Should Pierre Gagnaire's idiosyncratic andeponymous Parisian gastrodome also have retained a spot in the topfive? Almost undoubtedly. And what of those Japanese restaurants thatthe likes of Ferran Adria cite as their great inspiration? Surely thereshould be a kaiseki restaurant in there. And you'd also suggest thatgiven that only The Fat Duck and El Bulli have the top ranking of threeMichelin stars (Can Roca, Noma and Mugaritz only have two), there areanother 88 or so three star restaurants who might suggest they deservea spot as well. The trouble is you can't twenty places into a Top Fivelist!
The reason why El Bulli, The Fat Duck, Noma, Mugaritz andCan Roca make it into this Top Five is simple. A list like this canonly ever be a reflection of those that help compile it, and of therestaurants at the time that it was compiled. These things change. Eachone of these top five places are classed as “innovative” by theMichelin Guide and casting an eye down the rest of the list in seemslike innovation is the key factor in making in to the upper reaches ofRestaurant's list. Personally I'd blame all those food writers andchefs, so often obsessed with the shiny and new, who vote!
Forme after this trip and some 120 courses across the five restaurants -as well as some significant back-up dining just to set then in context- the realization is that at the top end of the restaurant town thereare a lot more delicious places than there are gobsmackingly innovativeones but it is this that those unique places that the Top Five mostreflects. As a critic who has eaten at many of these other contendersmy feeling is that the order is about right, give or take a ThomasKeller restaurant.
Restaurants are like cravats - yourfavourite depends on your own mood and your needs at that time ratherthan which has the prettiest pattern. For me, however thanks to itsreckless pursuit of the new El Bulli has to be the leader of the pack.A meal here should be the aspiration of any serious food even if, orperhaps because, you will careen from dishes that plunge you intoparoxysms of pleasure to those that might confound or even disgust you- undercooked kidney anyone? It will however never be boring and willalways leave you asking why, how and whether this is the future offood. My wife's question is whether you want to engage in anintellectual dialogue with your dinner, or just eat it.
Ask mewhere I'd like to eat every week for a year however and I'd tell youNoma or Mugaritz. Theirs is the sort of clean, pretty, produce-drivensoul food that's easy to digest, served in a relaxed interior free ofany pomposity. Ask me where I'd like to have my birthday each year andI'd tell you The Fat Duck given the theatrical wows, intricateexperimentation and surprising yumminess - even if, when every dish isput down, you expect the waiters to fling their arms wide and sing out,“ta-daaah!”
Ask me the Woman I Love where she would like to gofor dinner and you'd get a very different answer and a very differentorder to me - but then she's no foodie. For her El Bulli wasinteresting but never ever as delicious as El Celler de Can Roca whichrather throws that list on its head. She'd have Can Roca and The FatDuck at the top of the list, then Noma, Mugaritz and finally El Bullibut her parameters for enjoying a meal are different to mind and farmore purely pleasure driven.
And here's the heart of why eatingat five of the world's top restaurants in close succession was sofascinating. It not the fact that they are so different; it how connectwith different people in very different ways. Yet it is also thesedifferences that expose the major flaw in any attempt to stratifyrestaurants. It's always going to be a case of comparing apples tooranges, or in this case comparing flaming sorbets to exploding olives.
EPILOGUEExactlya week later I am sitting in a Pancake Parlour in a suburban shoppingcentre with half a dozen small children sipping Blue Heavens. Maybeit's not so bad as the four nine year old boys at the table startdissecting their dishes criticising rubbery cheese, a crumbed fish thatlacked “crunch in the crumb”, the quintessential wrongness of puttingwhat tastes like a meat spaghetti sauce over a crepe. They also weren'tat all impressed with soggy “cottage fries” which don't even lookanything like cottages. The pancakes on the other hand get fulsomepraise. They are right on every count and I leave thinking that maybethe future audience for restaurants where you intellectually engagewith your food rather than just stuff in your face is assured. Assumingwe can ban the raw kidney for ever. 
