Weekend in Barcelona, Part II: Ferran Adria's Snackeria

After the beach, our group decided to part ways. Some went back to the hostel to change to go out that night, others had other things they wanted to see, and I went in search of a very particular restaurant. Those of you who are also facebook friends may know that a few weeks ago I posted an article from El Mundo talking about a new restaurant that was opening up in Barcelona. It was billed as "El Bulli on a budget". As soon as I read that article, it went on my list of priorities for Barcelona. First, some background.

Ferran Adria is perhaps the most renowned chef in the world. His restaurant, El Bulli, has been listed as the number one restaurant in the world a record five times over the past decade by Restaurant Magazine. He is particularly known for his pioneering contributions to the field of molecular gastronomy. Taken from wikipedia: "Molecular gastronomy seeks to investigate and explain the chemical reasons behind the transformation of ingredients, as well as the social, artistic and technical components of culinary and gastronomic phenomena in general." Fascinating. You may know him from his famous use of different foams that taste like a variety of foods.

Pictured: Delicious.

Needless to say, El Bulli is not only really expensive, but nearly impossible to get a table at (they usually get around 2,000,000 requests for the 8,000 available reservations every year). Now, however, it really is impossible to get a table; El Bulli is closing this summer, so if you didn't have a reservation for this season, you're out of luck. I've always been kind of curious about this whole molecular gastronomy business. So when El Mundo reported that Ferran Adria would be opening up a "snackeria" based on the foods that he made at El Bulli, but cheap, I was really excited.

41º, as the restaurant is known, bills itself mainly as a cocktail lounge that offers a variety of "snacks" masterminded by Adria. It is attached to an upcoming tapas bar, Tickets, which is also run by Adria. Luckily for me, 41º doesn't take reservations. You just show up, and if there's room, there's room. If not, you wait outside. When I got there around 7PM, there was a seat at the bar with my name on it. I ordered a cocktail, a caipirinha, that I've heard is good. Then I turned to the snack menu. I started out with the enigmatically named "oliva de 41º". Yes, that means what it looks like it means: olive of 41º. Only, it wasn't an olive.

It looked sort of like an olive. It tasted exactly like an olive. But it wasn't an olive. Molecular gastronomy does a lot of this sort of thing, making things taste like other things without being those things at all (I realize that this is a grammatically atrocious sentence). I'm still scratching my head about this one. Next up were "pistachios in acidified yogurt".

Pretty, huh? The mystery here was how exactly they made them. As the title suggests, they were basically just pistachios in bundles of stiff white stuff that I assume was yogurt dusted with some sort of mildly sour powder. These were absolutely delicious. I continued down the menu with the tantalizing-sounding parmigiano ice cream sandwich:

I felt like this had a lot of potential, but unfortunately just tasted like a mouthful of salt. Alas. I decided to adventure a bit on the next selection: oyster with caviar, apples, and a few other things that I can't remember:

This was the first time I had tried oysters or caviar, and I actually really enjoyed it. I don't know if I'm ready to venture out into eating straight whole raw oysters, though (this oyster was chopped up and mixed with the other ingredients). My last "snack" before dessert were essentially pork rinds with some sort of special seasoning or something. They were forgettable, so I'm not even going to bother with a picture. The dessert was "dry meringue with praline":

These were neat; you hold them on your tongue for a few seconds and they dissolve completely, leaving behind only flavor. Delicious.

All in all, 41º was definitely a worthwhile experience. Yes, it was pricier than meals typically are, but the concoctions that they've come up with really are nifty. And, after all, when else are you going to go to a Ferran Adria restaurant?