El Bulli: Cooking in Progress

This German documentary about the most famous restaurant in the world is the closest you will ever get to sitting at a table in El Bulli, given it closed its doors on 30 July last year and bearing in mind only the rich or famous or extraordinarily well-connected were able to command reservations at the exclusive Michelin three-starred Catalonian eatery.

The restaurant, which opened in 1961 on a remote mountaintop above the sea, functioned as a tasting paradise for the avant-garde cuisine of owner/head chef Ferran Adrià. Its short annual season ran from July to December, at which point Adrià and his colleagues would relocate to a hi-tech laboratory-kitchen in Barcelona and begin anew with their gastronomic experiments, the results of which would be introduced at El Bulli the following season.

The first two thirds of director Gereon Wetzel's film meticulously documents the rigorously scientific gastronomic experiments undertaken by Adrià’s team of chefs, while the last section switches location to El Bulli itself. Although we get little of the flavour of the man behind the restaurant, Wetzel captures the essence of Adrià’s process of sublime culinary creation.

Selected release from Fri 27 Jul.