41 Grados, Barcelona, Spain

In January 2011, the three-Michelin-starred chef Ferran Adrià and his brother Albert Adrià, opened this small tapas bar (tapas as in “many small dishes”). Their idea was a multi-course dinner experience, with music, lights and sounds accompanying the taste buds. The result is 41° in Barcelona, and it’s amazing. Since then, Ferran Adrià has closed El Bulli, and as a matter of fact, 41° is also closed for good. So this article doesn’t really help you in any way other than that of remembering that Adrià is a superhero. Whatever he decides to open next, you should visit.

At 41°, every single dish was spectacular. And if you’ve ever been to 10 course dinners, multiply that with 4. A sweet-jelly-covered leaf, and a straw shoved down a flower. Drink from it, and you’re a colibri. The plate is swiftly taken away, and before you know it you’re sitting in front of a black-sesame ball looking like a pearl, and a piece of watermelon infused with red-beat juice, yuzu and licorice. By now, I knew this was already an amazing evening. And it only became better. The dishes all had simple names, like the “aubergine and caviar”. This turned out to be an aubergine chip topped with hazelnut cream, osetra caviar and spicy sesame olive oil. These are not combinations they just happened to put there, they were carefully selected, paired and balanced. I sound like a snob here, but I don’t know how else to put it. This was an amazing experience, and the only two things that made me sad at the end of the evening were 1.) that it was the end of the experience and 2.) that I never managed to get a hold of a table at El Bulli.

I could go on telling you about the grilled lily flower topped with tomato, nut and red pepper sauce; or the crayfish in fried chicken skin. Or why not talk about the El Bulli classic, that was now served at 41 grados, the puffed bread surrounded by cured cow meat? And the desserts. Oh, my, I’m telling you, coconut mató (Catalanian cheese) or the strawberry yogurt biscuit.

This was an amazing experience. If I need to express any perceived faults here, it would be that some of the dishes were difficult to eat. I don’t mean that they were hard to eat once you put them in your mouth, I mean that some bites were tiny, and “hidden” on the table. The instructions were clear, “eat the little berry hanging from the tree like thing on your table, put the straw into the flour and drink like a bird, take the little piece of the stones, the one that looks like a pistachio. By all means, all these parts were amazing, but at times it was hard to remember what to take and in what order. None of this was a problem, though, I managed and I wish I could do it again.

Humming bird, licorice cocoon, strawberry rose, lime leaf and infused pine flower

Makrut lime leaf
Pine flower infused in blood orange gel
Licorice cocoon
Strawberry rose with amaretto
Humming brid drink made of carrot, orange, milk, gin and shiso

Black sesame pearl & Infused watermelon

Black sesame pearl
Watermelon infused in yuzu, beetroot and licorice

Buhto & Infused pine flower

Buhto cocktail: mix of sake, sochu, cardamom and limequat
Infused pine flower

Spicy corn tentacles & Tuna millefeuille

The spicy corn tentacles looks like octopus, but is in fact made of rice, quinoa and kimchi
Tuna, avocado and wasabi are presented into apuffed rice and crispy nori millefeuille

Oyster with tiger nut milk

Oyster poached in tigernut milk, topped with lemonquat

Aubergine with caviar

Aubergine chips topped with hazelnut cream, osetra caviar and spicy sesame olive oil

Cone of perretxiko mushroom

Enoki mushroom and wild garlic in pork rib juice

Parmesan and porcini forest floor pistachio and berries

Caramelized rasberries topped with wasabi
Dried porcini mushroom shaped as leaves
Pistachio ganache mixed with honey shaped into a pistachio
Coconut rochers filled with parmesan cheese

Lily flower with romescu

Grilled lily flower topped with tomato, nut and red pepper sauce

Rubia gallega airbaguette

This El Bulli dish is made of puffed bread surrounded by cow.

Horse mackerel and cherry

Smoked horse mackerel served with stracchiatella cheese
Cherry umeboshi

Miso asparragus

Braised asparragus with black garlic in sesame oil and miso sauce

White asparragus bone

White asparragus shaped into a bone marrow, filled with bone marrow and pork rib juice

Chicken and crayfish

Crayfish in fried chicken skin

Suquet

Suquet de peix, “fish stew”, is a Catalonian dish made of fish, shrimps and potatoes. Originally, it was a dish eaten by fishermen with the products they didn’t sell that day.