2006 El Bulli Reservations Sender: Ian

I'm an erstwhile chemist. Now alchemist.

Yes. There's a very interesting expose of the scientific background to meat cooking on the Beeb.

Quite apart from that, given that normally dangerous bacteria are found only on the outside of a piece of solid meat, it makes sense, if you're going to cook at very low temperatures for hours, to make sure that the outside is heated hot enough to kill any.

No. I don't think so.

Various reasons. Immersion in water will tend to remove flavours, that's how stock becomes tasty. Cooking temperature is significantly higher (water simmers at around 90C, I was cold roasting at 55C) Air transmits heat more gently than water (conduction vs convection, fan buttisted). There was surface evaporation, though not much, which also ctended to give different results. I've had poached beef fillet, and thought it was good. This was mind boggling.

It's very hard to buttess how pleasurable a meal has been. Tom S will confirm that we found the food at TFL both extraordinary and also fascinating, because we had points of reference. If the food had been so far outside our experience as El Bulli seems to make , we'd have had nothing to judge it by, in effect. I have no idea HOW I could mark - say - Bocuse, or Bras in purely gustatory terms, with sufficient precision and reproducibility so that I could compare the pleasure recieved at the Fat Duck or El Bulli. Muy point in comparing Bocuse-Bras - but I could have mentioned any provincial michelin 3 star restaurant - with these serious contenders for #1 spot, is that despite the success they achieve in terms of waiting list and rapidity in booking up, their prices are of the same order as that of "ordinary" 3 star places, and cheaper than Bocuse.

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