El Bulli: Cooking in Progress

Each year, the culinary scientists of Spain’s world famous avant-garde restaurant El Bulli closed for six months to prepare the next season’s experimental menu. Before the restaurant shut in 2010, filmmaker Gereon Wetzel followed head chef Ferran Adriá and his team as they retired to the kitchen to scheme. There are doubtless viewers for whom the prospect of a group of undoubtedly talented but largely charisma-free Spaniards buying, discussing, preparing and serving food for 107 minutes sounds like cinematic heaven. For those of us who don’t have an deep interest in freeze-drying, ‘El Bulli’ is astonishingly, sub-‘Masterchef’ dull. And with the likes of rabbit’s brain and ice vinaigrette on the menu, it doesn’t even work as food porn.