Melanie McDonagh has written the Bookend column in this week’s issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog.
In July, the world’s most famous restaurant, elBulli, closes, to reopen in 2014 as a ‘creative centre’. Rough luck on the million-odd people who try for one of 8,000 reservations a year. It’s also a blow for the eponymous young cooks of Lisa Abend’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentices, the 45 stagiaires who labour in Ferran Adria’s kitchen for a season in the hope of sharing in the magic. Ferran, you see, is no mere cook. With him, ‘hot turns into cold, sweet into savoury, solid into liquid or air’.
The stagiaires have a dog’s life by this riveting account: tedious, repetitive work for no pay. They rarely talk to the great man. They don’t taste the dishes.
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