El Bulli: Has anyone been this year yet?

What's on the menu? What is the meal cost this year? Any advice regarding wine pairings? Thank you!

We asked the wine guy to pick for us, and stay Spanish. We were 8 people so we mostly had magnums. I am a total cork dork that loves geeking out on pairings, but at el bulli the food is so captivating you hardly notice the wine. So grows together goes together seemed to make the most sense.
The morels with pine and cream was very interesting with the ribera red but it probably would have been with any.

Link: http://www.augieland.blogs.com

I haven't translated my copy yet and can't remember enough detail to list in English, so here is the menu for May 3, 2006 in Spanish:

fresas/mandarina campari
aceitunas verdes sfericas
croquanter de guanabana
serpiente
corteza de salmon
parma/pasion (passion fruit tuiles filled with shaved parma, perfect)
waffles de oliva negra
galletas heladas
esencia de mandarina
nitro-fresas, parmegiano
caviar sferico de melon
brioche al vapor de mozzarella al perfume de rosas (brioche filled with mozzarella with rose foam -- one of the more amazing dishes I had, could eat this for breakfast everyday)
deshielo
migas de almendra, tomate raff, sauco y gele de almendruco
esparragos en escabeche
guisantes al jamon con ravioli cremoso a la menta fresca y aire de eucalipto
mejillones sferificados con sopa de patata al bacon y creme doble
ventresca de salmon con encurtidos
ostras con panceta iberica ahumada, sopa montada con su grasa
perrechicos escaldados
colmenillas a la crema
virutas ibericas con pure de patatas (another great dish -- Iberico jamon layered over a sort of potato foam)
patas de pollo crispy (chicken feet!)
torta canarejal con merengue de miel (oh my, my favorite dish -- an entire torta del casar type cheese, cut open tableside, perfectly runny in the middle and served with honey wafer/meringues; not every table got this, I'd recommend asking for it)
liquid de melocton
helado de coco con merengue ligero de zanahoria
morphings...

I have, it was brilliant. it was 170 euros for food. we asked the sommelier to pair mid-range local wines. We had mostly whites, a glass of red each (there was only one meat course) and then ended with a sweet Spanish wine with desserts. The sommelier can help you better on wines than I can.

thank you susan. what was the cost of the wine pairings? how many pairings did you get? thank you.

I don't know how much the wine was. My boyfriend paid for wine while the rest of us (four of us) paid for dinner. The wine list is huge - lots of choice and the sommelier is very helpful. I think if you just indicate how much you want to pay he'll work around that. We are moderate drinkers and he didn't push us to have too much. We started off with a glass of cava each (except for my BF who had sherry) then a whole bottle of white then a half bottle of white (except it wasn't a proper half-bottle; it was the remains of a full-bottle. But it was still fresh) then a glass of red each then with the desserts, a half-bottle (a proper one) of lovely Spanish sweet wine.
The sommelier said at the beginning of the meal that it's more of a white wine dinner. And of course he was right.

We told the sommelier we liked Martin Codax & that gave him the idea that something in the under 50E range would be good. He came up with 2 lovely whites - Do Ferreiro Capas Vellas Rias Baixas '03 & Xarel.lo Pairal '03 @ I think 40E & 45E. I wouldn't even bother with red, as that one pork dish is over so quickly & the rest of the menu is very white-driven.

Did you have pork? Our server said ours was baby lamb which was served with "milk air"; I wondered if it was a play on the traditional dish of lamb cooked in it's mother's milk.
But the menu says it's cabrito, which is goat, unless it means something else in Catalan.

Sorry, we were there last August, not this year, & it was pork.

Baby goat in Catalan is "cabret"... "cabrito" is indeed Castellano and does mean "kid". Lamb in Catalan would be "xai" or "corder" (depending on the age); pork is "porc".

[mstinawu]

How did you get your reservation?!