The Sorcerer's Apprentices

Kitchen Confidential meets Heat in the first behind-the-scenes portrait of the world’s most influential restaurant and the aspiring culinary geniuses who toiled to make it so exceptional.

WHAT GOES ON BEHIND THE SCENES AT ELBULLI?

Elected best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine an unprecedented five times, elBulli is where chef Ferran Adrià’s remarkable cuisine comes to life—with dragon cocktails that make the drinker breathe smoke and caviar made from tiny spheres of olive oil. elBulli is also the object of culinary pilgrimage—millions clamor every year for a reservation at one of its tables.

Yet few people know that, behind each of the thirty or more courses that make up a meal at elBulli, a small army of stagiaires—apprentice chefs—labor at the precise, exhausting work of executing Adrià’s astonishing vision.

In The Sorcerer’s Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adrià’s elBulli, Lisa Abend explores the remarkable system that Adrià uses to run his restaurant and, in the process, train the next generation of culinary stars.

Today, food has become the focus of unprecedented attention, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentices explores the strange evolution—in less than two decades—of a once-maligned profession into a source of celebrity.