On the Catalan coast, not far from the French border, up a narrow road that twists into the mountains, stands the most famous restaurant in the world. Its name is El Bulli, and Ferran Adrià has been chef there for more than 20 years, developing a way of cooking and thinking about food that has fascinated gourmets everywhere. Some call it “molecular gastronomy,” because it transforms ingredients with techniques found more often in the laboratory than the kitchen: oyster juice solidified into a pearl; cheese turned into “frozen air.” Adrià favours the equally cumbersome term “new nouvelle cuisine,” suggesting the movement will have an impact on restaurant cooking as pervasive and revolutionary as that of nouvelle in the 1970s. I have my doubts about that, but the comparison is valid in other ways. Both movements began with master practitioners—philosopher chefs who really were avant-garde artists—and both spawned an army of imitators who aped details without understanding the context or rationale, and dragged the revolution into parody. With nouvelle, it was tiny portions on oversized plates garnished with kiwi and an orchid corsage. With molecular gastronomy, the increasingly commonplace notions of foaming a sauce with a nitrous oxide siphon or serving almost anything on a ceramic spoon are already slithering from novelty into cliché. Public reaction has also been eerily similar. Fans are enthralled, but scoffers find it all precious, unsatisfying and hamstrung by artifice. Even quite worldly trenchermen titter into their napkins when they hear of smoked water or fisherman’s friend sorbet on Adrià’s 26-course, $218 tasting menus (pretty good value, incidentally, for a restaurant with three Michelin stars) On the Catalan coast, not far from the French border, up a narrow road that twists into the mountains, stands the most famous restaurant in the world. Its name is El Bulli, and Ferran Adrià has been chef there for more than 20 years, developing a way of cooking and thinking about food that has fascinated gourmets everywhere. Some call it “molecular gastronomy,” because it transforms ingredients with techniques found more often in the laboratory than the kitchen: oyster juice solidified into a pearl; cheese turned into “frozen air.” Adrià favours the equally cumbersome term “new nouvelle cuisine,” suggesting the movement will have an impact on restaurant cooking as pervasive and revolutionary as that of nouvelle in the 1970s. I have my doubts about that, but the comparison is valid in other ways. Both movements began with master practitioners—philosopher chefs who really were avant-garde artists—and both spawned an army of imitators who aped details without understanding the context or rationale, and dragged the revolution into parody. With nouvelle, it was tiny portions on oversized plates garnished with kiwi and an orchid corsage. With molecular gastronomy, the increasingly commonplace notions of foaming a sauce with a nitrous oxide siphon or serving almost anything on a ceramic spoon are already slithering from novelty into cliché. Public reaction has also been eerily similar. Fans are enthralled, but scoffers find it all precious, unsatisfying and hamstrung by artifice. Even quite worldly trenchermen titter into their napkins when they hear of smoked water or fisherman’s friend sorbet on Adrià’s 26-course, $218 tasting menus (pretty good value, incidentally, for a restaurant with three Michelin stars). Yet few of these critics have actually eaten the dishes they’re mocking. In an ideal world, we would all make the pilgrimage to El Bulli or its rival, the Fat Duck in Bray, England, and taste with an open mind. Meanwhile, Toronto offers two extraordinary, bona fide molecular experiences of its own, thanks to Claudio Aprile at Senses and Robert Bragagnolo at Lobby.

Neither chef claims to do everything Adrià does. For one thing, they don’t have the resources. El Bulli closes for six months every year while the great man retires to his laboratory to work on startling new metamorphoses, turning vinegar to powder, parmesan into marshmallow, liquids to solids and back again. Come summer, the restaurant often boasts a kitchen brigade of more than 50 cooks (about one for every customer), though only eight of them reputedly draw any pay—the rest are there to learn and donate their labour. Aprile flew to Spain to join these El Bulli volunteers last August, and though the trip had its perils—he watched the plane he was supposed to take slide off the runway in flames at Pearson and was almost driven over an 800-foot cliff when the chef at the wheel attempted a late-night shortcut on the way home from the restaurant—he found the experience rewarding.