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Ferran Adrià, the famed revolutionary head chef of El Bulli in Spain. Photograph: Murdo MacleodFerran Adrià is not closing El Bulli, the world's (ex-) best restaurant, tonight, he is simply "changing, moving on … improving", a process that involves, erm, closing it. It will reopen as a "creativity centre" in 2014. He announced this decision two years ago, the reason given being that it loses half a million euros a year. Insiders counter that it was a kind of loss-leader, the high concept of the place cross-fertilising other ventures. Or, as Joe Warwick, co-founder of The World's 50 Best Restaurants by Restaurant Magazine, put it: "He has so many commercial endorsements coming out of his arse, I can't believe he's short of money." He meant it in a nice way.
There was a second reason given, though, which was the weight of expectation: while only 8,000 diners were ever served in any given season, two million people tried to book. They flocked for the flavours that were only air, for the things that looked like olives but were really jellies with liquid inside, for the hare that has been moulded to look like a chestnut. This level of erudition takes all the creativity that humankind can muster, which has been well documented in Adrià's case: he's a genius. Everybody knows he's a genius. Hollywood is making a film about what a genius he is.
His inventiveness has passed from the judgments of a few over-weaned restaurant critics into an undisputed pillar of global culture. I've been reviewing restaurants for the Sunday Telegraph for five years: by the time I?started, the Spaniard was already legend. I haven't been to the restaurant. Given the proviso that he's peerless, of course, I have seen the kind of thing he does, sort of replicated at the razzle dazzle end of English restaurants: Sat Bains in Nottingham, Marcus Wareing at?the Berkeley and, in a less fanciful, more traditional way, Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons, Nathan Outlaw.
Probably the only English chef to have suffered the same curse of El Bulli would be Heston Blumenthal – namely, the longer they are open, the more word spreads of their unexpectedness, and the more people come to expect. It's a race to the top, but at some point you have to ask, the top of what? This kind of cooking is extremely labour intensive; if you're going to present some blood in a bag on the side of the plate, not to eat, just to smell, you are going to need more than a chef and a sous chef. There are probably as many people making radical textures in this three-starred restaurant as there are in a major research university trying to figure out nuclear fusion. As one restaurant insider said: "I?would not devote a brigade of 70 people to turn out something that looks like an olive but is actually something else. I don't think that's a proper use for 70 highly trained people."
Just because El Bulli is closing doesn't mean the world has lost this intricacy of endeavour. In Copenhagen, René Redzepi so far has only two Michelin stars, but relieved El Bulli of its best restaurant in the world title in 2010, and kept the prize this year. As a character, Redzepi seems to distil the essence of what we currently think of as "best": there is nothing fussy or flamboyant about him; he is the opposite of what you'd think of as the Michelin "personality". If you were asked to guess what he did, you would most likely say conceptual artist: he's taciturn, watchful, amused.
His restaurant, Noma, takes the efforts of excellence one step further, blending the experimentation that Adrià and Blumenthal trailblazed with an obsessive devotion to localism and seasonality, so?that in the depths of winter, all you can eat at Noma is stuff that's been preserved in ice (or, as we might say, "frozen") or buried underground for two years. Adrià didn't really care where his turtle doves came from; that's what people said, anyway. Of course, you can never truly know a man's heart when it comes to a turtle dove.
It's fair to say that excellence, now, is measured in ways other than Michelin stars: The World's 50 Best Restaurants is taken as, or more, seriously because it's seen as more transparent, canvassing more opinion, and letting in the new world (a Californian restaurant won twice). Although Michelin will catch up with restaurants of renown, it no longer dictates the hierarchy.
Michelin itself has changed, moving away from its traditional roots, opening up in New York, the rest of America, Tokyo and Kyoto, all these guides having different sensibilities to the classic European model. Warwick says: "There are places that have Michelin stars in Hong Kong that are just holes in the wall. There's a place that does dim sum for about eight quid."
Traditionally the Michelin priorities were strict and, some would say, a bit perverse. In theory, the stars were awarded on the basis of the food, with a number of knives and forks (couvert) to indicate comfort. A bistro could get one couvert and three stars. In practice, however, nowhere ever got three stars that wasn't absurdly formal, with suffocating amounts of linen, and fleets of staff whose obsequiousness came with the hint of a threat that if it were revealed you didn't know what spoon to use, they would be the first to tell you. For years, three stars were reserved for restaurants with very French sensibilities, leading to the justifiable accusation that it was essentially a grading system for how French restaurants were.
Delia Smith said earlier this month: "I?like the 70s the best. Gifted amateurs opened restaurants and pubs and you could have real food. If I am in a Michelin-starred restaurant and they have done this beautiful little smoked haddock soufflé in a thimble, I would like to order a whole big plateful. No, I'm not for four-course tasting menus."
This system privileged fuss: assuming you were allowed to choose your own food (by no means a given at the top end), you could never just go straight into a starter. There would always be an amuse-bouche or three; there would be a pre-dessert to flatter your palate in preparation for your actual dessert; instead of a sugar cube, finely spun sugar would arrive on a porcelain stirrer made by someone exquisite. Sticking my neck out – this is a subjective view – people hate this kind of eating. You see it in country house hotels, the one- or two-star brigade, that sometimes have a golf course attached: couples are valiantly trying to leven the atmosphere with, I don't know, something as simple as a conversation, but it's all too ceremonial, and ceaselessly interrupted by waiters explaining how they managed to turn a leek into a cappuccino.
And, even without the liquid nitrogen and chemistry lessons, this is an expensive way to eat: Blumenthal once explained the economics to me. It's simple, but I hadn't given it much thought: "You could borrow a million quid to redo the dining room, and pay that off, and that would be nothing compared to employing another two members of staff." This necessitates very high prices, to the point that a restaurant in N?mes, Le Lisita, last month gave its stars back, feeling that its price points were alienating, and that, ahead of kudos, it would prefer some actual customers. Michelin rewarded fuss, fuss takes people, people cost money, punters will pay money, but you've got to wonder, at some point, whether the bit they're paying for is the bit they're enjoying.
In terms of service, then, the modern seats of food excellence have really moved away from the Michelin standards: Warwick credits Redzepi with having pioneered the new egalitarianism, where the hierarchy between chefs and waiters has been collapsed, and the chefs, from their visible kitchen, will walk out, "all bearded and handsome and articulate", and give you your food. This is certainly the way Nuno Mendes does it in Viajante. Trained at El Bulli, Mendes opened Bacchus, in Hoxton, before taking over Bethnal Green Town Hall for a couple of restaurants, of which the cheap, informal one – the Corner Room – is by far the best. But even in places which have much more of a friendly, edgy feel, the elaboration of the food is still too much.
Delia Smith is right about the tasting menu. Nobody wants to eat a tasting menu, not professionals, not regular people, not chefs. It's not even that there will be too much to eat (I took my mother to Viajante, and she spent the entire lunch saying: "Six courses! I can't eat six courses!" They are not very big, so it's a?lot like eating three courses. I could have eaten a pasty on the way home). No, what people dislike is the message: you're not in charge, the chef's in charge. This isn't a service environment, this is an art environment.
It's legitimate, as a lot of these people are very creative. Mendes, for instance, uses dental tweezers to get things into the right shape. How can you argue with care like that? But it's also intimidating, a bit distracting, and you can't relax. History would have us believe that there was a time when people enjoyed being intimidated, when being bullied by a waiter was all part of the security of knowing where you stood in the world. I?don't know if that was ever the case, but it isn't now.
The creativity and perfectionism lend themselves to a comparison with the art world, but the analogy more often made is between top-end restaurants and haute couture. Just as you wouldn't look at an outfit on a catwalk and think "but could I run for a bus in it?", so you shouldn't be looking at five textures of cauliflower and wondering if you would prefer a nice cauliflower cheese with crispy bits on top. And just as trends will travel from couture to the high street, where they will be affordable and wearable, so important restaurants will be the engine of invention for the rest of the food business. You cannot throw a stick in a restaurant at the moment without hitting some sorrel, and that's come from Noma. All kinds of food trends, from obscure game birds to savoury ice creams, will start at the top and work their way into mid-range eating, though probably not to Strada.
The sticking point is that art and fashion last, whereas food is evanescent. You think of great acts of creativity, and their value is tied up with what they left to posterity. There's something unsettling about seeing so much effort, intellect and expertise, lavished upon something that you're just about to eat. The higher the esteem in which you hold the chef, the more abashed you feel by your own role in the proceedings. It's like going to an exhibition in which you demonstrated your appreciation by kicking the art off the walls. I saw an argument once between Marco Pierre White and the journalist Pete Clark – it would ill-behove me to call anybody drunk in this exchange, but they were, and they were having a fight about mushy peas. Pierre White said: "What's?your opinion, anyway? Tomorrow's chip?paper." Clark replied: "And what's your work going to look like?tomorrow?"
The values of the old-school Michelin system, and the distended excellence that has grown in its wake, can all look like an elaborate disguise where the heightened refinement is there to distract you from the worldliness of food. You'll eat it. You'll digest it. You'll?expel it. And that will be that.
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