El Bulli is back

EL BULLI, repeatedly voted the world’s best restaurant before it closed in July 2011, is reopening as a museum to tell the story of how it sparked a culinary revolution in Spain. The premises at Cala Montjoi on Catalunya’s Costa Brava have been renamed as El Bulli 1846 in reference to the 1,846 dishes that

New Take

ARTIST Eva Fabregas has started a new genre - the Bowel Movement. Barcelona-born Fabregas has produced an eye-opening exhibition of ‘living’ sculptures featuring representations of human intestines draped through Santander's Centro Bolin . She designed large bulbous objects with bowel-like bodies that ‘repre-

€11m gourmet museum opens but food will be plastic or wax

chef Ferran Adria says were developed at the restaurant. Adria pioneered molecular gastronomy, the culinary trend that deconstructs ingredients and recombines them in unexpected ways. The resultant dishes produced interesting combinations and textures, such as fruit foam, gazpacho popsicles and caramelised quails. El Bulli was ranked in top spot five times on Restaurant magazine’s Top 50 list of the world’s best eateries.

sent a living organism’.

Apparently her work is concerned with the ‘erotica of the consumer object and the mechanisms of desire’, although for the uninitiated it is quite hard to make the connection.

Fabregas says she creates works that ‘dissect the cacophony that is wellness culture, consumerism, and therapeutic subcultures found on social media’.

Answers on a postcard please.

Op Quick Crossword

Across

7 Feeler (8)

8 Evils (4)

9 Plaid (6)

10 Measurement system (6)

11 Parody (4,2)

13 Monopolize (6)

14 For each (3)

15 The girls from UNCLE? (6)

17 Resist (6)

19 Black Sea port (6)

21 Chopping sport (6)

23 Irish county (4)

24 Ran madly about in America (8)

Down

1 Act properly (6)

2 Let it stand (4)

3 German gin (8)

4 Quantity of paper (4)

5 Cover with decorative paper (4,4)

6 Mountain plant (6)

12 Outcome is in codemust be deciphered (8)

13 Dishes (8)

16 Third-largest ocean (6)

18 Glossy (6)

20 “Or to take --- against a sea of troubles ...” (Shakespeare, Hamlet) (4)

22 Dominion (4)

All solutions are on page 12

“It’s not about coming here to eat, but to understand what happened in El Bulli,” Adria, 61, said of the restaurant he ran for more than two decades. The museum opens this Thursday (June 15), some 12 years after the restaurant was forced to close due to big financial losses. Visitors will be able to see hundreds of photos, notebooks, trophies and models made of plastic or wax that emulate some of the innovative dishes that were served at the eatery.

A foundation set up to maintain El Bulli’s legacy has invested €11 million in the museum with the project first announced in 2019. Plans to expand the building on Cala Montjoi cove had to be changed after running into opposition from environmentalists.

MARINE shells used as ornaments 30,000 years ago have been discovered in a Spanish cave.

Researchers found 13 marine and freshwater shells in the Ardales Cave in Malaga that were ‘carefully transformed’ into ornaments between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago by the first Homo sapiens. They believe the shells were worn as necklaces and earrings and that they were highly prized as the cave is 50 kilometres from the sea.

Researchers from the University of Cadiz explained that this discovery reinforces the site’s position as ‘among the most important on the Iberian Peninsula’.

The analysis of the shells has been headed by UCA professor Juan Jesus Cantillo Duarte who said: “It is unusual to find this type of marine remains in caves located so far inland and with such an ancient chronology.”

Ancient humans used the Ardales cave for over 50,000 years, and it is renowned for art featuring over 1,000 paintings and engravings made by prehistoric people, as well as artifacts and human remains.