Beef

Bourdain (Predictably?) Calls Out Slate’s Anti–El Bulli Piece

Photo: LLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Images

Tony Bourdain jumps on his blog today to discuss the making of his forthcoming El Bulli segment. His first order of business is the IAAEBP (I Ate at El Bulli Piece) critique leveled by Slate’s Noreen Malone, what he calls a “snarky, sour grapesy, but not entirely untrue piece.” (Malone had mentioned Bourdain’s tweeting of his 52-course meal there. Apparently it did not go unnoticed by Tony.) 

To Malone’s piece, which effectively cries, “Enough with the El Bulli pieces!” Bourdain has the storyteller’s ultimate defense and simply tells the tale of his time there. Whether or not it is revelatory will likely depend on how much of a Bourdain fan you are, but he goes so far as to say he had “the greatest meal of my life there, aware all the time that there would never be another.” (If you’ve been under a rock, El Bulli will close at the end of July.) He says the forthcoming segment will be “the show of a lifetime.”

Malone had opined, “Unless you can get Adria to button you into a bib, deconstruct and foam-ify some sweet potatoes, and spoon feed them to you himself while making airplane zooming noises, your account will not surprise me, and will not satisfy me. I’ve read piece after piece and am still unfulfilled; the words, I fear, were all just so much foam.”

Bourdain zings back: “It is worth noting that anyone who bitches about ‘molecular gastronomy’, ‘science cooking’, food with ‘foam’, has, really, no idea what the **** they are talking about. They are certainly not talking about El Bulli, which is none of those things.”

He ends with, “We filmed everything — with the best crew we had. And what we got? In all modesty? It’s ***ing history. It will never be topped.” (Aside: What kind of swear word only requires three asterisks to censor?)

Tony’s stirring up a nice bit of controversy before the segment airs. We’ll be curious to see if it is, in fact, ***ing history

Where The Road Ends [No Reservations]
Earlier: Writer Calls BulliShit on ‘I Ate at El Bulli Pieces’

Bourdain (Predictably?) Calls Out Slate’s Anti–El Bulli Piece