But El Celler de Can Roca is not the only bright light in the post-El Bulli landscape.
Don't get your hopes up for a tie-in on the level of VW's iPad-friendly Bulli concept, however.
After four consecutive years ranked as the World's Best Restaurant, Spanish restaurant El Bulli takes a seat at No. 2.
Today El Bulli is the benchmark for the world's greatest culinary experience.
Achatz got to visit El Bulli while working at French Laundry, was blown away, and the innovative nature of the food set his mind racing.
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El Bulli would never turn out another alchemical 35-course meal, and those who had not enjoyed a coveted spot at an El Bulli table now never would.
In fact, El Bulli's end seems to have opened up space for other farmers, food producers and chefs to step out of Adria's shadow and show off their culinary diversity.
One such cove is home to El Bulli -- the three-Michelin-star restaurant run by Catalan super chef Ferran Adria -- voted the world's best restaurant a record five times.
The Dining Impossible crew will take over the entire restaurant for a meal of 41 courses, each prepared with 12 flavor components, a mix of El Bulli classics and new concoctions.
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Or they might recreate the restaurant elsewhere to train the as yet unchosen actors for "El Bulli, " a film that will mix fact and fiction about Adria and restaurant's final year.
Yet by the time Adria was 24 he was the head chef at El Bulli on the Catalan coast in northeastern Spain, at that time a struggling restaurant in danger of losing its Michelin-star rating.
El Bulli master Ferran Adria, who in 2011 opened Tickets, a tapas bar in the Sant Antoni neighbourhood, and is also home to institutions including the century-old, 14-seat Bar Pinotxo in La Boqueria market.
If you want to taste this food, you'll have to visit the El Bulli satellite in a hotel outside Sevilla when it reopens in March or wait to be invited as a guest of the academy in 2014.
Notably, a major inspiration for Achatz in creating Alinea was a trip to El Bulli, a restaurant outside of Barcelona, and the one widely thought among those in the know to be the best in the world.
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Akrame Benallal, who trained at Spain's El Bulli and Pierre Gagnaire's eponymous establishment, only knows what he will offer the night before service, when the restaurant team, headed by a young Englishman named Jon Irwin, have discussed what is available.
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If you have read anything about gastronomy in the last decade, you have probably seen your share of what Slate called the I Ate at El Bulli piece, describing the experience with a level of detail usually reserved for high-class erotica.
That is great news for travellers, who could easily spend weeks exploring the region's culinary culture, particularly as some of these other chefs and food producers offer unique, hands-on experiences at much more affordable prices than an El Bulli or El Celler dinner.
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