El Bulli at Next

I finally did some processing of my photos from my visit to Next Restaurant for their El Bulli menu.



For those few folks that have followed my blog from the beginning (I think that would be me and... me?), or just know me in real life, you may remember that I went to El Bulli in 2006 in a trip that also included some biking and football watching. My brother was once again gracious enough to invite me to this dinner and while it perhaps wasn't quite the same brainchanger that my introduction to this style of food preparation was, it was still very, very good. Next chose to take some of the best dishes from a range of years and put them onto one menu. I think because of this, the menu didn't feel quite as contiguous as a menu from a single year, but I suppose the point was not to duplicate- to begin, sitting in a dark room in Chicago in March can't be like sitting next to a beach in Spain in June- so much as to pay tribute to it's influence. Per the menu folder:

"It is impossible to recreate a full sense of time and place here at Next. El Bulli was about more than merely its food. And so, while we have fauthfully recreated these 29 courses, we do so with a nod to chef Adria and his team-- a sense of thanks-- knowing that there is still much work for all of us to do."

So the photos probably won't do much to really communicate what the experience was like. I mean, I framed out my brother and our two dining companions also. But it's all the thing to take pictures of food so there they are.

Looking back at my post from 6 years ago (what? 6 years?), it seems like maybe my life was more interesting than it is now, or at least less about work which I have intentionally avoided posting about here. Or maybe I it was just my life before Twitter and Facebook when I would actually write multiple paragraphs regardless of whether I thought anyone cared (or I just assumed someone would rather than getting a form email from me) instead of thinking, is this worth writing home about in more than 140 characters?

Parry's preview

If you can't make it to SF for the premiere, check this out, I think it captures the core essence of the film. Great work, Parry.

It's not a musical

But here's a music video in anticipation of our world premiere at SFIAAFF!



On a selfish level, this shows more footage from the movie than the trailer, but hopefully either one will lead you to seeing the whole thing at some point if you can't make it to SF or San Jose this month.

a true revolution of values

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look at thousands of working people displaced from their jobs, with reduced income as a result of automation, while the profits of the employers remain intact and say, "This is not just." It will look across the oceans and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia and Africa only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say, 'This is not just.' It will take a look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, 'This is not just.' A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, 'This way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.' A nation that continues, year after year, to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Vancouver x3

Chinese still into bikes

art is life, discuss

more transpo analysis

Would have appreciated a spreadsheet, but all this writeup at My Family's Money is pretty interesting. I like that it adds a valuation of time, which my own analysis did not since I am not nearly so rational about it sometimes (how much would I pay for an extra 20 minutes of sleep while I'm in bed and it's raining outside at 6:30am? Probably a lot more than I would pay to get home 20 minutes sooner when it's sunny and I'm enjoying a burrito in the park).