El Bulli- The Last Supper.

The restaurant, El Bulli, in north-eastern Spain, closed its doors to the public on the weekend after 24 years of head chef Ferran Adria’s extraordinary culinary innovations.

El Bulli has been voted the world’s best restaurant, by Restaurant Magazine, a record-breaking five times, and has managed to maintain a 3 Michelin star rating for over a decade. It has been described as the most imaginative generator of haute cuisine on the planet, and brought Spanish cuisine to the culinary forefront.

Whilst there has been some uncertainty with regards to the future of the restaurant, Adria has announced that over the next two years they will change, evolve and improve the business, reopening as a “centre of creativity” in 2014. Adria said of the closing of the restaurant, that whilst it may seem to be a sad day, really “We are happy. Today we celebrate that this continues.”

El Bulli was famous for its inventive and ground-breaking ‘molecular gastronomy’, open for 6 months of the year, 8,000 diners were served, yet over two million people tried to book. Those lucky few diners were treated to a 34-course meal, exposed to the daring and truly unique combinations of flavours and textures, from a dry martini with olive spheres, to a clam meringue or tobacco-flavoured blackberry crushed ice. Adria’s aim was to shock, provoke and delight the diner, providing them with not only a delicious food but an overall experience.

Whilst some Spanish classics appeared on the menu, they were a world away from the traditional recipes. Take ‘Kellogg’s paella’ for example, which consisted of rice krispies, shrimp heads and vanilla-flavoured mashed potato! Or, perhaps, the deconstructed Spanish omelette- onion puree, potato foam, egg-white sabayon (a light foamy custard) topped with deep-fried potato crumbs.

Whilst El Bulli may no longer be open to the public, what remains certain is that it will be will not cease to push the boundaries of culinary experimentation as a think-tank for creative cuisine; providing the world’s most talented cooks with the highest level of professional training and upholding culinary prestige in Spain.