Features September 2, 2010, 5:00PM EST

"Will You Eat Rabbit Brains?"

(page 2 of 2)

Wrapped in nori seaweed, moistened with plum juice and green and bitter almond oils. Strong flavors, not entirely pleasant.

Parmesan dumplings with tallarines. Mildly cheese-flavored soft dough wrapped around barely cooked sea-bright miniature clams. Very good.

Baby cuttlefish with pesto ravioli. Three triangular pale green ravioli—the pesto was "spherified," forming both the ravioli wrapper and the filling—with a lightly cooked little cuttlefish; dots of its ink accented the plate. Just plain delicious.

Mandarin flower sorbet with pumpkin oil, pumpkin seeds, and mandarin seeds. A dramatic transition from the previous two dishes; a frozen custard, not very sweet, served in a hollowed-out white cube.

Spherified Parmigiano gnocchi. Very light "pasta" with a pronounced Parmigiano flavor. Sauce of concentrated hazelnut oil overpowered it.

Anchovy with truffle. Good anchovies are one of Spain's great food treasures; they don't need truffle oil.

Tomatoes and basil. A wonderful example of how Adrià reinterprets familiar flavors. Confit cherry tomatoes, dehydrated and injected with olive oil, looked like chocolate-glazed profi teroles (they were coated in black olive oil with dots of balsamic vinegar); with them were fake "olives" fashioned out of puréed Japanese black garlic, and "basil leaves" made of dried caramelized mango coated with basil water powder. A triumph.

Coco with caviar. A yin-yang presentation of coconut milk and thickened coconut water topped with three small spoonfuls of real caviar. Off the wall, but appealingly so.

Lulo. This is a high-acid tropical fruit from Colombia (Solanum quitoense), with a citrusy, faintly metallic character. It had been concentrated into a kind of firm jelly and was served with little clouds of whipped yogurt and dots of unsweetened cacao. Interesting.

"Tagliatelle." Usually served atop the lulo, but in this case a separate course: a coil of noodles made not from flour but from frozen foie gras fat, dusted with crystals of salt. A love-it-or-hate-it proposition. I loved it. Don't tell my cardiologist.

Veal tendon. Like some slow-braised red-cooked Chinese meat dish, rich and very flavorful, served in a tarragon-scented broth, then followed by a small, tiny-handled spoon of bone marrow soup. Really good.

Abalone. Thin-sliced baby abalone, the pieces interleaved with wisps of ham fat, surrounded by black Codium seaweed, ginger jelly, golden enoki stems, hazelnut oil....Too much going on, could never get the dish in focus.

Soup of mango and begonia flower tea. Thin, aromatic fruit punch. Okay.

"Nenúfars." A soup, based on elderflower syrup, that looked like a tiny, yellowish lily pond; the pond was inset with "water lilies" of nasturtium leaf and (very bitter) Australian finger lime and with brittle-like cashew rock and little pink and white flowers preserved in sugar. Floral and sharp. Didn't love it.

Pork tail. Sweet meat, mahogany in color, crunchy and superb, alongside a ham soup with melon, cilantro, jasmine drops, and carnation flowers. Elegant evocation of prosciutto and melon.

Green walnuts with endive. An almost recognizable version of the classic salad, with a jumble of soft, herbaceous walnuts glazed in Roquefort, out of which rose a bud of red- tinged Belgian endive upended like a rocket about to be launched.

Sea anemone 2008. Just your everyday mix of sea anemone, raw rabbit brains, oysters, and calamondin (a sour-sweet Southeast Asian citrus) in lukewarm dill broth. A food blogger described this creation as "Vile. Vomitous. Nightmare!" I found it so unpleasant and cacophonous that I wondered whether Adrià had gone off the rails. It made my teeth ache.

Game canapé. Duck foie gras and hare sauce made into a paste and spread on a bitter cacao cracker. Very good, despite the ghost of truffle oil in the background.

Flower canapé. A bar of meringue topped with tiny but pungent yellow-green Sichuan pepper blossoms and two or three other kinds of minuscule flowers. Neither refreshing nor very flavorful. I could easily have skipped it.

Honey caramel. A crisp wafer of caramelized honey and sunflower seeds glistening with bitter arbutus honey. Brilliant, a perfect confection.

Elderberry juice. Just that, with honey water jelly stirred in. Tasted like bubble bath.

"Autumn landscape." Sculpture on a plate, an evocative scene built from spice bread, licorice, frozen chocolate powder, and cherry sorbet, all excellent and all in surprising harmony. A truly memorable dessert, beautiful to look at and a joy to eat.

Morphings. What would be called mignardises in a French restaurant or pequeñas locuras (little follies) in Spain, something to go with the coffee—in this case, 25 or 30 little candies and confections, most of them chocolate, presented in a beautiful, dark-wood treasure chest (sometimes jokingly referred to as the "Caja [box or strongbox] Willy Wonka"). I managed a few, including a dark-chocolate-framed mint leaf, a chocolate flavored with eucalyptus, an airy but crisp chocolate-yogurt sponge, a bit of freeze-dried peach coated in dark chocolate, and a couple of branches of chocolate "coral," given color by sour cherry powder. All were impeccable.

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