There was talk of the food being witty, which gave me nervous indigestion. Some described it as unsatisfying, citing far too many courses and collective gastronomic amnesia. Still others termed it techno food, designed to wow fellow chefs but incomprehensible to the average punter. Words like ‘experimental’, ‘virtuoso’, ‘postmodern’ and ‘off the wall’ were bandied freely around. Seldom, in the history of great meals, has a dinner been more gleefully anticipated, chattered over and enthusiastically pre-deconstructed than this one.

Chef Ferrán Adrià likes to play with his food. He spends half the year doing it at his workshop-laboratory in Barcelona. The other half of the year he puts the play into practice in his restaurant up the coast. He’s into ‘solid’ foams, explosively tasty sauces designed to be sucked from plastic pipettes, soups which are hot at the top and cold at the bottom, warm jellies which magically don’t melt. The food fizzes and froths and foams. It’s physics-defying stuff, a game, a challenge, a sort of culinary jeu d’esprit. It’s also good to eat.

Dinner began in the kitchen where we saluted the chef and his brigade (35, for 45 diners) while sucking pensively on a slab of frozen caipirinha infused with tarragon. At table we sailed into the ‘snacks’, twelve in all (there’s only one menu, from which you can rule out any personal dislikes or own up to allergies). First came paella crujiente, like seafood-saffron-flavoured Rice Crispies. Diners all around us slit open neat cellophane sheaths, threw back their heads and shuffled the contents down with a delighted crunch.

There was chicharrón made from a flattened and frizzled chicken’s foot (more enthusiastic munching), and canapés of ceps, some in wafer-thin strips, others for slurping from a cigarette-sized tube. The patatas al vinagre (potato crisps/chips with vinegar) were a nice take on the sort of food most Brits come to the Costa Brava for, except these were freshly fried discs of potato destined to be dipped into a coiled heap of glistening white gloop – it looked like raw meringue but it tasted like vinegar. 

For the sashimi of prawns, an entire, flattened and fried gamba was impaled on a syringe-like plastic dispenser which housed an intensely flavoured, soy-based sauce. We did as bidden and got stuck into the prawn while enthusiastically pumping the sauce from the dispenser. 

Remember ice cream sandwiches by the seaside, in which a slab of ice cream was corseted by two wafers? Adrià’s interpretation is a Parmesan ice cream sandwiched between cheesy tuiles. The caramelised quail’s egg decorated with gold leaf was presumably what inspired the edible Fabergé egg comparison. The last ‘snack’ was the much-chronicled minty pea soup, served in a small, tall glass. ‘Drink up – don’t stop!’ instructed a smiling, androgynous waitperson. It was hot at the top and iced at the bottom and somehow the twain never did meet.

We moved on briskly to the ‘tapas’, nine in all. There were Thai-flavoured frozen grapefruit flakes, served with a slab of one of Adrià’s famous foams, this one made of coconut milk and drizzled with olive oil. Tackling the iced Parmesan and polenta was rather like eating Parmesan-flavoured snowflakes. The tagliatelle a la carbonara was a humorous re-creation of pasta carbonara in which the ‘pasta’ turned out to be translucent, tagliatellish ribbons of jellied chicken stock redolent with truffles, and served with tiny bacon and Parmesan dice.

After a ‘couscous’ of cauliflower (cauliflower crumbs scattered with lemon verbena, with crunchy cinnamon breadcrumbs and chervil on the side) came a dish of ham and eggs. A buxom egg yolk, soft, runny and divested of its white, was surrounded by cubes of jamón jabugo. The white of egg had been whipped to a frenzy and floated lightly over the dish. The ensuing fizzy carrot juice dispensed from a soda siphon (‘to clean the palate after the jabugo ham’) was a little too close to spa cuisine for comfort.

At this stage of the game, even my shoes were beginning to feel a little tight. So much for those who’d claimed the portions were tiny (they were) and that we’d go away hungry (fat chance). There was still “arroz” negro to come – once again there was the ‘gotcha!’ phenomenon. Not rice, but bean sprouts cut in short, rice-like lengths and served in squid ink with pulpitos (infant octopus). ‘Es precioso',  murmured a lady at the next door table – 'como los Reyes Magos! (‘it’s beautiful – just like a Three Kings party!') . Then came a little ragout of thumbnail-sized slivered ceps with plucked elderflowers and grated almonds, and more foam. 

Next we nibbled on three ‘travelling oysters’ with crispy seaweed. They were lined up beside a bar of algae-infused foam on which were perched little heaps of things Japanese, Thai and Mexican - hence the travelling allusion. The climax came with a “ravioli” of cuttlefish, small, plump cushions enclosing coconut milk. ‘Importantísimo to eat it all in one go!’ came the instructions – ‘it explodes’. Later the waiter came back and asked with a grin ‘how was it for you?’ We confirmed, straight-faced, that it had definitely exploded. (I had to be restrained from bolting back into the kitchen to find out how the cuttlefish cushion could possibly have held together in its pre-explosive phase.) 

By now I was beginning to stall. I wished only for a bed upstairs into which I could curl up, and come back tomorrow for the rest. We marched manfully on with sea cucumbers, skate, a civet of rabbit with foie gras sauce and a warm apple jelly. The final “ravioli” was a frozen disc of fennel enclosing a toffee-like filling. The desserts were mercifully light, yogurt- and fruit-based. Even the friandises (pequeñas locuras), usually eminently resistible, almost managed to seduce. 

El Bulli is open only for dinner (shame about the view, not visible at night) for just six months of the year, so tables fall firmly into the hens’ teeth category. Why are so many people falling over themselves to try and get a booking? The décor is homespun, the floor tiles truly ghastly, the lighting dire. The service is attentive, relaxed and playful. It’s the food you go for, stupid. It’s beautiful, witty (yes), satisfying, memorable, technically close to the edge and – most important of all - dazzling in its combination of tastes, textures and temperatures.