The Sorcerer's Apprentices: a season ao elBulli - Tapa blanda

It is, arguably, the most famous restaurant in the world and perhaps one of the most significant and influential ever: the legendary 'el Bulli' in Catalonia has attained a near mythic reputation for culinary wizardry. But what actually goes on behind the scenes? What is the daily reality of life in the world's greatest kitchen? The Sorcerer's Apprentices tells first-hand the story of a young chef enrolled in the restaurant's legendary training course. It shows her struggle to adapt to the culture shock of el Bulli, how she and the other apprentices learn to push themselves and the limits of their culinary abilities, how they adjust to a style of cooking that is creative in the extreme and how they deal with the pressures of performing at the highest level night after night. In past years stagiers have clashed with the rather severe demeanor of Oriol Castro, the restaurant's chef de cuisine; others have gone on to work permanently at the restaurant. One, inevitably, is sent home each year, unable to fit into the high-wire act that is the el Bulli kitchen. Complicating things even more, the stagiers live together in shared apartments, so the events and emotions of their personal lives bleed more than usually into the professional. The Sorcerer's Apprentices tells these smaller, more human stories as well. At its heart, The Sorcerer's Apprentices is a quest: it tells the tale of a handful of aspiring young men and women who submit themselves to a grueling challenge in order to be made better by it. It also offers an unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look at the most famous restaurant in the world through the lens of those who, ultimately, make it work.

Lisa Abend is journalist based in Madrid. For the past three years, she has been Time magazine's correspondent in Spain, where she writes about everything from international terrorism, to climate change, to immigration, to costumed debt collectors (with, needless to say, a fair number of bullfighting stories thrown in for good measure.) As a freelancer, she has written on learning the Basque language for The Atlantic; on volunteer bit torrent translators for Wired; on the plight of Roma women for Ms., on prime minister Zapatero's republican upbringing for The American Prospect; on the recovery of the Iberian lynx for National Wildlife; and on the situation in Western Sahara for The Economist. Her real love, though, is food writing. She contributes regularly to all the major American food magazines, and has written features on a Marrakech cooking school (Bon Appetit); on culinary travels through Extremadura (Gourmet); on a collective of grandmothers in Catalonia who preserve traditional cuisine (Saveur) and on learning to love pig face (Food and Wine). Her food writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, and the Christian Science Monitor. She hosts an upcoming episode on Andalusia in the third season of PBS' Diary of a Foodie. In a previous life (that is, about 5 years ago) she was a professor of Spanish history at Oberlin College.