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About a month ago, I returned from a long roadtrip in the US, fired up my computer, and saw a tweet about
Richard Ekkebus getting
Ferran Adrià to come to the
Landmark Mandarin Oriental. Being a HUGE fan of Ferran's, I immediately fired off a tweet to Richard, jokingly asking him
"who do I hv 2 kill 4 a seat?" Richard rather cleverly suggested that I "shoot" an email to him, and so I did as I was told. Soon I had myself a table, and went about recruiting partners in crime.
There was some debate among my friends about whether the price of the dinner was "worth it" or "reasonable". I gotta admit that when I first found out about the cost of dinner - which was, admittedly, AFTER I had asked for a table - I experienced a little sticker shock myself. First of all... this was a book tour by Ferran. Everyone gets a set of the massive
elBulli 2005-2011, the seven-volume compendium published by Phaidon
that weighs a whopping 18kg... This presents a problem for some couples, who don't need 2 sets of books at home... and has led at least one couple to decline my invitation.
Stripping out the list price of the books makes the cost of the 12-course dinner, wine-pairing included, somewhat more palatable. But here we run into another objection from some people : for the not-inconsiderable price, what's on the plate isn't actually cooked by Ferran or his team. It's a menu put together by Richard and Amber Chef de Cuisine Maxime Gilbert - in consultation with (and obviously "approved by") Ferran. So it's not exactly equivalent to a "guest chef" performance. What you get comes 100% from Team Amber (with all due respect from this very fine team).
Comparisons were immediately made with the time Thomas Keller flew in with his team for a guest chef program at the Mandarin Oriental, and how diners experienced sticker shock back then (including myself, before later being told how much free-flowing wine was being poured at those dinners). People scoffed this time just as they did back then.
But plenty of people wanted in on this. Richard was jokingly being compared to Willy Wonka - holding the "golden ticket". Lots of people were more than happy to pay, only to be left empty-handed and upset. That's what you call "star power", and only a few people in the culinary world today command that kind of power.
As for me... even though I knew the cost of the dinner defied normal logic, but having been a huge fan of Ferran
for the last 10 years (and having become an even bigger fan after
having dinner with him two years ago), I dutifully bit the bullet and paid up. I wasn't gonna miss this!