Well a food writer as done just that.
He has accuse Ferran Adria, often described as the world’s best chef, of unintentionally poisoning diners with additives.
Adria, who presides over El Bulli, near Barcelona, inspires a reverence of hushed tones as he creates more of an art form than a cuisine.
It may take years to get a booking but Jörg Zipprick, a German food writer, is unimpressed with the sacred robes of “molecular gastronomy” and says menus should carry health warnings informing diners of the additives in the dishes.
“These colorants, gelling agents, emulsifiers, acidifiers and taste enhancers that Adria has introduced massively into his dishes to obtain extraordinary textures, tastes and sensations do not have a neutral impact on health,” adding that some have a laxative effect.
Molecular cooks also use polysaccharides from seaweed, which Zipprick says are suspected of causing intestinal cancer.
Chef Adria’s dismisses the claim saying, that the chemicals he uses have been part of holy cuisine for years and he denies his dishes pose any risk to health.
But Zipprick is not alone questioning Adria’s use of ingredients more often associated with food processing than with this cuisine. His book, The Unappetising Underside of Molecular Cooking, followed last year’s attack on Adria by Santi Santamaria, another top Spanish chef, who asked in a newspaper: “Can we be proud of a cuisine which fills plates with gelling agents and laboratory emulsifiers?”
The restaurant charges about $400 a head and opens for only six months a year, giving the chef time to develop new creations at his “laboratory” in Barcelona.
Some diners claim to have found it too much.
There have been those who almost walked out after being served a wafer called “electric milk” that “incinerated her tongue”, while another said “the meal ... was an experience and art. I enjoyed it enormously and it made me vomit”.
