Ferran: "Like Being Waterboarded With Truffle Oil"

The New York Times dropped its review of Colman Andrews' biography of celebrated Spanish chef Ferran Adrià, Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food, and it's sort of not positive? Calling Andrews' book "fawning" and his "awestruck observations" an "appetite suppressant," reviewer Dwight Garner even suggests the quotes from other sources ("To follow the gaze of Ferran requires the training of a triathlete" and "Ferran Adrià did not feed us. He deflowered us") have a "Will Ferrell movie lurking in here somewhere."

While the first two chapters alone compare Adrià to Picasso, Le Corbusier, Walker Evans, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, and incongruously Tiger Woods, Garner says that "if you stick with Ferran details — some of them interesting — emerge." Things like the fact that Adrià has a "larger tongue than normal, with more papillae."

· A Chef as Visionary, Poet and Chemist [NYT]
· All Ferran Adria Coverage on Eater [-E-]
· The Eater Fall 2010 Cookbook and Food Book Preview [-E-]