Last April 14, El Bulli was named the World's Best Restaurant by the prominent London publication Restaurant magazine, beating out "hometown" favorite and last year's winner The Fat Duck. I had a reservation at El Bulli on April 20. Imagine my delight.

"Super-foodies" know that El Bulli is the domain of chef Ferran Adrià. He has been called the most innovative chef in culinary history, the Salvador Dali of food, the best chef of the 20th century, and on and on and on. Check out his Web site — there are 2,091 PAGES of press clippings.

If a sub-super-foodie had to sum him up in one lay word, that word would probably be "foam." Yes, he's the one who brought that bubbly trend to the surface and it is, believe me, alive and well in his kitchen. He practices what has recently come to be known as "molecular gastronomy" and the condition appears to be contagious — Homaro Cantu at Moto and Grant Achatz at Alinea Restaurant, both in Chicago, and Wylie Dufresne at WD50 in New York are probably the best-known American disciples. Basically, these guys manipulate food: They powder it, they foam it, they use liquid nitrogen to transform it, they do everything EXCEPT, I think, cook it.

And so, we arrive at what for me amounts to the Big Question. Do you go to El Bulli for what we mortals call dinner? I think not. You go to El Bulli for an experience unique in all the world (I think). It is positively theatrical. But in my extremely humble opinion, it is not dinner. And although I'm sure that Adrià CAN indeed cook, you'd be hard-pressed to judge his traditional culinary skills from the 30 courses (yes, 30, and I use the term "course" lightly) that were set before a friend and me on that Thursday night in April.

I've heard everything from six months to three years is the waiting time for a reservation. When I knew I was going to Spain — last October — I thought, what the heck? I'll e-mail the restaurant and see. With only 50 seats and open only six months of the year, five nights a week, I figured my chances were slim to none. Imagine my surprise when four weeks to the day later I got that elusive, "We're pleased to confirm your reservation ..." via return e-mail.

So go for it if you're planning to be in the neighborhood and have $225 or so, per person, to spare. The bad news is that chef Adrià has said this is his last season in the kitchen at El Bulli — what with his science experiments in Madrid needing his attention, not to mention his catering company, product manufacturing businesses, and $350 cookbooks. But never mind, he wasn't in the kitchen the night we were there, either. And I suspect, especially after talking to industry insiders, that he's not there behind the st... uh, I mean the liquid nitrogen tank much these days anyway.

The restaurant's location is spectacular, on a remote beach just outside the town of Roses on Spain's Costa Brava. And if you think "getting there is half the fun," imagine the first time you drove the road to Hana, only steeper, only at night.

You are greeted at the entrance and then ushered into the doorless kitchen for a short tour — two hot lines, garde manger (cold food) area, patisserie. And, oh yes, there are 35 cooks. For 50 seats. But then, there are 55 servers. For 50 seats.

The restaurant is beautiful in a traditionally upholstered sort of way — comfortable chairs, white linen. There is one "balcony" area overlooking the back half of the dining room with some comfy-looking furniture and a fabulous little modern art collection including several bulldogs in different media (el bulli means "bulldog" in Spanish). The only thing is that I never saw anybody up there all night.

Oh, it's also very, very quiet. We were told that Chef doesn't allow any music in the dining room. He does, however, allow talking.

OK, the food. I suppose you could stretch the definitions and say the "meal" was divided into appetizers, mains and dessert. But you'd be pushing it. The first thing we were served was the "house cocktail": cachaca (a Brazilian sugarcane liquor) and lime juice whisked together tableside with liquid nitrogen — for dramatic effect, no doubt — then placed in a hollowed-out lime skin sitting in a white plastic cube on top of a black stone, served with a tiny silver "shovel." So, basically what we have here is lime shave ice with a little alcohol and a fancy spoon.

Next — and I swear I am not lying — tarragon concentrate. I just don't know what else to say about this.

"Course" No. 3. Out came what looked like a mason jar of marinated olives. What we were served was the "shell" of an olive with gelatin and calcium. Sort of like a very clean, smooth oyster with a hole in the middle that tasted a little bit like olive.

Nos. 4, 5 and 6 were served together and these were really fun. Pine-nut marshmallows (savory), tropical fruit "chips" (a consistency like the coating on a candy apple but clear), black olive wafers filled with creme fraiche (savory Oreos, so to speak).

I'm not going to make you sit through all 30 courses — it took more than four hours for us to do it. So I'll just tell you that my favorites were: No. 8, "Rice Snakes," crispy white rice shaped into long squiggles served in powdered nori and wasabi; No. 9, "Golden Egg, " a tiny liquid egg yolk center enrobed in an orange "candy" coating flecked with real gold, an explosion of flavor and surprise; No. 10, "Ham Sandwich," a clever inside-out version made of a crispy cone of bread wrapped with a slice of ham; No. 11, "Popcorn Cloud," a puff of popcorn-flavored cotton-candy-like something sprinkled with extremely fine sugar that you had to scrunch up in your hand and pop into your mouth in order to obey the server's instructions that it "must be eaten in two bites, no more!" (There was a lot of that "must be eaten in ..." throughout the evening. Every one of my friends is shocked that I put up with it.)

More favorites: No. 25, a local, creamy cheese served with honey biscuits; and No. 26, "White Licorice Bonbon," a frozen-rock-solid white licorice bonbon filled with peach liqueur and accompanied with a tiny silver spoon of peach puree. This, by the way, is the only course not photographically preserved for posterity. I wasn't quite able to hear the explanation of this course and asked the server to please repeat it. He did but added,"You must eat this RIGHT NOW!" I guess the three seconds it took him to describe it again combined with the three seconds it would have taken me to get a picture would have rendered this frozen morsel inedible.

Fully 11 courses entailed foam, some tasty, others downright foul (rose foam). At least four involved powder: wasabi, nori, green tea, almond. The most popular of Adrià's ingredients seemed to be passion fruit, popcorn, Parmesan, mozzarella and raspberry.

The woman at the table behind us was celebrating her birthday and the servers brought out a pretty spiffy-looking birthday cake with four layers, made out of paper. She asked if anything on it was edible. "The candle," the waiter responded.

A couple near the back of the dining room heard us speaking English as they passed the table and stopped to chat. The woman swooned about the meal as if she had seen God. When I politely disagreed, you'd have thought I'd insulted her child, she was that miffed. "This is what every chef in the world aspires to," she said. I politely disagreed again.

So here's the thing. If you go knowing what you're in for, it's a big, gigantic, once-in-a-lifetime treat whether, frankly, you like the "food" or not.

What would have made it better for me, is if the dozens and dozens of people who work at El Bulli had even the tiniest bit of fun with us during the service. The whole deal is simply NOT as serious as they all think — or portray it to be.

I'm sure the air of gravity comes from the top. But if this food isn't amusing, I don't know what it is.