El Bulli has been called the best restaurant in the world and Ferran Adrià, its creator, deemed a brilliant innovator, the father of molecular gastronomy, or sometimes just a crazy chef. The restaurant, located outside of Barcelona, closes each year for 6 months, as Adrià and staff sequester themselves to concentrate on creating the new culinary wonders that will become their next 30-course menu. (The restaurant accommodates only 50 for dinner, despite two million annual requests for reservations.)

This is cooking as avant-garde art: a cocktail composed of hazelnut oil, salt and water or a dessert of freeze-dried peppermint and ice shavings. Surrounded by bizarre, high-tech equipment, elaborate containers, chopping blocks and knives, they experiment with making mushroom juice and sweet potato meringue. Gereon Wetzel’s elegant, observational documentary captures the razor-sharp, science-fiction sensibility at work. Adrià exclaims: “The more bewilderment, the better.”