With seemingly genuine concern, the waiter asks if there is anything we can't or won't eat.

A reasonable question considering the restaurant. We're seated on the breezy terrace at El Bulli in Spain, about three hours northeast of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast. Many consider El Bulli ("bulldog") among the best restaurants in the world, and it's certainly the most buzzed about - on www.egullet.com, in Wine Spectator and in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, among others.

For at least two years, Ferran Adria, (most call him "Ferran") the self-taught chef-owner of the small Michelin 3-star, has drawn much praise and a few pans for his creative - some might say really weird - tasting menus of two dozen-plus tapas-size courses.

Here, near the birthplace of Salvador Dali, Adria pushes the envelope of culinary creativity, serving airy carrot-tangerine foams, bone marrow and rabbit brains, cherries glazed with lard and other strange concoctions.

Ferran Adria of El Bulli is a self-taught chef of culinary oddities. (www.elbulli.com photo)

So when the waiter asks, I respond that none of us (my wife and two American friends, Jim and Deborah) suffer from food allergies. But I confess I don't want to eat brains of any kind - on this night, anyway.

The handsome man in the black suit glances over his notes and assures me there are no brains on the evening menu. Of course, we soon discover that it's what he doesn't tell us that will make this perhaps the most memorable meal of our lives.

Tough table to get

Much of the El Bulli mystique is fueled by the overwhelming demand to eat there. According to growing legend, El Bulli can seat 8,000 customers during its six-month season. But the restaurant receives more than 300,000 requests a year for tables.

Imagine my excitement when a response arrived to my e-mailed request for El Bulli reservations: Due to a fortuitous cancellation, a table for four was available in late September. In order to realize our quest to eat at El Bulli, all we had to do was confirm our reservations a week ahead - and get there.

And it's during that white-knuckled drive to El Bulli - up, down and around steep, narrow mountain roads with no guard rails, thousands of feet above the azure sea - that I think we might not get there. Alive, anyway.

The trip from Rosas, the touristy Spanish beach town where we were staying the night, is less than 15 minutes from El Bulli. Not knowing that, and having escaped driving off a cliff, we pull in to the restaurant 45 minutes early.

DINING DETAILS

Our 28-course El Bulli meal cost 135 Euro per person (about $160, including 10 percent gratuity but not wine). Information and reservations: www.elbulli.com. Other meal highlights: •  Course No. 3: Individual tins labeled "Iranian Caviar" filled with faux fish roe made from orange melon gelatin, sprinkled with tart grape seeds and mint leaves. Gelatin mimicked color and texture of caviar. •  No. 10: Two small "egg yolks" made of mango puree presented in a Chinese soup spoon. Excellent palate cleanser. •  No. 14: Bowl containing hot chicken consomme with cold, freeze-dried foie gras powder mounded at its edge. Waiter instructed us to eat foie gras, then consomme. Very rich. •  No. 16: Warm wedges of orange melon with passion fruit air (foam) and fresh flowers that tasted floral, like gardenias, but salty, as if brined. Intriguing contrast of temperatures, flavors and textures. •  No. 20: Shelled spider crab claws and sauteed wild mushrooms on chunk of serrano ham fat topped with crisp bean sprouts, subtly flavored with cilantro. Decadent flavors.

Despite our premature arrival, the staff, unfazed, seats us on the terrace. For the next 41/2 hours, we are theirs. Never I have been more anxious about eating.

Bring on the magic

It happens just like in the tales I read: A group of waiters swoops down on our table with a "welcoming" cocktail of raspberry eau de vie with a scattering of frozen raspberries in a dish and finely ground green tea mounded in another.

A waiter directs us to roll the berries in the tea and eat them slowly, "like candy." Then, sip the cocktail.

Using the large tweezers set before us, we toss the slippery berries in the green dust. The tea is bitter, the frosty berries fresh-tart and the bracing cocktail fruity and refreshing.

The next few courses on the terrace (the staff called them "snacks") come briskly: a rabbit ear "crackling" that tastes like a pork rind (did it really come from a bunny?); rich, salty, Parmesan ice cream sandwiched between cheese crisps; and a robin-size "egg of gold" presented in a ceramic spoon.

"Eat it in one bite," the waiter instructs.

We crush the fragile, candy egg shell , warm, liquid egg gushes surprisingly into our mouths.

How did he do that?

Waves crash on the beach beneath the terrace in the darkness, and a woman seated behind us shouts "wow" several times.

It is a surreal circus of food, and we have front-row seats.

Second wave - indoors

A waiter leads us inside the restaurant, filled with warm-toned wood, soft lights and laughing people.

Another troop of waiters brings each of us a whole red mullet - a small Mediterranean fish - swaddled in cotton candy. Odd enough, except there is no meat on the bones. This is a deep-fried, head-on, eyes-in, fish skeleton. This is weirder than brains of any kind.

I pull at the cotton candy with my fingers (they left us no utensils) and eventually muster courage to nibble a bone. It crumbles, tasting intensely of the sea, but not fishy. I eat every bit of that skeleton - except the head.

"You have to try the head," Jim coaxes. "It has this spiciness."

It's as if the chef made the dare. I close my eyes and chomp on the fish head. Not bad. And it leaves a pleasant, glowing heat in my throat.

Full-palate assault

Like artillery, Adria's cooks keep firing courses, assaulting our palates with a cold, bitter grapefruit soup, drizzled with grainy black sesame seed paste, and wooing us with a luscious rabbit civet (stew), redolent of red wine, on a puddle of tawny, pureed foie gras.

The savory courses end with "2 meters" of cold Parmesan spaghetti coiled in a bowl. The waiter suggests we suck the spaghetti into our mouths. Like children, we obediently begin inhaling the long noodle, stopping about a meter later to laugh.

Is the chef playing a joke? For hours, of course, he had teased our senses, challenging our preconceptions of what food should look, feel and taste like.

Then there's dessert. We devour semi-frozen meringue "snow balls" hiding tiny sweet strawberries, then lap up a loaf-sized white chocolate, which deflates like a balloon when stabbed with a fork, showered with tangy yogurt sugar.

Well after midnight, after the last (a hollowed, take-home baguette, crisped and coated with sugar and anise seed) of our 28 courses arrives, I talk my way into the kitchen with a bottle of fine Kentucky bourbon - a gift for the chef.

Adria, short and dark with furrowed brow, soon bursts into the room to snatch the bottle and rivet his eyes on the label.

Through an interpreter, he asks if I made the whiskey. He smiles when I laugh.

Now I can't wait to hear what the ringmaster of El Bulli cooks up with bourbon.

E-mail cmartin@enquirer.com