Cala Montjoi is a remote cove about 5 kilometres south of Roses, reached by a winding road that ends at the water. This is where Ferran Adrià's El Bulli restaurant operated from 1961 until its closure in 2011, becoming what many considered the most influential restaurant in the world during the first decade of this century. The kitchen here essentially invented a new vocabulary for fine dining — spherification, culinary foam, deconstruction — that chefs are still arguing about.
The restaurant building now operates as the El Bulli Foundation (elBulli 1846), a creative laboratory and archive. It is not open for lunch. You can visit the cove, walk around the building, and gaze at the setting — a restaurant at the end of a track, looking out over a beautiful bay, about as far from a city as you can get while still being in Europe. It is worth a detour for anyone interested in the history of modern cooking, even if there is nothing to eat when you arrive.