El Bulli (pronounced "L Boo-Yee") has held top spot in the Restaurant list for the past four years. Even in the strangely self-obsessed world of elite chefs, this ranking is seldom railed against; a tacit agreement, perhaps, that Ferran Adrià is that rare thing - someone who has inspired a paradigm shift in fine dining, a sort of Mozart of the kitchen. His importance is underlined by the fact that two of the other restaurants in the Top Five are run by disciples who once worked at El Bulli. The other two share Adrià's principles of innovation. The question is whether Adrià's brilliance at thinking up new techniques and dishes to express familiar flavours in unfamiliar ways makes for a good dinner.

Adrià's restaurant is a nondescript three-hour drive north-east along the coast from Barcelona. There is a strange sense of anticipation clattering round in my gut as we drive into the fading seaside resort of Roses, its esplanade lined with cheap cafes that smell of fried food and stale beer.

I have wanted to eat at El Bulli since I started writing about restaurants, but with bookings only taken over three days in October and the restaurant vastly oversubscribed, a table here is the hardest in the world to snare. (I booked via the usual email route last October.)

My wife, Emma, and I squeeze into a little taxi to wend our way 20 minutes up and over the headlands towards a far sleepier tourist cove, once best known for its scuba-diving. Our anticipation builds with every hairpin turn until we see, clinging to one side of the bay, the low-rise adobe home that houses El Bulli.

A disarmingly warm welcome calms our initial trepidation. When in Australia last October at the culmination of his world book tour, Ferran Adrià was tired and distracted. Here, he is animated and relaxed, and his tan face wrinkles in a smile as we walk into his kitchen. (He insists on photos in front of his army of 45 young chefs and the giant bronze bull's head that has fooled some - yup, that's my hand sneaking up - into thinking that the restaurant is named after the bull, rather than the previous owner's obsession with bulldogs.)

A meal at El Bulli starts with snacks on the small terrace that overlooks the bay of Cala Montjoi and the path that leads around it. Every so often, families in bikinis, boardies and sarongs traipse past on their way back from the beach and look in. This, and the wood-beamed dining rooms full of bulldog figurines and what could pass as dodgy community-hall art, make El Bulli seem like a surprisingly un-elitist spot.

"Snacks" is such a prosaic term for the 39 creations with which we are, one by one, presented. They start sweet, with sugar cane soaked in different Latin cocktails, tall sheets of gossamer-thin pineapple wafer studded with black olive, and "virtual" peanuts or olives, which look and taste like the real thing, but whose liquid centres explode when you bite into them, sending flavours splattering across your mouth.

It's a relentless assault of tastes, with Adrià's culinary obsession with Japan - the soybean, sesame seeds and anything associated with the pine tree - becoming increasingly clear. The repetition of these passions, however, makes for a slightly unbalanced meal.

It's also weird to start with so many sweet flavours and slowly progress through a selection of amazingly delicious dishes to end with iodine-like flavours of sliced, almost raw-tasting kidney, or a mix of green tea, caviar and rather wibbly-wobbly heat-wilted tendrils of sea anemone that look like phaser-frazzled aliens from an early Star Trek episode. Both are interesting but distinctly un-yummy compared with such delectable middle dishes as parmesan gel ravioli that burst with flavour and turn your tongue inside out with unexpected textures, or a strange raw little leaf that looks like spinach but tastes uncannily like oysters. "Here, nothing is as it seems," says the waiter who clears the plates, as if quoting an El Bulli motto.

This is El Bulli's first season after the departure of Ferran's brother Albert from the long-held role of pastry guru. I found the desserts lacked the breathless excitement of the savoury stuff. 

In the end, though, El Bulli comes across as the culinary equivalent of the Paris catwalks. It's cool seeing what's new and trendsetting, but it's also not what you'd wear every day to go to the shops. You might also feel that some of the more outlandish creations should have stayed in the atelier. 

El Bulli, Apartado 30, 17480 Roses en Cala Montjoi, Spain; +34 972 150 457 (after 3pm during the season); bulli@elbulli.com. Bookings taken only in October and only by email. Menu (wine not included): €250 ($422). 

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