<p style="text-align: left;"><img class="size-full wp-image-654" title="Ty_blog_thumb_nb" src="/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Ty_blog_thumb_nb-e1271796922229.jpg" alt="" width="40" height="40" /> By Ty T.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-330" title="Liquid Nitrogen Capirihna" src="/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/caipi.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="358" /></p>
When is the last time a brand made you talk and talk and keep talking? <a title="The Bazaar.com" href="http://thebazaar.com">Bazaar</a>, Los Angeles?, part of Jose Andres' collection of restaurants just may be the most experiential meal I've consumed in my life - and I've been talking about it!  From the moment you walk into the restaurant, you feel like you've stepped into an Alice in Wonderland novel.  Thanks to Philippe Starck's design of very eclectic pieces mixed in with pieces of art with Moss tchochkies being sold, you feel as though you've literally stepped into a bazaar....but that's just the beginning!  Do you ever walk into a restroom in a lounge or restaurant and think, "I need to take pictures of this awesome restroom"?  I did!

So besides the entire ambience, the main character in this story is the food.  The food quite certainly will keep your attention and keep you engaged from beginning to end.  The menu at Bazaar is split into two different sections - <em>Traditional Tapas </em>and <em>Modern Tapas</em>.  The traditional tapas is very much like you would see at any tapas style restaurant, although the flavors and forms seem to be a bit more cutting edge.  The modern tapas, however, blew me away!<!--more-->

By taking everyday ingredients, deconstructing them and then reconstructing them, Jose Andres creates an experience in your mouth like you've never had before. Once dinner was concluded, they whisked me away to another location in the restaurant for their desserts.  Sitting on the steel silver sofa with a mirrored coffee table in front of me, I couldn't decide what to have since everything looked amazing.  The apothecary jars were filled with different types of cookies, chocolates and madelines.

Light pink tile reminiscent of old Hollywood reflected the lights from the chandeliers.  They started me off with dark chocolate pop rocks - which I've had before, but none this good.  He then brought out the piece de la resistance - the Nitro Coconut Floating Island.  Imagine passion fruit, coconut and vanilla formed into an island/cloud shape with nitrogen.

Mr. Andres has created a dining experience that will have me talking for a long time to come.  It's a winning combination for a brand to engage a consumer through an experience like this and have that consumer talk about it for months to come.  So as a food company, how can you take the familiar and put a new twist on it to engage your consumer?  How can you take what is common and make it uncommon to help differentiate from the competition?