TREE OF LIFE | The olives attached to this miniature tree at El
Celler de Can Roca, the award-winning Catalan restaurant, are
both delectable and unforgettable. Photograph by Thibault
Montamat  Imagine a tree, a living, miniature olive tree, whose
branches bear heavy, golden fruit shining like poisoned apples
in the late-afternoon sun. The tree is a bonsai of sorts,
gnarled and thick-trunked, rooted in a vessel that appears to
have been fashioned from the earth itself. Not without
difficulty, a man in a dark suit heaves it onto your table. You
understand without being told that you are to pluck one of the
glittery orbs and pop it into your mouth. Its skin, crisp and
brittle, shatters under your teeth, releasing a complex brine,
all ocean, sugar and decay, which fades to a subtly penetrating
bittersweetness that lingers until it is washed away with a sip
of cold wine. Does the substance of the fruit matter? The moment
is sublime.  This olive, wrapped with a bit of anchovy into a
microscopically thin membrane o