FERRAN ADRIA: EXCLUSIVE
The “hard-partying, football-loving Catalan” as he
was aged just 24 (this picture, far left, with
Caption can go here xyxyxyxyxy
I
n 1985, with my first cookbook contract under my arm, I started prowling around Catalonia researching the region’s unique and fascinating cuisine, then virtually unknown outside Spain. I visited private kitchens, modest seaside cafés and
elegant urban eateries, where imaginative Catalan chefs were inventing contemporary cuisine of their own. And in one of the more obscure corners of Catalonia, I had lunch at a onetime beach bar that had evolved into a serious restaurant. It’s name was elBulli. The restaurant had two head chefs: a Frenchman named Kritsian Lutaud and a hard-partying, football-loving Catalan, all of 24 years old, named Fernando Adrià – whose most extensive cooking experience had come from working in an admiral’s private kitchen during his obligatory military service. And unfortunately, I don’t have the slightest recollection of anything I ate – except that while it was very good, it didn’t seem Catalan enough to merit inclusion in my book. After my book – Catalan Cuisine: Europe’s Last
his team) when writer Colman Andrews
first encountered him
gotten on well, and the next time I was in Barcelona, in 2003, Ferran invited me to visit his famous workshop, El Taller, where his brother and longtime collaborator, Albert, demonstrated his now famous technique of spherification, producing instant green pea ravioli, in which both the filling and “pasta” were nothing but peas. I finally got to the restaurant itself in 2006, where I had a dinner
Great Culinary Secret – was published, in the US in 1988 and in the UK the following year, I turned my attention to other projects, not going back to Catalonia until the mid-1990s. By that time, Fernando had become Ferran (the Catalan version of his name) and taken over elBulli as sole chef and co-owner, and gastronomes around the world were beginning to whisper about a genius chef in the middle of nowhere on the Costa Brava. In the years that followed, his reputation grew – the 1997 Guide
Michelin for Spain gave elBulli its third star – and following a New York Times Magazine cover story in 2003, Ferran the chef became Ferran the superstar, the icon, the myth. I met the man himself in 1998, when a mutual friend, Spanish chef José Andrés, brought us together for lunch in New York. We’d
OF THE RESTAURANT’S EVOLUTION – A NEW PARADIGM
WAS, HE HAS SAID, A LOGICAL EXTENSION
CLOSING ELBULLI
that was alternately dazzling, challenging, delicious and a little too weird for me – but one that, in sum, convinced me that Ferran was a genius. It also occurred to me that somebody should write a book about him and his immense influence, and I figured I was the man for the job. Over the next year, with the help of José Andrés, I pursued Ferran. “Let me do a book about you,” I pleaded. “A biography, a portrait, a record of your accomplishments.” “I’m too busy,” he’d say; “I’m too young for a biography; too much has been written about me already.” I persisted, and he finally agreed to meet me over dinner at his brother’s trendy tapas bar, Inopia, the next time I was in Barcelona. There we ate such emphatically non-elBullian
fare as simply poached white asparagus, grilled baby shrimp, and jamón iberico – the kind of thing Ferran most likes to eat – while he vetted me on my knowledge of Catalan cuisine – it turned out he liked the Catalan translation of my cookbook and even used it as a reference. He finally said: “Okay. The first thing for you to do is to come spend a week at elBulli.” I was in. Over the next year-and-a-half or so, I spent many hours with
Ferran and his family, friends, and colleagues, spent many hours – many days – around both eBulli and El Taller and read a substantial portion of the hundreds of thousands of words in assorted languages that have been written about the man and his restaurant. I found
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