FERRAN ADRIÁ F
ew can claim to change the world in any real sense, but most people in gastronomy would agree that elBulli genuinely changed
the culinary world. At its peak, the kitchens of elBulli, five times voted the best restaurant in the world, wowed the world with it’s boundary-breaking creations, as they played with textures and techniques – and conventions. Foams and spherifications were served alongside savory ice creams and granita salads. Pushing the boundaries does not begin to cover what Adriá and his team started in elBulli. If Spain’s ascent to the top
of the tree of world gastronomy came as a surprise, that Adriá found himself at the center of it surprised no one more than the man himself. He entered the profession by chance. Te story goes that, as an 18-year-old with a desire to travel to Ibiza for the summer holidays he looked for a job to fund his trip. He found one as a kitchen porter and it turned out to be his way into life as a chef.
Today he is considered the
pioneer of creative gastronomy in Spain – and beyond – and his restaurant the birthplace of the creativity that is seen in restaurants across the world today. ElBulli closed in 2011 and in 2023 was converted to the first museum of a fine dining restaurant in the world. But elBulli Foundation, established in 2013 and located on the site of the restaurant in Cala Montjoi, Roses in north-east Spain, is much more than a home for the relics of times gone by. Te elBulli foundation was
launched to preserve the legacy and the spirit of the restaurant – it consists of the museum, elBulli1846; elBulliDNA, the project dedicated to the investigation of innovation in gastronomy; the Bulliniano community of the people who worked in the restaurant over time; as well as the elBullistore which offers a vast selection of publications related to elBulli and the investigations that have come out of the restaurant .
GROWING AND LEARNING Today, Adriá is focused on
“Ask ChatGPT to outline creativity in gastronomy and you will see it is a disaster”
creativity in gastronomy. “It is something we talk about a lot but it is not analyzed very much,” he said during a chat hosted by the Michelin Guide Spain, taking place at Disfrutar, the Barcelona restaurant owned by chefs Oriol Castro, Mateu Casañas, and Eduard Xatruch. Te three are Bullinianos and worked with Adriá and his brother Albert during the years of wild success. “If we ask ChatGPT to
outline creativity in gastronomy in the last 60 years you will see it is a disaster,” said Adriá After taking the reins of
elBulli he went on to push at every boundary that existed in gastronomy, a field indisputably dominated by France at the time. Adriá started cooking in 1980 and in 1984 he became the head chef of elBulli, which was already the holder of two
Michelin stars. “Spain was nowhere in gastronomic terms in the world at the time, it was all about France,” he recalled. In those days Spain did
not enjoy the sense of being at the top of the table – that came later. When Adriá went to events with the few other globally recognized chefs in Spain such as Juan Mari Arzak from the Basque Country, they were always seated at the last table. “Tis is really important to know because young people think that things have always been the way they are now and they weren’t always this way,” he said.
As a young chef Adriá was
inspired by the French greats, such as Michel Bras and Pierre Gagnaire. Nouvellu cuisine, with its lighter and fresher flavors, arrived in the 1970s and was practiced by giants of the French kitchen including Paul Bocuse. It continued to be the dominant cuisine in the early 1980s and when Adriá joined elBulli it was not about creativity but imitation. “I became head chef and we started to make nouvelle cuisine. We reproduced.”
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A museum was opened on the site of elBulli to preserve the legacy and the spirit
23
WORLDWIDE
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