Ferran Adrià : Sweet Success
To see him on the cover of times magazine with George W. Bush, Nicole Kidma and Nelson Mandela, you’d think his oversized ego. Error! Ferran Adrià receives us in his workshop in barcelona, in all simplicity.
INGENUOUS GENIUS
To understand how Ferran Adrià was able to remain so humble despite his planetary triumph, just listen to him tell you how success came “by chance”. He never wanted to become a great leader. He never dreamed of amassing millions. His driving forces are freedom and the satisfaction of a job well done with his team. It takes luck to taste his creations: every year, more than a million people try to reserve a table in his restaurant, “ElBulli”. Only 8,000 lucky people make the journey to Cala Montjoi, two hours north of Barcelona. The beautiful cove can be reached by boat, but the road trip is a real treat: it keeps getting smaller and smaller and winding
THE PLAYFUL KITCHEN
It’s worth the trip. Ferran Adrià’s cuisine advocates joy, poetry and magic without giving up humour or provocation. On the plate, he avoids the trap of “gadget” cooking. Technical innovation remains at the service of flavours, which are not superim - posed as in “fusion”, but rather contrasted as in a master’s canvas. It plays on structures, smells and the staging of the dishes. Customers are delighted to be surprised by this art of magnifying tastes by stimulating all five senses. Parmesan spaghetto is served in a single two-metre-long piece. Caviar is balanced on apple jelly... but it can also become “apple style” when the flesh of the fruit is trans - formed into small translucent balls served in Beluga boxes. The fish is presented as a “mummy” and the “snowball” is with cucumber. The tasting menu includes 32 dishes and takes about five hours to complete. Businessmen in a hurry should refrain.
ELBULLI
ElBulli is the name of a small bulldog. When Ferran Adrià arrived at the restaurant in 1983, the establishment had been in existence for more than 20 years and already had 2 stars. Ferran did not go to cooking school and found himself there for a month-long internship, helped by an acquaintance he met in the army. He is offered to come back the following season. 3 years later, another stroke of luck: he takes the place of the chef de cuisine leaving the establishment. The first winter closure is dictated by economic imperatives in 1987. That same year, Ferran Adrià attended a presentation in Cannes of Jacques Maximin, the chef at Negresco. One sentence wasa revelation to him: “Creativity is easy: all you have to do is not copy”. The forced pause becomes an opportunity. The ElBulli team starts looking for new processes that will seal the Catalan’s success. Other chefs are looking for new dishes while he and his team develop new techniques and concepts that open up unexplored spaces.
R & D
Year after year, the ElBulli team is deepening its work. When it achieves its goal of setting up a “workshop” dedicated to year-round culinary research, Ferran Adrià plans to visit other similar structures around the world. The concept does not exist! Chefs from all over the world innovate in their kitchens when they have time. His “Taller” becomes a full-time research centre. It relies on a team of twelve people and a meticulous working method where everything is noted and then published. He envies the most unthinkable combinations of tastes in front of an astonishing piece of furniture that serves as his “palette of tastes”: the translucent object brings together the hundreds of flavours at his disposal in small drawers. Just put a dish or an ingredient on top of it and inspiration is stimulated. Years of research have led to unlikely innovations: a spherical raviolo... without pastry; a mozzarella chewing gum; a sesame sponge; a coconut milk skin pancake... These insolences represent only a tiny part of his discoveries, but they are so striking to the imagination that they are a catalyst for criticism...from angry competitors, particularly in France... You can’t have fun with gastronomy with impunity. Ferran Adrià doesn’t care about polemics. He cooks first of all for pleasure and has fun making people taste foie gras ice cream, dishes cooled with liquid nitrogen, ginger spray, aerial mousses such as foam or caramelized olive oil served in the form of a spring. He serves you his “peach paper” in an envelope and sums up his approach with a formula: “Innovation is action”. You have to make the effort to do the research, but you don’t have to talk about it a lot: people will judge the results.
"Give bill gates a table at the last minute? I don’t work for microsoft.”
AN ATYPICAL BUSINESS
We can turn the problem around any way we want: if Ferran Adrià had shareholders, he would open at noon, reduce the winter closing, add a few tables and increase the price of the menu. He would then become a three-star restaurant like any other. The chef bought the restaurant in 1990 with his partner, Juli Soler. He believes that the menu price should cover fixed costs and that the margin should be generated with peripheral activities: book publishing, catering and partnerships with brands such as NH Hotels, Lavazza or more recently Barclays Bank. It is also categorical: the limit of 8000 covers is a necessary condition to maintain the innovation and the level of requirements that the ElBulli team has been offering for more than 10 years. He often repeats the word “Honest”. This concept allows him to remain true to his values despite the countless demands. He has always refused, for example, the golden bridges he receives for cooking at home and he takes care to keep the business on one side and innovation on the other. When asked if he thinks the price of 200 euros is expensive for his tasting menu, he leaps to his feet: “It’s the price of a room in a three-star hotel where you just sleep!
FROM THE KITCHEN
Ferran Adrià is proud to have taken gastronomy out of the kitchen and opened it up to a wider public. He sees his art as a social bond that touches each individual 3 times a day throughout his life. He feels responsible for a mission: to make the general public aware of the importance of good nutrition where tastes are preserved. When we talk to him about his future, he looks back on his past: 10 years of fury. He is beginning to limit his commitments and is preparing to implement other projects where he will be able to express his “creativity” and “madness” by reaching a larger audience. He regrets in passing the crisis that is shaking the European service society where nobody wants to serve anymore. Ferran Adrià’s memory is not short. In his cookery books, he does not hesitate to mention the name of the person behind a discovery, even if it is a trainee passing through. He does not deny the great chefs who have influenced him: Pierre Gag - naire “everything is possible”, Michel Bras “respect the purity of the product” and Jacques Maximim “do not copy”. Of the three, he praises the enthu - siasm. Joël Robuchon launched it into orbit. He is the first to have named him “Best Cook in the World”. Like any self-taught chef, he is very proud to have made cooking accepted in the culture, to have been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Barcelona or to have been invited to “Documenta”, the famous contemporary art event, but he remains touching in the way he approaches life with passion, without taking him - self seriously.