Adrià, a legacy of freedom with ElBulli and a future with a feminine accent

ElBulli closed ten years ago, establishing the freedom for every chef to do “whatever he wants”, the course on research and innovation coming to a close, and Ferran Adria realize he needs new challenges, like helping a chef make her dream come true.

“I would like to find a woman who wants to start a restaurant and help her out, like a little ratatouille,” he says. Adria With humor in reference to the famous animated movie.

It will not be his restaurant, but hers, who will have to determine the type of establishment. “I’m still young, I have to challenge myself,” said the Spanish chef, joking with how many girls would give him ideas when his intention was known.

It’s just one of his projects once the current cycle closes, and there’s another one of those that keeps him active, and it’s called elbulli1846.

He lists: “The exhibition center (which is located where the restaurant used to be, in Cala Montjuy, Barcelona, Spain) will be finished in 2023 and we will open next year by invitation; in 2023 Bullipedia will have 30 books on doctoral theses, and there will be 4-5 books on innovation” .

“We will finish a course that will be longer than we expected,” he says, and will look for another “eggplant” like this to share, because it needs risks, challenges and passion, at the level of time to create the culinary vanguard in poly.

Relaxed, smiling and close, Adrià spoke hours before his presentation at the San Sebastián Festival (North Spain) The documentary “Las track de elBulli”, which opens the culinary section of the competition and which will premiere on Movistar+ on October 10.

Andoni Luis Aduriz, Juan Mari Arzac, Rene Redzepi and José Andres pass through the documentary. They all immediately agreed to take part in the documentary, because if it was for Adria, whoever it was, they would recognize Jose Larraza and Inigo Ruiz, the directors.

They show great admiration for the chef as all of their colleagues and admit that they were amazed to discover the extent to which bule affected the dishes used by many restaurants.

But Adria insists that the most important part of Polly’s legacy is the freedom, which he passed on to all those who trained in the restaurant.

Staff replenished 80% every six months, taking advantage of the annual shutdown, which brought in 2,500 chefs, and they are now 80% of the most influential names in Western cuisine. “They are the sons of the buli, like me, I’m one other, more important but one more,” Adria says.

This can be seen in the documentary, where Adria is teaching the young chefs who are involved in his innovative project, and he does so absolutely freely to make them believe.

“We were pioneers, and we certainly weren’t aware of the importance it would have later on,” admits the chef, who marks the turning points of his career in the culinary and science course they did with Harvard (EE.UU.) which everyone later imitated, and on the cover of the legendary 2003 New York Times Magazine.

But at the time it was hard to tell. For this reason, this documentary, with a 10-year perspective of the closure of elBulli, allows us to see this long-term impact.

“What we’re doing is de-monopolizing this and saying, ladies and gentlemen, think and think and do as you please. It sounds so simple, this degree of freedom, this song of freedom reaches Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina, to the United States, Norway, Portugal …, to the countries where there was a traditional cuisine of the country and French gastronomy, as in Spain.”

From Polly he changed the paradigm of gastronomy and asserted it without false modesty. All this made it possible to improve the kitchen and develop a whole generation that would not have existed.

From that point on, he jumped into his project for the Exhibition Center and the Bulli Foundation, which aims to preserve the legacy of elBulli, create high-quality content for the profession through Bullipedia, and share experiences in innovation, management and administration.

But what he focuses most on is improving the quality of the kitchen. “I’ve never had good food in Spain and I’m discussing this with anyone,” he said fiercely, before noting that at the moment there was no need for a new gastronomic revolution and that we were dealing with the best generation of chefs ever.

And although he says categorically that ” pandemic He was a great host to everyone”, believes recovery is underway. Plus, he has helped teach that, from the simplest pubs to high-end restaurants, they are “the essential places for socializing and this is brutal.”

“The most important social network in the world is not Facebook, it is food,” and we have to put aside the debate about creators and traditionalists, because what matters is quality.

Although yes, the avant-garde, like polycarbonate, is something else. And there they reach 7, 8, in more than 10 restaurants in the world. “They are all creative, but the vanguard are the ones who make their way into the army and usually kill them all.”