Life after a legend

IT’S BEEN almost 15 years to the day since the closing of El Bulli, the restaurant run by the Adrià brothers. One of the cradles of molecular gastronomy — which has since seen its day, but its imprimatur lasts — it collected Michelin stars like candy. It gained its first star in 1976 under Jean-Louis Neichel, but after Ferran Adrià joined the staff in 1984, the restaurant began its reign as one of the world’s best restaurants (if not “the”), gaining its third star in 1997.

The restaurant closed its doors in 2011. Its loss is still mourned in the culinary world. The restaurant survives in a different capacity as elBullifoundation, a gastronomic resource and research facility.

Ferran’s younger brother Albert, who was El Bulli’s creative director and pastry chef, was in the Philippines in April 20 as one of the speakers at Spain Fusion: The Premium Experience. The talk was organized by Vocento Gastronomía, also the organizer of world-renowned food congress Madrid Fusion (see main story, “Madrid Fusion Manila returns”).

He’s been busy since El Bulli’s closure: during his talk he spoke of projects he had done since. There was Barcelona’s Tickets, which was in 2019, No. 20 on Restaurant Magazine’s list of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. It closed its doors in 2020, just like another award-winning restaurant of the brothers, Pakta. Current projects he’s running include Enigma in Barcelona, which is No. 34 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. In his talk, he said (through a translator) that 1,200 dishes come out of their kitchen every day from Monday to Friday, with about 55 workers.

BusinessWorld, in an interview, asked him what it’s like to live after reaching the very top of the world. “Each time in life has its moments,” he said through a translator. “El Bulli is obviously the past — a very, very important part. It changed many things.”

Still, “I don’t think of the past or the future. I focus on today.”

Asked why they closed then, at the very height of their power (though there are reports of the restaurant simply not making enough money): “We had already given our lives to El Bulli. We were getting older. We were having children, having a family. We thought (it) the best moment to close and start anew.”

AROMAS AND JOKES
He had a hectic few days. He had flown in from Rio de Janeiro the night before he gave the talk at Spain Fusion, doing a dinner at Gallery by Chele, then flying off to Shanghai right after.

Speaking to BusinessWorld without a translator after the talk, he joked, “I retired at 50.” With a real age of 56, we joked that he looked 10 years younger. “Without jet lag, 35,” he answered.

We asked about his first memory of food, and he said, “It was not food. It was aromas. Smells.”

These were the aromas emanating from pots in the kitchen while his mother was cooking.

In Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses, she posits that the sense of smell is the most emotive due to its direct link to the brain. “A smell can be overwhelmingly nostalgic because it triggers powerful images and emotions before we have time to edit them.”

“Another aroma is from the pizza,” he told us. “When you make an artisanal pizza, each aroma is different. The mix of the flavors, with the cheese and the tomato, and the duck, it’s one of the most beautiful sensations.”

Mr. Adrià will probably be remembered to the end of his life as one of the world’s greatest chefs. Asked about what a legend eats on weekends, he said that he lives in front of the Mercat de la Boqueria in Barcelona, one of the world’s most famous markets (a fitting address). “When I’m home, I cook a lot of vegetables. I really love vegetables Asian-style. Like in a wok. I fry. Very simple. Nothing special.” — Joseph L. Garcia