Dishes to taste… with your eyes. Twelve years after its closure, the famous Spanish restaurant elBulli, long considered one of the best in the world, is reopening its doors but in the form of a museum dedicated to the culinary revolution led by its chef, Ferran Adrià.
Nestled in a cove on the Costa Brava, not far from the French border, the museum, which will open on June 15, has been named elBulli1846, in reference to the number of culinary creations in this temple of haute cuisine, which has been awarded three stars by the Michelin guide in 1997.
“It is not a question of coming to eat but of understanding what happened” in this laboratory of molecular cuisine, explains to AFP Ferran Adrià, 61, seated close to what was his cooking for more than 25 years. Inside the restaurant, time seems to have stood still. A wandering of more than two hours allows the visitor to discover hundreds of photos, diagrams, models, notebooks, books and trophies. And, icing on the cake, reproductions according to the Japanese technique of “shokuhin sampuru” which uses plastic or resins of dishes that have made the avant-garde reputation of elBulli.
“We looked for the limits of the gastronomic experience. The physical, mental and even spiritual limits of human beings. This quest has paved the way for others,” says the chef. The foundation created to preserve his heritage has invested 11 million euros in this museum whose initial expansion project had aroused opposition from environmental groups.
Ferran Adrià still remembers the day when, in 1983, he first took the winding dirt road that then connected the village of Roses to the restaurant, baptized elBulli in reference to its owner’s passion for French bulldogs. Coming on the recommendation of one of his comrades from military service, Adrià had planned to stay there only for an internship. He will become the chef of the establishment four years later, then having a Michelin star, and will end up buying it in 1990 with his partner Juli Soler, who died in 2015.
“The most important thing that happened to me at elBulli was that, for the first time, I saw the passion for cooking there. At the table, when we ate as a team, we didn’t talk about football, not about our weekends, we talked about cooking,” recalls the man who, as a child, dreamed of following in the footsteps of his idol, the Dutch striker from FC Barcelona, Johan Cruyff.
Hundreds of cooks including the future stars René Redzepi, José Andrés or Andoni Aduriz cut their teeth among the team of 70 people providing, six months a year, around fifty covers at each service without wanting to please the customers at all costs. of the whole world. “The concept of loving the dishes when doing avant-garde cuisine is very complex,” explains Ferran Adrià, who wanted his creations to provoke “shock after shock” but also a “reflection” on taste.
A herald of molecular cuisine, Adrià has not only gained followers, especially among purists. But was never deterred from pushing back and finding her limits in 2011. “I was certain that we were doing well to close. We had reached what we considered the ultimate satisfying experience. Once this goal was achieved, we said to ourselves “why continue if our mission was to seek the limits?”, he says.
He has since swapped the white apron for a black t-shirt and intends to leave his hat in the closet, arguing without vanity that it would be “impossible” for him to repeat his exploits. “When the guests came, it was a shock, today it wouldn’t be the same,” he adds. But he says he supports those who continue to search for limits, “because if it weren’t for these three, four or five people in the world who are looking for them, everything would stop”.
