Ferran Adrià

Ferran Adrià (born May 14, 1962, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain) is a Catalan chef who, as the creative force behind the restaurant El Bulli (closed in 2011), pioneered the influential culinary trend known as molecular gastronomy, which uses precise scientific techniques to create inventive and evocative high-end cuisine. In the early 21st century many considered him the best chef in the world.

Adrià was raised in Barcelona. After dropping out of school at age 18, he took a job as a dishwasher at a hotel restaurant in order to finance a trip to Ibiza. At that restaurant he began to learn about classic gastronomic techniques, and his training led to kitchen jobs at other restaurants in the area. In 1982 Adrià joined the navy to fulfill his compulsory military service, and he eventually became chef to an admiral stationed in Cartagena. At the end of his service, he accepted a one-month internship at El Bulli, a respected French restaurant in Roses, on the Costa Brava. In early 1984 he was hired there as a line cook, and eight months later, after the head chef departed, he and another cook were put in joint charge of the kitchen. By 1987 Adrià had become the restaurant’s sole chef de cuisine.

In the mid-1980s El Bulli’s menu featured a combination of traditional French recipes and nouvelle cuisine, but Adrià, inspired by the notion that “creativity is not copying” (a maxim he had heard from a chef with whom he had studied), sought to explore other culinary avenues. Gradually he began to experiment with new techniques for preparing and presenting food, and by 1994, four years after becoming co-owner of the restaurant, he had moved away from classical cookery altogether. In its place was what he called “technique-concept cuisine,” in which he subjected potential ingredients to rigorous experimentation and scientific analysis as a means of creating novel dishes that produced unexpected sensations.

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One of the concoctions to emerge from Adrià’s kitchen was culinary foam, which he originally observed as a by-product of inflating tomatoes with a bicycle pump and then discovered he could create through a more-refined process by spraying out of a nitrous oxide canister the mixture of a main ingredient, such as raspberries or mushrooms, and a natural gelling agent. He also invented a technique he called “spherification,” which delicately encapsulated liquids within spheres of gelatin; its best-known application was “liquid olives,” which resembled solid green olives but burst in the mouth with olive juice. Such whimsical creations were emblematic of Adrià’s deconstructivist philosophy, by which he aimed to preserve the essence or flavor of a familiar dish even as its form or texture was radically altered. One of his culinary students at El Bulli was a young José Andrés, who would go on earn fame as a chef in the United States.

By the late 1990s El Bulli had attracted copious praise within the culinary world, earning a top rating of three stars from the vaunted Guide Michelin, and Adrià’s innovations became widely imitated under the rubric “molecular gastronomy.” In 2002 the British magazine Restaurant, having conducted a poll of food industry professionals, named El Bulli the best eatery in the world, a distinction it also held from 2006 to 2009. In recognition of the artistic dimension of his work, Adrià was even invited to participate in the 2007 Documenta contemporary art exhibition in Kassel, Germany.

His approach to cooking, however, attracted plenty of critics as well. The prominent Catalan writer Josep Maria Fonalleras accused Adrià of “talking about dishes as if he were discussing mathematics rather than cooking” and said that “those who watch how…Adrià uses a screwdriver to coil a thread of sugar to make it into a ring will split their sides with laughter.” Famed TV chef Gordon Ramsay, who later became a fan of Adrià’s cooking, concurred, saying that “food should not be played with by scientists. A chef should use his fingers and his tongue, not a test tube.”

Though the publicity Adrià received created enormous demand, his cuisine was so ambitious and exacting that he could afford to serve only a limited number of diners per year, and the restaurant consistently operated at a loss. Adrià compensated by selling books and other self-branded merchandise, but in 2011 he closed El Bulli and transformed it into a nonprofit foundation for culinary research.

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