Chef Ferran Adrià
Posted on 02/13/2010 7:39:02 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Spanish restaurant El Bulli, famed for its avant-garde cuisine at the hands of celebrated , will close its doors for good next year.
For those who cannot imagine life without trout egg tempura or "tagliatelli" of shaved foie gras, the news will hit hard.
Just a fortnight after the Spanish chef Ferran Adrià announced that he was to close his celebrated restaurant El Bulli for two years, voted the finest on the planet, to take a break and rethink his future, he has decided that the closure will be for ever.
Chef Ferran Adrià
Not only was he losing money, he said on Friday, but the pressure from diners was so great that "at that bestial pace, it would be impossible to continue."
Instead, after the last diner is served in December next year, he will concentrate on running an academy for advanced cuisine.
Mr Adrià, 47, considered one of the world's greatest chefs, has achieved semi-mythical status for his restaurant on the Costa Brava that charges eye-watering prices for unfamiliar concoctions.
Diners who manage to reserve a table at the hugely-oversubscribed restaurant, which is only open from June to December and already has 3,000 people on the waiting list for the coming summer, can expect a riot of up to 30 dishes such as Parmesan marshmallows, popcorn clouds, lambs brains with sea urchins and sea grapes, and chocolate sablet with verveine and hazelnut.
For the remaining six months of the year, Mr Adrià and his crack team of chefs labour in their laboratory, conjuring up new dishes for the next season.
But after two decades leading the gastronomic charge, Mr Adrià has decided to close the restaurant from the end of next year. He says it was losing half a million euros a year -
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Not that I’ve eaten there but I never understood that exalted status this guy has. Cooking with liquid nitrogen? Flavored foam? To each his own I guess.
The horror!
Why not close it now and save yourself a million?
From what I had read somewhere, Adria made no money from the restaurant, rather from the books he sells. I guess the restaurant is now such a burden he has to close it. Perhaps local taxes are also killing the business. Spain is broke after all.
Sounds like BO’s kind of food. Metrosexusl BS! Time for a bail out. This article made me hungry for a cheeseburger.
I don’t know but something doesn’t add up? The food also sounds like crap. But then again sometimes I enjoy eating at the Waffle House, go figure.
Wow. Hope-n-Change in breaking out all over.
“He says it was losing half a million euros a year”
So why are they closing down?
Has he been a judge on Top Chef or a challenger on Iron Chef America? Done a throwdown with Bobby Flay?
If not, he is just bush league!!!
(lol)
how good can this place be? I didn’t see chicken fried steak with cream gravy on the menu...
It’s like abstract art. The food may taste as bad as the art looks but all the critics go gaga over it.
I guess I’ll just have to settle for Cracker Barrel from now on.
That looks delectable! I want that.
I appreciate fine food, well prepared from the best ingredients, but a lot of this type of stuff just seems like the height of pretentiousness. Of course, a lot of people would say the same thing about some of the stuff I like. Heck, some people think Big Macs and Kraft Mac and Cheese are the height of good eating.
This is not going to make the lamb-brain-with-sea-urchin aficionados happy...
Eh, I’ve never been big on the whole “molecular gastronomy” field that chefs like Adria embrace. There is a cleverness, even a sort of wizardry, to some of the stuff they come up with, I will admit. But for me, fine dining and great cuisine doesn’t have to be a pretentious magic show. It’s interesting that Adria developed a tobacco-blackberry crushed ice. It doesn’t mean I’m going to fawn over the dish itself and it sure doesn’t mean I’d rather have that than a plate of good Spanish paella.
If it ain’t burgers and fries or biscuits and gravy, I’m not touching it.
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