we believe we’re doing something important and above all it’s about the challenge.
What was our greatest challenge at elBulli restaurant? Nothing was left; we had already achieved everything; we had changed the way that cooking was understood; we had trained 2,000 people some of whom are the foremost chefs these days; we created a number of techniques and elaborations that were just amazing; we had no more awards to win and we had no motivation, so we had to find a new challenge at this level.
Do you miss being in the kitchen?
Chefs like me don’t cook; what we do is creativity. If I had no contact with people then I would say I missed it but I still have contact with people because I’m always on the go. I just spoke to Joan Roca on the phone, but it’s a different set of rules; I will never be the best restaurant in the world again; I won’t have three Michelin stars.
Like I was just telling Joan, this is a project to help people and it gives me incredible freedom, more than ever; I already had a lot of freedom; I did what I wanted when I wanted but being a foundation gives you even more – the only thing you can demand of me is transparency, ethics and honesty. This is a private foundation; there’s no public funding whatsoever, but it’s a different way of looking at things and we want everyone to participate.
What continues to inspire you?
The challenge. The book that we’ve just published with Phaidon is part of a catalogue of more than 14,000 pages. It’s the most extensive work in the history of cooking but we didn’t write all this just for the landmark, so to speak, it was a challenge for us. We wanted to come up with a different kind
of tool because all of the projects I’m telling you about, none of them would have been possible without these books, because that’s where everything was born. From 2000-2012 we did all that work which is the starting point for everything else.
Do you think there could be another restaurant like elBulli?
Yes I hope that in the future there will be one but it’s very difficult. What really marked elBulli? Number one, the quantity of things you need - it’s impossible to have a menu longer than elBulli’s. Also to carry out a project like elBulli, we needed time; it took us 15 years and nowadays with the internet there is no time. We live in a society that’s mad, where the media has become something different because of social media, and we’re living in schizophrenic times. If you look at Messi – today he’s God but tomorrow he’s the devil.
Noma won the best restaurant in the world three times now we’re looking for their replacement, same with El Celler de Can Roca; this leads to a lack of stability and above all a lack of tranquillity. El Celler de Can Roca was built over many years and it’s a solid institution but there are many restaurants these days that just go up and down. There are people who, five years ago, were in the top ten, and now they’re not even on the list, and this is due to the immediacy of things. I can know today what any restaurant in the world is doing with the internet; I used to have to go and eat there.
Now is the most creative moment in history. With Nouvelle cuisine in the mid-60s and techno-emotional Spanish – or whatever you want to call it – in the mid-90s, an incredible revolution took place in just a few years. So another revolution – what would it be?
Here the media has a very special role – in the midst of all this madness of information, someone needs to order it. There’s no book that explains all the things that we’ve talked about. So many
things have happened. The other day I saw a story about an Indian man who has the second best restaurant in Asia according to the 50 Best restaurants list. Getting a grasp on all this used to be very easy – it was just France, France and France, full stop. Now it’s happening everywhere so it’s very interesting, and you and I are part of the most incredible generation in history, because we’ve been lucky enough to live through all of this.
elBulli did and does have a big role to play in that because the bottom line is you
can do it; you just have to be brave – that’s the most important value of elBulli.
Watch this space for a chance to win an exclusive copy of elBulli 2005-2011 worth £425 and signed by Ferran Adrià himself.
