Ferran Adrià . The New York Times profile.
GeneralJul 22nd, 2009 | no responses
Ferran Adrià is the dean of molecular gastronomy, the Catalonian chef who uses his kitchen laboratory for creations like liquid ravioli; caviar made from olive oil; an elliptical olive that is pure liquid; pine cone mousse; ravioli of cuttlefish wrapped around coconut milk; and Parmesan snow. They are astonishing and often baffling technical accomplishments that have garnered many disciples and set trends in restaurant kitchens worldwide.
At Mr. Adrià’s three-Michelin-star restaurant, El Bulli, in the small town of Rosas about two hours northeast of Barcelona, he uses unusual, expensive equipment, like a $25,000 encapsulating machine, to express his artistic, often magical creativity. The dishes that emerge from his wizard’s kitchen almost always taste as astonishing as they look.
Two of his most famous and influential creations are ”foam,” in which he aerates sauces with a nitrous-oxide siphon that is ordinarily used to whip cream, and ”warm gelatin,” in which he adds a seaweed powder called agar to stabilize beef gelatin without chilling it.
The son of a house painter, Mr. Adrià has often said that his career began accidentally, that he had no master plan. At a classic French restaurant in Barcelona, the chef, his father’s friend, gave him a job as a dishwasher and made him “memorize Escoffier,” he said. He was 17; a year later, he started working in kitchens around Spain. He began at El Bulli, then a French restaurant, in 1983. Shortly after, the head chef quit, and Mr. Adrià persuaded the manager to give him the job.
At 21, he began cooking in the classic French manner, but, curious as to why food was cooked the way it was cooked, he slowly started to create his own cuisine. During the off season, he would visit France, often with Juli Soler, the restaurant’s manager, to check out the best restaurants. He says his career really began in Nice in 1986 at a cooking demonstration given by Jacques Maximin, an influential chef known for defying boundaries. Mr. Adrià recalled that someone asked, ”What is creativity?” and Mr. Maximin said, ”Don’t copy.”
Mr. Adrià’s idea was simply, he said, to ”do new things with old concepts.” He figured he would create something different with chicken curry, so he developed a now-famous dish, with a solid sauce and a liquid chicken.
He soon began to attract attention. Then, in 1997, the Michelin Guide gave the restaurant three stars. In 1999, Joël Robuchon declared him the world’s greatest chef. (Mr. Adrià always shares credit with Albert Adrià, his brother, who runs the dessert side; his three executive chefs, Oriol Castro, Albert Raurich and Eduard Xatruch; and Mr. Soler, who has been his business partner of more than 20 years.)
El Bulli is open six months a year, usually from early April to early October. The rest of the year is for experimenting. Reservations are difficult if not impossible to get.
Looking back to his early years, Mr.Adrià told The Times in 2003: ”All we were trying to do at that time was have a good restaurant. I’m not even sure I knew I had a personal style until others said I did.”’
“The most important thing,” he added, “is taste.” — Adapted from “Adrià May Be Relaxing, But His Obsessions Are Still Abuzz,” by Mark Bittman, The New York Times, Sept. 13, 2006, and “A Laboratory of Taste,” by Arthur Lubow, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Aug. 10, 2003
