"ferran adria" news and stories

Now that El Bulli, the world's most famous restaurant is closing, chef Ferran Adria can concentrate on other projects, like teaching a class at America's most famous college, Harvard University.

This fall Adria is teaming up with his old friend, Jose Andres to teach a 13-week 'culinary physics' course at Harvard. Andres runs several D.C. based restaurants and is often credited with introducing traditional Spanish cuisine to the U.S.

Other chefs will be joining them including Blue Hill's Dan Barber and Spanish compatriot Joan Roca (who has snagged his own Michelin star).

The course is not a typical cooking: the chefs will be instructing students on the abc's of physics and then moving onto demonstrations on how to make the emulsions and foams that are Adria's trademark.

Andres told Slashfood that "Harvard is a world-class university and when Harvard does something, other institutions around the world take notice. This is something completely new and I think you will see other universities starting similar programs."

While Catalan chef Ferran Adria will be shuttering his world-famous El Bulli restaurant for the 2012 and 2013 seasons, the father of avant garde cooking denied reports the restaurant was closing for good, the Associated Press reported.

Adria denies a report in the New York Times that he was closing El Bulli permanently and replacing it with an academy for advanced culinary study.

El Bulli, about two hours north of Barcelona, is considered by many to be the world's best restaurant. However, even for the best, the restaurant business can be tough.

The Times reported the restaurant, known for its creative approach to molecular gastronomy with creations like Parmesan ice cream sandwiches, was losing half a million Euros a year.

ElBulli groupies will have to wait until 2014 to get their fill of sea-urchin foam.

Ferran Adrià announced Tuesday that he will be closing his mecca of molecular gastronomy in Roses, on the northeastern coast of Spain, for all of 2012 and 2013.

"No meals will be served in elBulli in 2012 and 2013," Adrià said. "But elBulli is not closing down. These are not two years on sabbatical. I need time to decide how 2014 is going to be. We want the year 2014 to stand out and I know that when I return it will not be the same.

Woe to the unfortunate eaters who faithfully followed the past decade's dining trends: Smaller portions, rising prices and the unabated craze for comfort food (especially dishes involving pork products) would presumably have left them far fatter and poorer than they were in 1999.

But for diners who enjoyed the last 10 years in small doses, the aughts were downright delicious -- thanks to local sourcing, a vigorous insistence on fresh and seasonal ingredients and, yes, all those pork products.

If there was one trend that defined the first breaths of this millennium, it was a general resistance to trendiness. In years ruled by buzzwords like "authentic," "heritage," "artisanal," "traditional" and "classic," what was deemed cool at the decade's outset pretty much stayed that way: If there's an organic greens and sustainable seafood backlash brewing, it hasn't perked yet.

Still, we're pressing ahead with a restaurant trend-by-year taxonomy. Nitpickers will notice that the assignments are sometimes rather arbitrary: Was 2003 or 2004 the year that celebrity chefdom raged most fiercely? Is it fair to call 2005 the year of foam, considering it was already old hat in big cities and still years away from arriving in small towns? Argue among yourselves.

.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.

It's said that 2,000,000 requests a year come in for just 8000 seats at Ferran Adrià's Spanish temple of molecular gastronomy. The closest many of us will come is grazing through this brand new 528 page play-by-play, A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià. It's not so much the common parlance's "food porn" as it is a post-millennial culinary junkie's process orgy, documenting each staff motion and motivation, every microgram of alginate and liquid nitrogen, and fetishistically breaking down quantity and custom and customer/server semiotics.

The proverbial sausage has never been so obsessively, graphically made for public consumption, and rarely has it been so deliciously presented. There are pleasing pictures and recipes, to be sure (Hazelnut praline air, anyone? Perhaps some Garrapi-nitro pine nuts?), but sans easy access to an Isomalt-R-Us, it's a fever-dream cookbook. It is, however, a deeply heartening food-ifesto.