El Bullí in Roses on the Costa Brava, five times winner of the World’s Best Restaurant, and a three Michelin star restaurant, closed its doors at the end of July after 27 glorious years serving up the most avant-garde cuisine on the planet. It was a sad day for many. Yet the reason to close El Bullí wasn’t financial, or for loss of appeal. El Bullí is transforming itself into a centre of culinary excellence, the El Bulli Foundation, and so the legend of Ell Bullí lives on.
The alchemist himself, Ferran Adria, with business partner Joan Roca
Ferran Adria, the culinary wizard, insists he is not going into retirement; he is just ready to close the end of an era and start a brand new generation of creativity in the kitchen. Rather than dedicating all of his and his 70-strong team’s waking hours constantly creating new dishes for diners, he will be developing a gastronomy ‘think tank’, in which he will invite 30-40 culinary scholars from around the globe to work alongside the maestro in his quest for new culinary horizons.
A hidden gem, El Bulli Restaurant in Cala Montjoi, Roses
The El Bullí foundation will be situated in the former restaurant, in its idyllically scenic spot overlooking Cala Montjoi, in the charming Catalonian town Roses, on the Costa Brava. Ferran Adria has insisted that although the restaurant has closed, the soul will live on, and people will still be invited to ‘try’ the new creations, although it will not be classed as a restaurant, more a gastronomic laboratory.
If all goes according to plan, El Bullí should re-open as a restaurant in 2014, slightly re-worked, or should I say re-mastered, and with two years worth of intense culinary research. The location won’t change, but the restaurant itself will undergo extensive redevelopment, which promises a zero emission design, a completely sustainable architectural form using cutting edge ‘solar power’ energy, in a perfectly natural setting.
The new motto of the project is: ‘Risk-taking, freedom and creativity’, with no timetable, no routine, no rules, just pure creation.
El Bulli Water Lily
Throughout its life El Bullí has exceeded its own expectations. The restaurant was only open for six months each year and would receive over 3 million requests for reservations, for its 60 cover space, which could only seat 8000 diners per six-month season. The restaurant was literally legendary as so many people wanted to dine there, but just couldn’t get on the waiting list. Those lucky enough to be accepted were willing to pay 275 euros (not including tax or wine) for the set 50 dish ‘degustation’ menu. Despite this, the restaurant never made a profit and the maestro confirmed that he was losing around half a million euros per year.
So aside from establishing the the El Bullí Foundation, Ferran Adria has also signed a 40 million dollar Hollywood deal to make a film about his work, and he has a new book due to be launched this month titled, ‘Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria’. The book promises to teach even the most unadventurous of us how to cook a special dish El Bulli-style. Two lucrative deals, which will help the alchemist’s and academy’s bank balance improve and will surely allow the creative juices to flow even further.
So what should we expect next? It’s impossible to tell. The dishes were so avant-garde before, who can say what we can expect from the new academy. Only that whatever it will be will be amazing to the taste, a spectacle for the eye and an important step forward for Spanish cuisine and the culinary industry in general. So we wait for El Bullí: The Legend Part II.
For more information on the region of Catalonia and the stunning coastline Costa Brava, check out our travel guide and video to Costa Blanca. Or choose a place to stay on the Costa Brava.
Image credits @FlickR: cronica gastronomia / SBA73 / umami
