Adrià Ferran - Ferran: the inside story of El Bulli and the man who reinvented food

THE INSIDE STORY OF EL BULLI
AND THE MAN WHO REINVENTED FOOD

COLMAN ANDREWS

GOTHAM
BOOKS

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Previously published as a Gotham Books hardcover edition

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Copyright 2010 by Colman Andrews
All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION OF THIS
BOOK AS FOLLOWS:
Andrews, Colman.
Ferran : the inside story of El Bulli and the man who reinvented food / by Colman Andrews.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-1-101-54594-2
1. Adri, Ferran. 2. RestaurateursSpainBiography. 3. elBulli (Restaurant)History.
4. Avant-garde (Aesthetics) I. Title.
TX910.5.A25A53 2010
647.95092dc22
[B] 2010025124

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Per lAgust i na Maria Llusa

Ms de vint-i-cinc anys damistat i de bon menjar
i noms estem comenant!

N o chef in history has been interviewed, written about, and parsed more than Ferran Adri. Certainly no other chef has so precisely and exhaustivelyobsessively is probably not too strong a wordchronicled his own professional life and the history of his restaurant, issued so many statements of philosophy, and so freely shared his recipes and the details of his techniques. Every dish the man and his team have created for his legendary restaurant, El Bulli, has been photographed and ordered chronologically, the results appearing in five volumes (more than fifty-three pounds worth) of General Catalogue, which run a total of 2,402 pages so far, with more volumes to come. This alone should qualify him for the title of patron saint of professional introspection. A ten-part audiovisual companion to these tomes runs more than eight hours. Another book, A Day at elBulli, offers six hundred pages of photographs, not just of finished food but of the people who produce it, the places where it is made and served, and virtually every imaginable aspect of the restaurant and its operation. Much of the material contained in these books (including the catalogue of dishes), and a lot more, also appears on the excellent, multilingual El Bulli Web site, www.elbulli.com.

What my own book does not include, then, is another roster of Ferrans most famous dishes, or a reproduction of his twenty-three-part Synthesis of elBulli Cuisine, or (with brief exceptions) yet more iterations of his formal statements of culinary philosophy. Instead, Ive tried to sketch out, and fill in, a portrait of Ferran Adri as he hasnt quite been seen before and to retell the oft-told tale of El Bulli from a noncanonical point of view, adding at least some revealing facts that may not already be well-known. Ive also attempted to place Ferran and El Bulli in historical and culinary context, to address the more salient criticisms that have been leveled against him, and to both demystify and exalt the man and his accomplishments. Above all, Ive tried to tell a good story, one that I hope will interest even those readers who, before picking up this volume, had never heard of Ferran.