Spanish chef Ferran Adrià’s famous elBulli restaurant is closed, but the two million people a year who wanted to eat there can at least see what he was up to at an exhibition in London that features, among other things, a giant dog made of meringue.
Famous for deconstructing and recombining foods into new shapes and flavours, Adria said the decision to close the three-star Michelin elBulli on Catalonia’s Costa Brava two years ago was a hard one, but it freed him and his team from the pressures of running a high-end restaurant.
“I was tormented by having to close it. I wanted elBulli to survive for many years,” Adrià said in a telephone interview.
“We had to create something that would allow elBulli to live for a very long time.”
So Adrià created the elBulli foundation, which plans to safeguard the legacy by opening a food museum and a “creativity” centre on the restaurant’s former grounds, overlooking a bay. The 51-year-old chef also helped devise a special exhibition that explores elBulli’s history and its culinary evolution towards its famous, avant-garde cuisine, the proceeds from which will go towards funding the foundation.
British food has always had a reputation of not being that good; people nowadays have lots and lots of respect for it
Adrià said it was a “dream” to hold his exhibition, which was first mounted in Barcelona last year, in London.
“London is one of the cultural capitals of the world. The UK in the last 10 years has made a huge improvement,” he said, citing fellow chefs Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay as pioneers for British cuisine.
“British food has always had a reputation of not being that good; people nowadays have lots and lots of respect for it,” he said.
The exhibition, which runs until September 29 at Somerset House, is filled with personal photos, letters and mementos from Adrià and his team as well as cooking equipment and even a giant dog made entirely of meringue.
“In this exhibition, we are able to explain what we were doing. It was our life; creativity was our life... this exhibition is an appetiser to be able to understand all of this,” said Adrià.
An extensive timeline with videos showing visitors how some of the dishes that Adrià and his team created is also on display, as well as an interactive encyclopaedia of food and a model of the new foundation.
Adrià plans for the show to travel for the next four or five years, first to the US and then back to Italy and Spain, where some of its content will go on display in the elBulli food museum.