Spanish celebrity chef Ferran Adrià has denied weekend reports that he is to permanently close his three-Michelin-starred restaurant El Bulli.
Adrià announced plans to temporarily close the iconic restaurant for two years in 2012 and 2013 at Spanish chef conference Madrid Fusion last month.
But an article in the New York Times over the weekend quoted the famous chef saying that he would close El Bulli for good replacing it with an academy for advanced culinary studies.
The report claimed that Adrià had made the decision to shut El Bulli permanently because he and his partner, Juli Soler, had been losing €500,000 (£435,000) a year on the restaurant and their cooking workshop in Barcelona.
However, Adrià has now denied the report in a Spanish newspaper, saying the New York Times had misquoted him.
“Nothing has changed with respect to the announcement I made in Madrid in January,” Adria said.
“El Bulli will close its doors in 2012 and 2013, and will reopen in 2014.”
Last month Adrià said the decision to close El Bulli for two years was for a combination of personal and creative reasons. “I’m not retiring,” he said then.
He added the time would be used “to work and transform things at El Bulli” although he couldn’t yet say exactly what that would mean when the restaurant re-opens in 2014.
El Bulli currently opens for only six months a year and last year shifted its opening season, which previously ran April to October, forward to June to December.
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By Kerstin Kühn
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