Recently in Ferran Adrià Category

Ferran Adrià may be closing his legendary restaurant El Bulli this month but this doesn't mean he's taking time off.

It was announced this week that the world-renowned chef has teamed up with PepsiCo - owner of brands like Frito-Lay, Quaker, Tropicana and Gatorade - lending his creative, culinary genius to all of the company's brands worldwide.

Adrià has been linked to PepsiCo for a while through other partnerships including the Lay's Craft 100% olive oil or cream Alvalle. This time round the Catalan chef is to create a line of new "snack products", breakfast options and convenience items with a special focus on healthier choices.

Located on the Costa Brava, 100 miles north of Barcelona, El Bulli will close this month for two years and reopen in 2014 as a private, not-for-profit organisation.

The elBullifoundation will allow up to 30 scholars to work alongside the restaurant's creative team. El Bulli will retain its dining, where a certain number of customers will be able to taste the Foundation's creations.

Adrià recently opened two new restaurants in Barcelona together with his brother, Albert. The duo launched tapas bar 41 Degrees in the Catalan capital as well as tapas restaurant Tickets.   

Spanish chef Jose Andres, known for his avant-garde cooking and bringing tapas to America, has been named the most outstanding chef in the USA in the country's coveted James Beard Awards.

Andres, whose company the Think Food Group runs a string of popular restaurants in Washington, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, beat fellow chefs Gary Danko, Suzanne Goin, Paul Kahan and Charles Phan to win the prestigious accolade.

The chef, who grew up in the Asturias area in northern Spain, started his career under the tutelage of Ferran Adria at El Bulli, before moving to the USA in 1990.

"Here's an immigrant celebrating the melting pot," he said. "I feel like I'm an ambassador bringing Spain to America and also to the world."

Meanwhile, Daniel Humm's Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park in New York picked up the James Beard Foundation's award for restaurant of the year, with its pastry chef Angela Pinkerton being named outstanding pastry chef.

Celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's ABC Kitchen in New York won the best new restaurant award, while the rising star award for chefs under the age of 30 went to Gabriel Rucker, executive chef at Le Pigeon in Portland, Oregon.

Santi Santamaria, the three-Michelin-starred, legendary Spanish chef, passed away today. He was at his restaurant in Singapore.

A manager at Santamaria's Can Fabes restaurant in Sant Celoni told AFP that the 53-year-old chef had died suddenly while in his restaurant, Santi, run by his daughter.

The manager was not aware of the cause of death, but Spanish media reports claim Santamaria suffered a heart attack.

Santamaria's food philosophy was founded on tradition and authenticity, seasonality and provenance. In an interview with Caterer in 2009, when Roux Scholar Daniel Cox was conducting his three-month stage at Can Fabes, Santamaria said: "Visual aesthetics are no use unless a dish delivers taste. All ingredients must be excellent, from the stock onwards."

Santamaria hit the news in recent years when he publicly described Spain's more avant-garde chefs, such as Ferran Adria, as "a gang of frauds whose work is to distract snobs". 

His comments sparked a battle of words with Adrià, a battle that worsened when Santamaria claimed he and Adrià had had an "ethical and conceptual divorce over what we put on the plate" and accused Adrià of using gelling agents and synthetic additives that represented a health threat to his customers.

Spanish super-chef Ferran Adrià today opens a new restaurant in Barcelona.

The legendary culinary wizard of El Bulli fame is launching tapas bar 41 Degrees in the Catalan capital together with his brother Albert.

The menu at the new restaurant will offer dishes similar to those at El Bulli - including crèpe of Peking duck and marshmallow clouds of lime and cocoa. However, unlike El Bulli the average spend is around €50 and there is a no reservations policy so expect to find queues.

"I am sure this is going to happen but we will see," Adrià told Spanish news service The Reader.

"At 41 you won't be able to make a reservation because you can't say to someone who comes in at 7pm that at 9pm they have to leave. The concept is a bit new and we will see how we get on."

Additionally the Adrià brothers also plan to open a sit-down tapas restaurant in Barcelona next month. Called Tickets, it will be a 50-seat restaurant and will take reservations.

Last year, Adrià announced that he would close El Bulli for two years in 2012. On reopening in 2014 the iconic restaurant will run as a non-profit cooking foundation offering scholarships to the world's most talented chefs and providing a place for free thinking and kicking around ideas.

Read our Caterer Interview with Ferran Adrià.

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," he said.

"El Bulli will close its doors in 2012 and 2013, and will reopen in 2014."

Spanish celebrity chef Ferran Adrià has announced he will close his three-Michelin-starred restaurant El Bulli for two years.

Adrià made the unexpected announcement today at a press conference at international culinary congress Madrid Fusion, where he had earlier performed a cookery demonstration.

Sat beside business partner and El Bulli's general manager Juli Soler, the chef said he will temporarily close the iconic restaurant on the north Catalan coast near Barcelona during 2012 and 2013.

Adrià claimed the decision was for a combination of personal and creative reasons. "I'm not retiring," he said.

"It's just that we're not feeding anyone at the restaurant for two years. We will still be working. I don't want to go and sit on a beach in the Bahamas but I think we deserve to lead more normal lives because for 25 years we have been focusing on the restaurant. Now we need more time with our families."

El Bulli, which currently only 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, will open this year and in 2011 before closing.

According to Adrià the time will be used "to work and transform things at El Bulli" although he said he couldn't yet say exactly what that would mean when the restaurant re-opens in 2014.

Article published with thanks to Joe Warwick

After Heston Blumenthal came under fire following the outbreak of norovirus at the Fat Duck last February, fellow molecular gastronomist Ferran Adrià has now been accused of inadvertently poisoning his diners.

German food writer Jörg Zipprick has accused the chef patron of the iconic three-Michelin-starred El Bulli restaurant in Spain of poisoning his diners with additives.

Zipprick claims Adrià's menus should carry health warnings about the additives in his new book, The Unappetising Underside of Molecular Cooking.

"These colorants, gelling agents, emulsifiers, acidifiers and taste enhancers that Adria has introduced massively into his dishes to obtain extraordinary textures, tastes and sensations do not have a neutral impact on health," he says.

"It would not occur to any fast-food chain to stuff us with 20 or 30 dishes full of chemical additives."

Zipprick's criticism follows last year's attack on Adrià by fellow three-Michelin-starred Spanish chef Santi Santamaria, who also accused him of poisoning his diners. 

Adrià responded at the time by saying: "Obviously, if you consume too much of anything it's bad for you - too much roast beef, sugar or salt is bad. But 80% of the products I use are ecological, and the additives under debate account for just 0.1% of my cooking."