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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." 

Things have gone from bad to worse for our favourite culinary wizard Heston Blumenthal.

Victims of the food poisoning outbreak at his three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, are now seeking legal damages from the chef, reports the Daily Mail.

Blumenthal closed the iconic restaurant for two weeks in February after more than 500 diners were struck down by norovirus, or winter vomiting bug.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) released a report on its investigation into the outbreak earlier this month stating the official cause was contaminated shellfish.

The report pointed to "several weaknesses in procedures" at the Fat Duck including delayed response to the incident and staff working when they should have been off sick.

The victims are now seeking damages against Blumenthal over the chef's 'pathetic response' to the episode - among them high profile diners including boxing promoter Frank Warren and TV presenter Jim Rosenthal.

However, a spokeswoman for the Fat Duck defended the restaurant saying it was still in the process of reviewing the HPA's report and was not yet in a position to respond to claims.

"Unfortunately, until our insurers and legal teams have completed this review we are unable to comment further and we have written to all of our guests who were affected to advise them of this," she said.

The official cause of the outbreak of the norovirus, which forced celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal to shut his three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant last winter, has been revealed as contaminated shellfish.

Blumenthal, chef-proprietor of the iconic restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, was forced to close the Fat Duck for two weeks in February/March after up to 40 diners were afflicted with a mystery illness resulting in vomiting and diarrhoea. Following media coverage of the outbreak, the number of potential cases leapt to more than 500.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) today released a report on its investigation into the outbreak stating the organism responsible was norovirus "which was probably introduced via shellfish".

"Oysters were served raw; razor clams may not have been appropriately handled or cooked; tracing of shellfish to source showed evidence of contamination and there have been reports of illness in other establishments associated with oysters from the same source," the HPA report said.

Pretty scary stuff. If you can't trust the oysters at a three-Michelin-starred restaurant, who can you trust?

Good news for Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay: according to the latest edition of the Good Food Guide the celebrity chefs are still at the top of their game when it comes to restaurants.

The restaurant bible has named Heston Blumenthal's three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, the best restaurant in Britain awarding it a perfect score of ten out of ten for the second year in a row.

Gordon Ramsay's flagship three-Michelin-starred restaurant on London's Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea scored nine out of ten making it the second most popular UK restaurant in the Good Food Guide 2010.

The awards will no doubt have some critics up in arms.

The Good Food Guide 2010 is published on 8 September priced £16.99.

Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal is set to hike the prices at his three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant by a third.

Our favourite culinary wizard pushed up the cost of his much celebrated 12-course tasting menu from £130 to £140 this week. But he plans to eventually bring it up to £170, making it the most expensive tasting menu in the UK.

Even the tasting menu at Thomas Keller's French Laundry in Napa Valley, California, comes in at less than Heston's new prices at $240 (£147), while Jean Georges Vongerichten's flagship eatery in New York City charges $148 (£90).

However, the Fat Duck's prices are still nowhere near those of the three-star restaurants in Paris, many of whom charge in excess of €250 (£214) for their Menus Prestiges.  

Blumenthal said the hike was the result of the sheer investment in staff, produce and research that goes into the production of the Fat Duck's menu.

"The costs associated with employing 45 chefs to cook for, on average, 42 covers a service are huge," he told Restaurant Magazine.

Seems like the recession isn't much of an issue to old Heston but then again the Fat Duck did lose hundreds of thousands of pounds when it was forced to shut for two weeks amid a food scare earlier this year.  

On a separate note, Heston has agreed to appear at the Caterer and Hotelkeeper Chef Conference in September.

He will take to the stage in a one-on-one interview and is expected to talk about the breadth of his culinary experiences over the past two years, as well as future projects, including a 140-seat restaurant at London's Mandarin Oriental hotel, which he plans to open in 2010.

For everyone who watched the Channel 4 documentary Big Chef Takes On Little Chef, during which Heston Blumenthal transformed Little Chef's menu, it was pretty clear that there wasn't much love lost between our favourite culinary wizard and the roadside restaurant chain's CEO Ian Pegler.

The Fat Duck's three-Michelin-starred chef patron's efforts weren't ever quite "blue-sky-thinking" enough for the Little Chef boss, who in the end was proved wrong when Heston's menu took the restaurant it was launched at by storm.

The menu, which includes dishes such as braised ox cheeks, coq au vin and Hereford steak and Abbot Ale pie, proved a big hit not just with food critics, but also with Little Chef's target market of truck drivers and travelling salesmen.

And so last week, Pegler announced that following the success of Heston's trial-menu at the restaurant in Popham, Hampshire, Little Chef had taken the decision roll it out at its 175 restaurants across the UK.

Good news all round then, right? Apparently not.

Despite the great success of the menu, Pegler clearly hasn't quite forgotten his differences with Heston, who has said that he was not consulted by Little Chef about the planned rollout.

At last night's Craft Guild of Chefs Awards, where he was honoured with the Special Award, Heston revealed he was "surprised" that Little Chef had announced plans to launch his menu nationwide without further discussions with him first.

Not quite what I'd call blue-sky-thinking...

Heston Blumenthal not consulted about Little Chef menu rollout 

Heston Blumenthal is planning to open his first restaurant in London.

The chef patron of the iconic three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant and the Hind's Head pub in the Berkshire village of Bray, is in discussions to launch a restaurant in the capital and has been linked to London's Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park.

More details to follow soon on Caterersearch.

Yesterday it emerged that Prince Philip had taken his 50-strong entourage to the Fat Duck for their Christmas lunch.

What a generous employer. Who pays his wages again?

Comprising a starter of apple and lemon flavoured jelly balls, with a creamy texture on the inside and crackling on the outside, Gagnaire has worked for months with food scientist Hervé This to create the recipe from chemical compounds.

Entitled "le note à note", the dish, which will debut at his Michelin-starred restaurant Pierre at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong today, is a combination of "ascorbic acid, glucose, citric acid and a few grams of 4-O-a-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol, a sugar substitute otherwise known as maltitol". 

Hervé This, widely considered the godfather of molecular gastronomy, hailed the dish as a step into the future of haute cuisine.

"Tomorrow's chefs will frown upon plain vegetables, such as carrots and will instead use the molecules which make up carrots - caroteniods, pectins, fructose and glucuronic acid," he told The Times.

So is this the future of fine dining? 

Picture of Pierre Gagnaire supplied by Rex Features.