Ferran Adrià: “I love 'bollycaos”

Ferran Adrià is dressed as Ferran Adrià —black jacket, black T-shirt, black jeans, all very fluid and very unstructured— sitting on an ultra-modern daybed on the corner of the Telefónica building on Madrid's Gran Vía.

A classic building with an interior beautifully remodeled to look like a minimalist era, but with miles of cables hidden under the surface so that everything works perfectly without being noticed.

It does not seem a bad scenario to speak with the soul of elBulli.

Before, the hosts offer a snack of healthy buns and sandwiches and bright organic tangerines that are nice to see.

A colleague has just come out to interview the chef and, after the lunch break, others will come.

I'd be lying if I said I'm not tense.

So I drop ballast.

I don't know what to ask you that you haven't asked before.

Test.

I have been 25 years with an average of 400 interviews a year.

There are some in which I have fallen asleep and in others they have made me think.

And then there are those who come and ask: "When did you start?"

And then I refuse and say, 'Go online, please.'

What are you going to eat today?

Today we are going to La Tasquita de Enfrente, next door, and we are sure to eat marvelously.

Do you see the cook's panicky face when entering a restaurant?

I am a very grateful customer because I know how hard it is to be a cook.

Now I choose a restaurant by looking at the photos of the dishes on the internet, the comments or even looking at them, and I'm right 99% of the time.

Do you autopsy competitor dishes?

Yes, I look at them and say: this yes, this no.

I am dedicated to cooking and then a frying, no matter how beautiful the photo is, if they put two leaves of lettuce next to it, I say: what the heck does that do there, bad.

When God calls you so many disciples, does one come to believe it?

Far from it, I consider myself a normal guy, knowing that what we have done is important.

I am not a modest fake.

What exactly did he do?

I didn't want to be a cook but I can't keep my brain still.

When I started at elBulli, my idea was to make a small letter, but from 94 to 98 it was crazy.

My brother Albert, Oriol Castro and I changed everything.

We were crazy, we were hooligans.

We did things that did not exist.

We were neither better nor worse, but we were pioneers and being a pioneer is the hardest thing you can be.

There will be other revolutions, but that will not happen again.

Why do you think your 'madness' connected with the rest of the world?

I don't know, I don't consider myself a very intelligent person either, but my brain doesn't stop.

Now I am with you and my subconscious is in three places.

Maybe it was because eating, we all eat.

Food is the most important social network, more than Facebook, than Instagram, than Twitter, than everything.

Why are there millions of recipes in the world if with 20 we would be perfectly fed?

Because eating is more than filling the crop.

Exactly.

What we did is creative cuisine, but we are so horny that we did not name it.

You are interviewing me today for something we did 20 years ago and did not baptize it.

The

New York Times

called it "the new Nouvelle Cuisine", some have called it emotional cuisine, but nobody uses it and, if it is not used, it is not worth it.

I believe that if Nouvelle Cuisine was the avant-garde, ours was the Second Avant-garde.

That for those who say that we are pretentious.

Does it hurt to be told?

They tell me because I am talking about art, or philosophy, or design.

It doesn't hurt, because whoever says that hasn't made the effort to watch a documentary or read a book of mine.

I don't feel like an artist, I feel like a creative.

If I say that elBulli has won the Lucky Strike award for design, I am pretentious.

This is a huge Latino mistake.

We are ashamed to say, for example, that I have four

honorary

degrees

.

If I went to Harvard it was because they called me to sign me up and we did the science course in the kitchen.

But if we say so, we are pretentious.

I'm not the one saying it.

For not having, I don't even have a press agent, but there they are.

It seems that something is bothering him.

I listen to myself and it is normal that, if there are 47 million Spaniards, equal to 20% they do not like me.

And that's 10 million.

That's why I don't read the Twitter comments.

Nobody likes to be called a fool.

The strong thing is that, even so, they continue.

Gentlemen, elBulli has been closed for 10 years, leave me alone.

How do you survive success?

There are many levels of success.

Mine is beautiful, my success is not so bad.

A success of those crazy people, fans and such, I think that 95% of people make it crazy.

Do you know the stress of the elite cook?

Yes, but I have always remembered that I come from a working family and that I am a normal uncle.

Where is all the pasture that you have gained in these years?

Most of it at elBullifoundation.

If I retired at 50 it was because I had the resources to do so.

But I don't have a car or yacht or expensive things.

My wife and I live as a couple who both work and earn a good salary.

My circle is small.

Likewise, the fact of having decided not to have children has made us different, neither worse nor better.

Do you regret not having them?

No, as I see that today's children treat their parents.

I see teenagers, children of friends, who are terrifying, they want the freedom of 18 at 12. In return, I have had 2,500 children, the

Bullinians

, the cooks we have trained at elBulli.

One of them, dearly, José Andrés, is the Princess of Asturias Award.

He, with his solidarity project, is also a pioneer.

If you do different things they talk about you.

If not a yacht or a car, what is luxury?

Do what you want at all times.

The luxury can be a kilo of caviar or a sardine.

Confess a guilty pleasure.

The elvers with truffle, the elvers with white truffle are magical.

I was referring to something that you are ashamed to admit that you like.

I love bollycaos, but nothing to shame, I'm proud.

I eat them since I was 10 years old.

But if that's poison ...

That's why I don't eat them every day.

What would you have for dinner if you knew this was going to be your last dinner?

Remove remove.

I don't want to die.

And if I die, neither dinner nor heck: goodbye and quickie.

MEMORIES OF ELBULLI

Ferran Adrià (Barcelona, ​​59 years old) didn't even like to eat - "my brother Albert and I were fussy eaters," he remembers - let alone cook. Study, not too much. So, the son of a humble family, he started working as a dishwasher in a restaurant before going to the military in Cartagena, where he was good enough to be assigned to the captain's cook. When he graduated, he ended up in the kitchen of elBulli, a good restaurant in Cala Montjoi (Girona). The rest - cover of 'The New York Times', four doctorates 'honoris causa', presentations at Harvard - is on Wikipedia. And in the Bullipedia, his own work in which, since the restaurant closed 10 years ago, he has collected the concepts, dishes and techniques with which he turned world cuisine upside down. Now 2,500 disciples and 1,846 dishes later,presents 'The footprints of elBulli', (Movistar), a kind of memories in life. "It is not a will. It is a pause to tell where we come from and where we are, but this is not over," he warns.