Why Albert Adrià returns in Enigma to the tasting menu of 220 euros and 25 dishes

In the pandemic it was closed for 27 months.

In June of last year, Albert Adrià (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, ​​53 years old) reopened Enigma (Sepúlveda, 38-40, Barcelona), his most creative restaurant, with a lunch format at noon and drinks afternoon with tapas

“That model was brutal, he saved me from losses.

The meal formula with drinks is very good.

When you eat you have to drink and when you drink you have to eat.

People came to have a good time, but the place could no longer absorb so many people.

We were not prepared for a service in the morning and another at night”, Adrià comments to EL PAÍS.

Before the end of the summer, and despite the fact that he had promised himself not to return home at one in the morning every day, he turned it around and began to serve only dinner, from 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, at menu, to choose between 35 dishes.

Now it is giving another turn of the helm: as of March 6, it will eliminate the menu and will only offer a tasting menu of about 25 passes at a price of 220 euros (without drinks, including taxes).

“I return to the traditional model, I cook again, I live a second youth because now I cook from the tranquility”, he comments with some relief.

He has left behind his role as restaurant manager, the uncertainty and the suffocation of having to close, due to the health crisis, the five establishments that made up the elBarri group.

Three were his —the Mexican Hoja Santa, the Bodega 1900 vermouth bar and the haute cuisine Enigma—, and the other two —the creative and informal Tickets and the

Pakta—belonged to the Iglesias family, owners of the emblematic Rías de Galicia.

Of all of them, only Enigma has survived, with capacity for a maximum of 48 diners.

“I tried to pass him, but it was very difficult.

Who is going to want to stay with this local monster with so much uncertainty around?

I didn't want to continue on the front line, hence all the tests we did during these months", adds the cook, sitting in the dark back of the restaurant, now converted into a thinking area and where in the years of splendor, prior to 2020, the diner ended the gastronomic experience with music and drinks.

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'Rablé' of hare with anchovy from the Cantabrian Sea, one of the proposals of the Enigma restaurant (Barcelona).

The restaurant works.

It has also given it a boost to attract a certain customer profile by having recovered the Michelin star last November, which was awarded the year it opened in 2017 and lost due to closure.

“It has been a stimulus for the team.

It has given us strength and has put us on the map, because haute cuisine lives off tourists”, continues Adrià.

He confesses that a roadmap has not been set to achieve more recognition than those granted by the French tire guide: “It would be pedantic and unnecessary to set these types of goals.

Getting stars takes many years, and you have to have respect for those who have been fighting to get them.

Atrio has taken 15 years to have the third star”.

Saying this, and while he tries with a spoon a lobster sauce that a cook has improved,

He confesses that he only works to keep the restaurant full: "The guides help, but the important thing is that there is a kitchen and a base behind it."

It is what he is doing now, doing tests, testing recipes, polishing the style of the dishes and looking for a minimalist and elegant aesthetic.

“The menu has to sit well, it cannot be heavy, everything has to be measured and balanced.

It has to be proof against my stomach, which is delicate, ”she explains.

Adrià arrives every day first thing in the morning.

The light from outside filters into this 700-square-meter premises, a kind of futuristic labyrinth, the work of the RCR Arquitectes studio in Olot (Girona), winner of the 2017 Pritzker Prize, designed with innovative technology and materials, such as synthesized stone.

The space reflects the message that Ferran Adrià's little brother wanted to convey with his kitchen proposal: creativity and mystery.

There is little cheating: the kitchen is in full view and in it, after a welcome aperitif at the entrance, a team of 43 people line up to pay their respects to the diner.

Albert Adrià, with his team in the kitchen of the Enigma restaurant on February 8, 2023.Albert Garcia

He assures that the menu will change, that he wants to entrust almost everything to the temporality of the product.

Among the dishes, a squid scarf cut by hand and painted with the fat of the Iberian ham and caviar, or a soy milk burrata —during the pandemic he was working on this type of preparation with a London company— with broad beans, a slice of truffle black, oil and salt.

Other notable snacks are the

chicken and coconut gelatinized soup with sea urchin, the lobster cured in seawater with its own coral soup, the artichoke hummus wrapped in some ironed artichoke petals, with Moroccan lemon and fresh mint , or the hunting sequence: a

( traditional Japanese

)

tapioca and

with hare consommé, a

(loin) of hare with Cantabrian anchovies, and some endives, half prepared with animal sauce, and the rest, with

and raspberries.

Desserts seek the same balance and lightness in a crispy

leaf , orange sorbet and beetroot crisp or a tangerine tart, green cardamom toffee and hazelnut ice cream.

Adrià is happy with the results: “Now yes, there is no doubt.

Enigma is going to be a world reference”.