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ElBulli, fifteen years after the revolution that changed world cuisine
From legendary restaurant to knowledge laboratory, Ferran Adrià's project keeps alive the creative legacy of a space that transformed contemporary gastronomy.
Fifteen years after its closure as a restaurant, that small establishment located in Cala Montjoi in Roses continues to be one of the great references of world gastronomic creativity. The project led by Ferran Adrià and the late Juli Soler, and which was voted the best restaurant in the world five times, has begun a new stage as a center of memory, research and knowledge under the name of elBulli1846.
July 30 marked fifteen years since an end that was, in reality, a new beginning. After years of extreme creative demands, Adrià decided to close the restaurant's doors to analyze and understand what had happened in that universe of constant innovation. Cooking gave way to research, and the chef became a researcher of his own revolution.
ElBulli1846 today occupies the same space where that transformation was born. The Montjoi cove, surrounded by the cliffs and Mediterranean landscape of Cap de Creus, continues to be an essential part of the story. The location has not changed: the winding road, the isolation and the relationship with nature are part of an identity impossible to separate from the myth.
The museum-laboratory preserves the workbooks, objects, dishes and the original kitchen where the ideas that redefined the gastronomic language were conceived. During its career as a restaurant, the team created 1,846 dishes. Adrià defends this term against the more common term of “dishes”, because each of them was the result of a process of research, experimentation and reflection.
Currently, the project maintains a stable structure of about ten people, although it constantly incorporates collaborators linked to the different programs of the elBullifoundation, a platform that continues to develop lines of work around creativity, knowledge and innovation.
This new life of ElBulli will also reach the screens. The series Gênesi , a six-episode production, will reconstruct the history of the restaurant and the impact of a generation of chefs who placed Spanish gastronomy on the international map. The fiction, which will premiere on September 21 on TV3 and on the 3Cat platform before its distribution through Netflix, has a cast formed by Miquel Fernández, Iván Massagué, Carlos Cuevas and Mónica López.
The production also recovers fundamental figures of that gastronomic movement, such as Santi Santamaría, Oriol Castro, Fermí Puig, Christian Escribà, Joan Roca, Carme Ruscalleda, Fina Puigdevall or Nandu Jubany, in a portrait of an era that transformed the way we understand cuisine.
But ElBulli's legacy goes beyond memory. Initiatives have grown around the project aimed at organizing and transmitting this knowledge. Bullipedia works to systematize the wisdom linked to gastronomic restoration through various publications; the Sapiens methodology proposes analyzing any human activity based on its connections, its history and its processes; and the recent Genesis Plan, developed with CaixaBank, offers restaurateurs tools to create sustainable business models.
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