“If you need anything, please tell me.” So said the email from Ferran Adria to Grant Achatz. What the kitchen staff of Next needed a week ago was the recipe for elBulli’s famed gorgonzola sphere. They didn’t get it.
“They were setting up the exhibit in Barcelona and they were, I’m sure, incredibly busy so they kind of went off the grid,” chef Achatz says. “We had four recipes that we needed from them because they weren’t in any of the books. But [the elBulli guys] kind of disappeared. So Dave was like ‘I need these recipes, I really need these recipes’ and I’m like ‘I emailed them twice, I don’t know what to tell ya’ and his response was like ‘fuck it, I’ll just figure it out.’ Literally he goes ‘how hard can it be?’”
And did it work?
“Well,” Achatz replies. “It was good. It was pretty much the same thing.”
“I mean, it was 50 grams off,” Dave Beran says. “I used ice cream stabilizer instead of xantham gum, but otherwise…”
“Otherwise it was pretty much the same thing,” Achatz says.
“But then they came through with the recipe and now we’re going with theirs. But you gotta learn how to do it or else how do you know?”
![Eater.com: Ferran Adrià on Seeing the World, Misinformation, and the elBulli Foundation
Can you give more specifics on the kinds of people you will be bringing in? At the think tank there will be the same team that’s been at elBulli for the last fifteen years, save for Albert Raurich, who opened Dos Palillos in Barcelona and Berlin. And every year, every eight months, there will be 15 chefs — it doesn’t matter their age — who exhibit serious creative potential.
Will these be people you know? It’s a mix. If you ask me about how the first selection will go, I’ll tell you that if Andoni [Aduriz] or Grant [Achatz] tell me that they have an amazing person working for them, I’ll ask them to send me their resumé. Then we’ll test them online, and then have an exam at elBulli. Or, we could have a kid from Peru, from one of Gastón’s schools, who is wildly clever and shows great potential. I should say that this won’t be a school or an academy. I learn something every day trying to be creative, so there will be an element of learning, sure, but we’re not teaching.
So you won’t have to be established already? No, but if I want to invite Heston [Blumenthal] or Grant or a friend asks me to come spend some time working at the foundation, of course they can come. The main idea, though, is to have people that can carve out eight months of their year and dedicate it to working at elBulli Foundation. It could be, for example, the head chef at such and such hotel in Hong Kong, who is fifty years old, and has worked hard his whole life. He’s creative, but he hasn’t had the opportunity to truly express himself. That could be one.
What if I’m a fourteen year-old kid who doesn’t know any famous chefs, and I want to take a stab at it? Of course. We’ll look at your resumé, your application, you can send me some pictures of your dishes, and we’ll see. We want to bring in the best, like Harvard does, but we can also play around with the rules in certain cases. If we see a young kid who really intrigues us, we have to go for it.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsx2o7ipKO1qhod0do1_500.jpg)
Eater.com: Ferran Adrià on Seeing the World, Misinformation, and the elBulli Foundation
Can you give more specifics on the kinds of people you will be bringing in?
At the think tank there will be the same team that’s been at elBulli for the last fifteen years, save for Albert Raurich, who opened Dos Palillos in Barcelona and Berlin. And every year, every eight months, there will be 15 chefs — it doesn’t matter their age — who exhibit serious creative potential.Will these be people you know?
It’s a mix. If you ask me about how the first selection will go, I’ll tell you that if Andoni [Aduriz] or Grant [Achatz] tell me that they have an amazing person working for them, I’ll ask them to send me their resumé. Then we’ll test them online, and then have an exam at elBulli. Or, we could have a kid from Peru, from one of Gastón’s schools, who is wildly clever and shows great potential. I should say that this won’t be a school or an academy. I learn something every day trying to be creative, so there will be an element of learning, sure, but we’re not teaching.So you won’t have to be established already?
No, but if I want to invite Heston [Blumenthal] or Grant or a friend asks me to come spend some time working at the foundation, of course they can come. The main idea, though, is to have people that can carve out eight months of their year and dedicate it to working at elBulli Foundation. It could be, for example, the head chef at such and such hotel in Hong Kong, who is fifty years old, and has worked hard his whole life. He’s creative, but he hasn’t had the opportunity to truly express himself. That could be one.What if I’m a fourteen year-old kid who doesn’t know any famous chefs, and I want to take a stab at it?
Of course. We’ll look at your resumé, your application, you can send me some pictures of your dishes, and we’ll see. We want to bring in the best, like Harvard does, but we can also play around with the rules in certain cases. If we see a young kid who really intrigues us, we have to go for it.
I should charge 600 euros [for a meal at elBulli], but I do not cook for millionaires. I cook for sensitive people.
Tonight’s episode of No Reservations: elBulli nearly brought me to tears. Ferran Adrià’s genuine curiosity for elevating food is something to be honored. I am not fortunate enough to say that I’ve dined at elBulli and loved every moment of it, but I can certainly say that I know where Adrià’s heart is in the process of it all. Passion is a beautiful thing, and so is the art of cooking. Thanks for everything, Ferran.
One more thing: if anyone in the world could find me a copy of Spain’s Esquire June 2011 with Mr. Adrià, I will be forever grateful.
