Follow us. Albert Adria, from the pastry chef of elBulli to the owner of elBarri. Your career started at elBulli where you created desserts which became legendary. How did it happen that you decided to join your brother? And why did you decide the pastry section? Now you own important restaurants. Do you see yourself more as a cook or a patissier? For you, what is most fascinating about pastry and is there anything you dislike? You are one of the most creative pastry chefs in the world.
What is inspiring your creativity? If you had to express your pastry work in words, how would you describe it? What about chocolate? How is your relationship with chocolate? How important it is in your desserts and how do you enjoy it best? If a young chef asked you to give him your best advice on chocolate, what would it be? What would be the main thing you would be careful about when creating it?
What is your favourite dessert to eat and what type of desserts do you enjoy creating best? There is nothing better than creating a dessert with an excellent mango, pear, cherry… Is there any type of dessert which you think is not gaining the attention it should deserve? What about ingredients? Are there any ingredients which fascinate you more than others or is there any ingredient which is still not explored enough by you? You have built a great collection of restaurants. How do you manage to handle all of them — even more because they are so different from one another?
What are you working on at the moment? The restaurant, which specialised in molecular gastronomy, opened for only six months of the year and, despite its reputation, never turned a profit. Mr Adria said the final sitting would be a tribute to all those who helped make the restaurant so prestigious. The last menu would be secret, Spanish news agency EFE reported. The restaurant was unconventional in many respects - it was shut for lunch to give staff time to develop new dishes - and reservations in the seat venue were acquired mostly by lottery.
It was five times named best restaurant in the world by the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants produced by Restaurant magazine, based on the opinions of some chefs, critics and industry experts. He is middle-aged, middle height, of middling hair-density, with a slight paunch. If it were not for the fact that he dresses in black from top to toe, like his waiters, he would be the bloke at the bar, mistakeable for a million others, in Anywhere Spain.
He has preserved, to his immense credit, something of that everyday Spanishness at El Bulli, for all its cutting-edge sophistication. I have a friend who went there once with his wife and nine-month-old baby. But in material terms, he insists he is a regular guy: 'I am not a multimillionaire. I don't own a yacht or a Ferrari. I live in a square- metre flat.
My needs are simple. In fact, I bet my day-to-day costs are lower than yours. El Bulli itself may not make money, but the brand has spawned plenty of other things that do. He charges many thousands for each lecture he gives. He has a collection of kitchenwear, a joint venture with Armand Basi.
He has his own brand of plates and cutlery including a spoon with small holes in it so you can eat your cereal without drinking the milk. One could go on but he is, in short, the David Beckham of the food business. Though, like Beckham, he is the first to say that he couldn't have done it without the lads. Half the time that we talk, at least, he speaks in the third person plural, by which he means not the royal 'we' but the galactico team around him. It's a team of five including his genius younger brother, Albert, El Bulli's indispensable man.
He stays cool, he keeps me in check. He is vital for me. Both of them quite brilliant. We have the best team in the world and the reason I can say this, in all confidence, is that it is measurable. Tell me what new ideas there have been in the world in the last decade and then look at what we have come up with here.
He does not even sound boastful. During the couple of hours we spend together he conveys relentless enthusiasm, tripping over his words continually as he speaks, his thoughts rushing out faster than his mouth can process them.
He is perspicacious and funny, serious and self-deprecating. But he does not underestimate his importance. He has a quality you find in the truly great, whether their field be food, sport, art or politics. They know, beyond vanity, that they are the best. Whether you like what we do or not, and some might think it's crap, the fact is that this is El Bulli; this is what we do, and where we have been pioneers.
Also, bringing the idea to haute cuisine of ice creams that are not sweet, but salty - instead of vanilla, cheese. Also, I especially enjoyed the creation of warm gelatine. We developed this with the help of scientists, because to make gelatine that is warm seemed impossible at first. When I go to Brazil and I see a young chef who has been inspired by us, who has copied what we do and seeks to build on that, developing his own ideas For me to go to a restaurant and eat something that is not only good, but totally new, is a double thrill.
Double the enjoyment. The answer is crassly Freudian. It is sex. Sex was what drove him, aged 18, to get a job in a regular everyday restaurant in Castelldefels, on the coast just south of Barcelona. Initially he bore the title of junior assistant cook, a grand way of saying 'dishwasher'.
But he didn't care. He had no more interest in cooking at the time than he had in gardening or bricklaying. The point was to make enough cash to spend a whole summer in Ibiza, which meant meeting girls. He remained in Castelldefels a little longer than he had expected, the girls were very friendly gradually learning to cook what he calls 'basic stuff like tournedos Rossini, paella, that sort of thing'. He also began memorising a classic French cookbook, pages long.
A year later he made it to Ibiza. When he returned to Barcelona, he drifted from one restaurant to another and then did his military service.
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