El Bulli restaurant in Spain goes on hiatus for two years
Ferran Adria of El Bulli just announced this Tuesday that his three Michelin-starred restaurant will be going on a two year hiatus, to tinker with new ideas, following the end of this season.
- El Bulli
Chef Adria cited a lack of time to create new dishes and techniques as one reason for the hiatus. For those who don’t know, El Bulli, located in Roses, Spain, is considered by many to be the best restaurant in the world. It’s laboratory-kitchens are responsible for culinary inventions such as foams, spherification with sodium alginate and freeze-dried foie gras. The food and service at El Bulli are so extravagant that they lose money on each dinner (despite the $350 price tag), and only make profits through book (A Day At El Bull) and merchandise sales. Reservations are handled through a system that assigns priority to chefs and other culinary professionals, and are notoriously difficult to get. Six-thousand seats are available each year, approximately half of which go to returning diners; what’s more the restaurant receives over two million requests per year for these exclusive spots.
Ferran Adria has promised that the format of a meal at El Bulli will be revised, and that he doesn’t know what his restaurant will look like at the end of his hiatus.
Words by SHEI’s food lover/writer: Jason Siegfried
This is so sad. I wonder if it’s really for development or if they ran out of money.
I suspect it’s actually development, as they make huge profits on a catering business, a hotel, a restaurant that serves classic dishes, and a whole slew of other things. The compromise of organizing a tasting menu for each season versus pure experimentation probably stifled creativity and slowed down development. If they’re not creating new techniques to use elsewhere, the restaurant is just a waste of resources and time. This isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this either. A few years ago they had a sort of ‘greatest hits’ season where they only served dishes from earlier menus.
Also, I would like to correct my statement that El Bulli will be going on hiatus at the end of this season. It will be going on hiatus beginning in 2012, and will resume service in 2014.
this is bull
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