I felt compelled to translate this interview with Ferran Adriá to English for anyone who may be interested. There's lots of great questions from internet posters for the chef, who announced yesterday that he would be closing his restaurant, El Bullí, for two years.
Q: Some of my friends and I set aside money to go someday to your restaurant. What do you recommend, to go before you close or wait for the reopening? Will the new season arrive full of new, delicious flavors and exquisite sensations? Will we see each other in 2011 or is it worth the trouble to wait? Thanks.
FA: I would try to come in 2010 and 2011 and again in 2015. By trying to come you won't lose anything.
Q: I'm a cook in a high school, what kind of food would you make for children, modifying the secondary ingredients like side items, salads, etc?
FA: In the high schools, you have to check with nutritionists to see what is the healthiest for children. And be sure that you add a lot of love.
Q: Are you afraid that you will not acheive the same success that you have now when you return in 2014?
FA: No, we've decided that success will be measured in another way, and above all our happiness will be the true success.
Q:Would you consider being a politician in the future to better the public cooking schools in this country?
FA: No, with Valentí Fusté we are doing interesting work with the cuisine, but the politicians have to do the politics.
Q: First of all, congratulations on your success. When will we be able to enjoy your dishes in the US? Any plans?
FA: José Andres is one of my best friends, and in Washington you can eat marvelous food in his restaurant with the philosophy of El Bulli.
Q:How was the experience with the Spanish Navy in the publicity announcement?
FA: I did it with all the love in the world, without any economic interest, and I hope to have helped people see the Navy as it is today in a democracy.
Q: Good afternoon. Where will the new paths of investigation that you want to open go? Will it be a novel break from everything in the past, o will you perhaps try to perfect even further certain culinary techniques that are still not giving you the desired result?
FA: There will be two paths: on one hand, all the techniques that we have developed have a large trajectory that needs to be explored. And we don't rule out going to live three months in China, or getting to know Japan or Peruvian cuisine better. But these two years will allow us to do things that if we didn't close would be very difficult.
Q: Hi Ferran, three questions if you would be so kind: To what point can restaurants of this level not yield a profit? What cost ratio do you think each plate should have? What system do you use to price wine?
FA: The avant-garde, en whatever discipline, is not a business, but thanks to it it is possible to generate business. The cost ratio is 40% raw material, 50% service/staff, and 20% general costs. As you see, this is %110, not 100. For wine, we manage to be the most consistent with the understanding that a cup of wine can cost 25 euros. When one part of this formula breaks down....
Q: Hi Ferran. Are you happy?
FA: I've made this decision to continue being happy, because as you know, I have always been able to be happy.
Q: What do you look for in your providers. And what do you not tolerate from them?
FA: The providers live in a complicated world because they work with living material. When one sells dead material, it's easier. To put it simply, they have to be honest.
Q: Is it true that in Spain they care more about gastronomy than in other countries, or is this just a coincidence. Why don't, I don't know, the Polish triumph? How much of it is culture and how much is politics?
FA: Spain has a centuries-old culture and gastronomic history, an incredible climate that makes the highest level of product possible, an important traditional cuisine and an avant garde cuisine that sets trends. It's the perfect mix.
Q:What other restaurant would you recommend in the absence of El Bullí?
FA: Thanks to God not in absence, but being in el Bullí... we have great restaurants in Spain, from simple tapas places up to the six starred restaurants not including El Bullí. Eating is eating whether in El Bullí or not in El Bullí.
Q: Hi, I'm twelve and I really love your cuisine. I would like to know if you ever think of creating a chef school for young people?
FA. One of the things we can do now is in the theme of training, and we are going to see what possibilities there are and see where we can help.
Q: What is the oldest knife you keep? I am referring to the type (paring, boning...)
FA: I used to have a knife from when I started, and I lost it, and now I have a ceramic knife that was given to me ten years ago that is pretty much "my knife."
Q: Ferran, congratulations for being so great! How many hours do you devote to work every day?
FA: We are here for however many hours are necessary, between 12 and 15. But it's not something that tires me, but something that I enjoy. Just as in everything, there are days where I become overloaded, but I manage to enjoy it.
Q: We began with Apicio and we are now with Ferran. Do you feel vertigo from being part of the universal history?
FA: Our idea in El Bullí has been to help and share. We can't control the consequences.
Q: What was the time when you felt you ate better than ever?
FA: Being a cook has a privilege, which is eating well many times. Because to be a cook first you have to be a good table companion.
Q: Is this closing to reinvent El Bullí or simply about a broadening of your collection of recipes?
FA: The word is reinventing. Our intention is a step forward, which happens by reinventing oneself in the way of understanding cuisine and life, but the challenge is taking a big step forward.
Q: Hi Ferran, your art is always reaching greater heights, but perhaps the nobodies of the middle class like me will never be able to eat in your restaurant. Maybe a "museum" of your creations so that your communication with the public will be more global...but if your creations were within the reach of everyone, of course they would lose their "mojo" and their purity. What is the balance? Because I would love to eat one night in El Bullí!
FA: The balance is helping people to eat better at home and in general, however we can. It's what we can do for society.
Q: From Mexico, What are the most important qualities or virtues for a shef to have to collaborate in your restaurant. What are you most drawn to?
FA: Passion. Passion gives motion to life. And in work it must be the main motive.
Q: I'm studying in the Castellón School of Hospitality, and I finish this year. Currently I work in a restaurant on weekends, and I've already sent you my resume (as, I imagine have 30,00 others, but okay). I would love if you would share with me a little bit what steps to take now. I am 20 and I have great admiration for your work.
FA: You have to do your training in the proper progression. Knowing everything, from a tapas place to a catering business, a hotel and avant garde restaurants, and once you've seen everything, deciding what you find most to your liking.
Q: What do you think about the critiques made to you about not using raw materials, but rather chemistry?
FA: In life you have to live with the good and the bad, the elegies and the criticisms. I can only tell you that we manage to be the most honest and ethical possible.
Q: Ferran, tell us a good combination for nourishing people in Haiti, in small kitchens with the following ingredients: rice, beans, plantains, chicken and pineapple.
FA: The Haiti problem is very serious and has to be taken so. As a person, not as a cook, I manage to help how I can. Haiti is an example of human injustice.
Q: Is your molecular cuisine worn out?
FA: For sure, because I never have done molecular cuisine that I know of. But if you want to say that the cuisine of El Bullí has a path, I think that explaining what we have done these 15 years would take a good bit of time to go back and explain.
Q: I would like to say I am a big fan, and I would like to know what Ferran is going to do the two years that El Bullí will be closed and what we can expect for 2014. Also, I wonder if the next key date is 2020 (it's in the web site of el Bullí 2010-2020). I would also like to know how many years El Bullí will be open starting in 2014.
FA: The plan is 2010-2020, it's a plan of the future, the most of which one can is think about. The two years will serve to consolidate what we have been thinking the past two years about how 2014 will be, and to learn, learn, learn. We would like to spend several months living in China and learning everything possible.
Q: Is there still much to discover regarding gastronomy? Because if not, I just don't understand the decision to close the restaurant for two years to devote oneself exclusively to investigating. By the way, when you are at home, what do you usually cook for dinner?
FA: Without a doubt, we would be naive if we thought that everything was already invented. And not only naive, but arrogant. The question is whether it will be our generation that is able to keep creating or whether we wait for the next. For dinner, something very simple. Boiled artichokes and grilled sole, tomato salad with extra virgin olive oil and some sauteed goat ribs with a little oil. At home you have to cook very simple so you don't get lazy.
Q: First, congratulations on the decision to close to the public and continue investigating, something unprecedented in business logic, which is why you keep being the leader. When you visited New York, you almost promised not to return here, don't you think that this period of closing the restaurant could be a great opportunity to open something here? I know, I know...
FA:I love New York. I merely said that it was very apparent that it was a moment to rest, but I'm sure that I will return this year to New York.
Q: How would you define your legacy for future generations? Why or how would you like them to remember you?
FA: Our intention has been to help and share, since all our generation has lived a historic moment for Spanish cuisine. Our job now is to help the next generations.
Q: Is a haute-cuisine restaurant economically sustainably at your current prices?
FA: Although it can seem incredible, it's very difficult, but the examples of haute couture or Formula One serve us well. I know it's unpopular, but that's how it is?
Q: I'm 33 and I like cuisine. I have a good job, but sometimes I think about studying hospitality and trying the world of the kitchen. Do you think, as a professional, that is very difficult to catch the train to the professional kitchen from these heights?
FA: I recommend that you go do a trial of a month in a restaurant and later make the decision. It's a passionate world, but very hard.
Q: Ferran, please explain what you are going to do at Harvard. And if you think that innovative cuisine also has a mission of sharing knowledge and giving happiness.
FA:With Harvard we are going to do a course of science and cooking that will last 4 months. I think it's very important, since a collaboration like this with Harvard is not normal. The avant garde always has the mission to share, if it's not negative.
Q: How much does a seat cost at El Bullí, approximately?
FA: The menu without wine is 235 euros, the same as a ticket to the last game of Barça-Madrid cost me, and at the end it's just a matter of priorities.
Q: Closing El Bullí two years seems to break barriers, including in the world of economy. What do you think?
FA: More than a barrier, it's a challenge at a business level. But El Bullí is made of challenges, and this is the latest.
Q: Ferran, I'm a waitress studying to be floor manager. What is Juli Soler going to do during this time, what hospitality school do you recommend?
FA: Juli Soler will stay with me, reinventing El Bullí. En El Bullí there is no front of the house and kitchen, just people with a passion for what they do.
Q: What will people eat in 100 years?
FA: Questions that have never been asked...haha. I hope the food will still be a pleasure.
Q: How do you see the ancient culinary theme of stew, that has practically disappeared from the avant-garde? Could it not also be reinvented somehow?
FA: Sushi, lentils and an avant-garde dish are all compatible. There are 365 days in a year and enough days for everything.
Q: Is a restaurant an experimental laboratory?
FA: No, there are restaurants that search for the avant-garde, but we are speaking of very few in the world. A restaurant is a place where you go to have a good time and eat the best possible. But something is always missing, in whatever discipline, for places that search for it within the limit of its discipline.
GOODBYE MESSAGE.
Just wanted to tell you all that eating well nourishes the soul. This is the phrase that the marvelous people of Disney allowed me to put in Ratatouille when Remí tells this to his father.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
El País interview with Ferran Adriá (english)
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
1963: a good year for crazy Italian men
I love autonomous communities, even if they're just wannabes.
So imagine my delight upon discovering Seborga, a town of five square miles and 2,000 people in the Ligurian region of Italy. In 1963, Giorgio Carbone was elected the Prince of Seborga, despite the fact that Italy doesn't recognize it as sovereign. Giorgio, who died late last year, is awesome because
1) he drove a horse and buggy before he switched to a black Mercedes with Seborgan plates
2)he demanded to be called His Tremendousness
3) he installed a standing army (of one man)
4)he held court in a local bar
5) he forsook marriage because he loved all his female subjects equally
6)he had an all you can eat meat and cheese deal with a local shop as salary
7) he made ALL OF THIS UP out of nowhere and converted it into a REALITY. If that doesn't prove the power of positive thinking, I don't know what does.
This Prince reminded me instantly of Marcovaldo, a fictional character of Italo Calvino's, seen here in an illustration by Claudia Bettinardi. I thought surely that either reality inspired the fiction or vice-versa. Marcovaldo is equally quirky and equally wishful, if a bit less effective at actualizing his farfetched plans. The coincidence is that Marcovaldo was published in 1963, the year Giorgio took his throne in the dirty old Bianca Azzura bar. While some of the stories were written in the 50s, it's highly doubtful that they found their way to the backwater of Seborga. I guess Italy is just chockful of crazy, seccesionistly minded old men.
And I love that.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
tennis- live, broadcasted, transcribed
Here we are, in the heat of another Grand Slam, fourth round and counting. There's nothing like being several thousand miles removed, with only broadband and computer screens to connect you to the action at odd hours of the night, to make you yearn to be closer to the action. If watching tennis on TV is a sort of sacrilege, then watching tennis pixelate on the Internet is downright blasphemous. Is that Gael Monfils setting up a crazy shot, slamming it down the baseline and--oh, crap, my connection froze up again. Then it resumes movement and the players are pacing the courts, preparing calmly for the next point. Or there's Federer, advancing towards the net, reaching his racket between his legs, and--you get the picture. It's like listening to the world's most beautiful music on a radio signal that keeps fading in and out.
But if you can't afford a ticket to Australia, much less the cost of entry into the stadium, then TV/espn360 is your only option. So you deal with it. I console myself by watching it with hot cups of tea curled up in the purple dream sack on our sofa. I supplement my viewing experience with some reading, because I definitely believe you can gain a more varied perspective that way, too. I particularly like Forty Deuce for the latest tennis "news"...parody that rings dangerously close to truth. Then there's this article, by the late David Foster Wallace, that surely comes closest in aesthetic perfection to the live and in-person version of the game it describes. It's a great read, and still interesting and applicable nearly four years after publication. You get the feeling that a lot of what is typically written these days about Federer, Nadal, and tennis is lifted straight from this, the original. Give it a look-see between sets.
