Culinary Tidbits . . . El Bulli’s Ferran Adrià

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Pouring the beer into a white wine glass, you are greeted by a distinct aroma of fresh yeast and the visual appearance is not overly cloudy as some wheat beers tend to be

The butcher shop, Izarzugaza, with three locations in Northern Spain, is making efforts to adopt modern technology while keeping their more than 100-year-old tradition alive: They have an online shop selling meat and prepared items, as well as customer-facing multilingual touchscreens in the shops. But what truly sets them apart is their meat vending machine outside the store in Mundaka.
“We had to provide a service when the shop closes,” Mikel Izarzugaza, the fourth generation owner, told El Mundo. So they acquired a refrigerated vending machine that uses miniature elevators and the products change seasonally: “In summer pasta salads, we prepare and pack, in winter tongue in sauce or meatballs, sausages and burgers as well.”

Jose Andrés and Ferran Adrià will teach a 13 week intro to “culinary physics” at Harvard, culminating in a working demonstration of how to make foams and emulsions, the backbone of molecular gastronomy.
El Bulli will definitely close, as it had always been dependent on speaking engagements and publications for profitability, rather than income derived from the dining room. It will reopen in two years as a research center for 25 chefs and will still serve 60 meals a year in the restructured space with the dining room & kitchen still intact—it will just be a more difficult reservation than in the past—if that is possible!

Links to previous posts at Restaurant Dining Critiques about El Bulli:

El Bulli Restaurant, Roses, Spain to Close for Two Years

El Bulli Intends to Close Permanently

Breaking News . . . Earlier we heard word that Ferran Adria would close his restaurant El Bulli for a two year period from 2011-2013. Now he has announced that he will be closing permanently in December 2011. The restaurant along with his cooking workshop in Barcelona has been losing money at the tune of a half million Euros a year, although as we mentioned in our post on the two-year closure, the cookbooks are generating a large income. Instead of opening a new restaurant he will use any resulting funds to open an academy devoted to the study of molecular and other gastronomic studies; the academy will sponsor scholarships to allow the most talented chefs from around the world to attend.

It has just been announced at a press conference in Madrid that the world famous El Bulli Restaurant, chosen top restaurant for 5 years running, will be closing for two years in 2012. It has already been closing for six months a year recently and Ferran Adrià, the restaurants owner and chef, has decided to close for two years to use the time for reflection; even though there has been speculation that the most difficult restaurant reservation in the world might “dry up”, it still comes as a shock in culinary circles. Rumors are that the restaurant itself does not generate much income due to very high operating expenses, and they count on the large income from book sales.

Mr. Adria has come under attack by more traditional chefs, and just recently by a German “food critic” with accusations of “poisoning diners with foams and emulsifiers”, although whether these claims have any merit or not is unknown.  In any case, they have not hurt the popularity of his restaurant that is always solidly booked for the entire six months of the year that it is open.