Spanish Catalan chef (1962- )
elBulli isn't me. elBulli is the people who have eaten there, the people that have passed through the kitchen, and the people that have written about it. Every person has inserted their little bit of sand, their way of understanding the world, in that place so that it could exist. So they're not disciples or sons -- if they are anything, they're brothers.
FERRAN ADRIA
interview, Eater, Oct. 4, 2011
In an avant-garde cooking restaurant, it's the experience that's the difference.
FERRAN ADRIA
Washington Post, Oct. 11, 2011
When a customer receives a dish, they get food and design at the same time.
FERRAN ADRIA
Disegno Daily, Apr. 28, 2014
I never cook at home. After 15 hours at work, I don't have much of a desire to cook at home. I do eat at home, but it's always something simple. Raw nuts. Almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts--these are marvelous products. I am, however, the type that likes to go out to eat a lot. I never tire of it.
FERRAN ADRIA
GQ, Jul. 27, 2011
I use the kitchen as a pathway to achieve this happiness.
FERRAN ADRIA
The Vancouver Sun, Mar. 4, 2014
I'm not a materialist, I don't care for things. I don't like cars, I hate things that can be exploited. I live a simple life. The only luxuries I have in my life are travel and food.
FERRAN ADRIA
GQ, Jul. 27, 2011
If I don't have pressure, I don't function.
FERRAN ADRIA
interview, Toronto Life, Mar. 13, 2014
There's so much information that there is disinformation.
FERRAN ADRIA
interview, Eater, Oct. 4, 2011
Salt is the only product that changes cuisine. There's a big difference between food that has salt and food without it. If you don't believe that, ask people who can't eat salt.
FERRAN ADRIA
Esquire, Jan. 2011
When people think science and cooking, they have no idea that it's not correctly expressed. We're actually applying the scientific method. People think chemistry and physics are science, but the scientific method is something else.... It's the science that the world of cooking generates: science of butter; science of the croissant.
FERRAN ADRIA
interview, Toronto Life, Mar. 13, 2014
The concept of the public restaurant was created after the French Revolution -- before that private chefs only worked for the rich and powerful. It is time for another shift in the place where chefs work. For the last 12 years, we were only serving (food) for six months and working in a creativity workshop the other six months. We had freedom to create and have dialogues with other disciplines, like art and science, and apply those things. Now that proportion will change. Why now? Because you have to do the process of transformation while you are at the top. Otherwise it is seen as failure. For the entire year now we will work just on creativity. And we will only feed diners when we feel like it. It will be everybody's dream -- what we feel like doing when we feel like it, for whomever we feel like doing it for. It will be a dream of a dream of a dream.
FERRAN ADRIA
Chicago Tribune, Oct. 12, 2011
We'll work with any designer producing something linked to gastronomy. So a chair for the dining area, a van to move food around. Anything that's connected to the gastronomic process.
FERRAN ADRIA
Disegno Daily, Apr. 28, 2014
What's left for culinary innovation? We keep going. The vanguard isn't over.
FERRAN ADRIA
interview, Bon Appetit, Jan. 24, 2014
Like all disciplines where information is shared and work contributes to their advancement, cuisine should be no different. The kitchen is our life, and we are available to share. We want to share our work so that future generations can cook and create a more efficient, easy and unquestionable quality.
FERRAN ADRIA
The Vancouver Sun, Mar. 4, 2014
What you feel like eating at any given moment is what you should have.
FERRAN ADRIA
interview, Square Meal, Sep. 2011
When I go to a fine dining restaurant, I'm excited and I do expect to find proposals to wake my senses.
FERRAN ADRIA
The Vancouver Sun, Mar. 4, 2014
You can't please everyone, especially if you're doing very radical things at the vanguard of cooking. That's life; it's a polemic I've lived with since I started cooking.
FERRAN ADRIA
interview, Square Meal, Sep. 2011
We need to think about what cooking is, what context it takes place in and what its relationship to the world of art is. If there were criticisms of my presence at Documenta, that's a good thing because it means we were doing something new. Your mission in creating something artistic is to produce something new and polemical.
FERRAN ADRIA
Disegno Daily, Apr. 28, 2014
If you go off the edge, it's not cooking anymore, so you have to push it to the limit.... What are the limits?
FERRAN ADRIA
"World's top chefs talk cuisine, creativity in Chicago", Chicago Tribune, Mar. 20, 2014
In my early days, I copied the great French chefs, like most chefs do. Copying is not bad. Copying and not recognizing that you are copying is bad. For me, when I go to a restaurant and am served a dish influenced by something we created at elBulli, if it's well done, it makes me extremely happy.
FERRAN ADRIA
The Vancouver Sun, Mar. 4, 2014