To the uninformed, the name Ferran Adria would be meaningless. But to chefs around the world, Ferran Adria is a name synonymous with genius. Ferran Adria is to cooking as Picasso is to art or Gaudi is to architecture. Maybe cooking is too crude a word to use for his culinary innovations. He is an inventor with the ability to bewilder even his fellow peers with his culinary creations.
In fact, his restaurant 'El Bulli' opens only for 6 months in a year where they receive up to two million reservations of which only 8000 people would be lucky enough to get a table. He has three Michelin stars to his name, the maximum any chef could be awarded.
I was fortunate enough to secure one of the 150 seats at the World Gourmet Summit to attend a talk by Chef Ferran Adria about the future of his restaurant. Initially, I felt a little out of place in the theater where almost everyone seemed at least a decade older than me and were mostly food industry leaders and chefs.
Once Chef Adria started talking however, I was totally absorbed into another world. His video clips of the technical preparation of different dishes into wondrous spectacles of the senses were breathtaking. How he turned ordinary dark chocolate into a stunningly detailed tree made half the audience in the theater gasp in amazement. The simplicity in how he made a coconut dessert in the shape of an ostrich egg astounded me.
In fiction, you have Willy Wonka. In real life you have Ferran Adria. I still hold out some hope that one day, I will be able to go to El Bulli and taste his creations. With less than 1% chance of securing a table, I believe soon will be a good time to start placing my reservations.
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