Salt, pepper and touch
An interview with Ferran Adrià
The catalan chef Ferran Adriá has been exploring since years the boundary between research, sensorial pleasure and cerebral stimulation in his creative cooking. Here you won't find any recipes (are these chefs the new alchimists?) but the philosophy that moves one of the most acclaimed and innovative authors of today's culture.
Location: A phonecall between Barcelona/Turin, January 30, 2007.
Q. Speaking of senses, if we were to speak of architecture the weakest sense would be taste, because you really cannot taste buildings. Is there a weaker sense in cuisine?
A. Well, cuisine is the most multisensorial activity you can imagine. This is an objective, pragmatic truth: all the senses take part. Of course, the most important is taste... about the other senses, it is something personal. Somebody could consider hearing the second most important sense, others would choose smell or touching.
Q. Can you tell me the difference between good cuisine and high cuisine?
A. In principle, high cuisine would be cuisine at its highest, most refined and most complex: historically speaking, it would be court cuisine. And it had nothing to do with what normal people ate. Good cuisine is whatever you like. It can be simple or complex, it does not matter.
Q. Last year in Sicily I have met chef Ciccio Sultano. He says that when he is creating a new dish, he takes his inspiration from music. What about you?
A. I take my inspiration from life.
Q. Design and architecture are two basic components of the creation of a dish, and of its presentation. How do you design your dishes?
A. Industrial design has a big part in designing the container of the food. I work a lot with industrial designers, they are actually part of my team.
Q. Do you design yourself?
A. No, I help them, I take part in the process.
Q. How do you go about designing a dish? Do you draw it beforehand?
A. No, we do experiments, then we get feedback, we talk about it, we do another experiment... it is easy. It is logical!
Q. You are among the ten best chefs in the world, perhaps the best. One of the fundamental ingredients of your work is communication. What do you mean by 'communication'?
A. I don't really do communication. The only thing I do is answering questions from the press. They have been very nice to me, and I am nice to journalists. Nothing fancy, like this interview: you call, we set an appointment, and here we are.
Q. We work in technology and design. So, what is your relationship with technology?
A. Technology has always been an important part of cuisine, and cuisine has always changed in reaction to technology. For example, electrification has changed many things in the kitchen.
Q. Do you have an ideal restaurant?
A. No, I am not absolutist, there is no ideal restaurant.
Q. Is there technology, specifically interactive technology in your restaurants?
A. No, there is no interactive technology. I use computers to get information, of course, now it is a part of life for everybody, but there is no interactive computer technology in my restaurant.
Q. If you were not a chef, what would you like to be?
A. I would like to be a multi-millionaire, this way each week I would do something different.
Q. When you travel, where do you eat?
A. It really depends, where I am, in what company... if I am alone, I look for simple places.
Q. What is your favourite food?
A. Well, it depends on the moment. I really like ham, but after five days of ham I find myself a bit tired...
Q. What are you working on currently?
A. I am working on Bulli 2007, and this means on many, many things. We are working in many areas, we are making new books, new types of business.
Q. A new dish, a new strange experiment, perhaps?
A. No, really... there is a wrong picture of high cuisine that it has to do with strange stuff... there is a problem with cuisine: if you speak in technical terms of your architecture work to someone who is not an architect, they don't understand. With cuisine, if you speak in technical terms it seems that everybody understands, but this is not the case - because there is a huge difference between everyday cooking for your home, and high cuisine for a restaurant. They are really two different domains. Still, people think that they understand. They would not suppose that you can tell someone in the street how to design a building, but with high cuisine they have this idea.
Q. Do you have a dream?
A. To have time. And freedom.
You can listen to a small clip of Mr. Adrià.
Interview by StellaColaleo, edited by WalterAprile
Links
El Bulli website
Image Credits
All images by Francesc Guillamet