El Bulli: Adria Ferran

[Culatello]

Lately I've been hearing alot of Adria,so does anyone have anymore info on him apart from his coconut foam and cuttelfish raviolis

[Jason Perlow]

You need to use the eGullet search engine, there's tons of info about him all over the site.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-...e%3Aegullet.com

160 hits via google to eGullet alone, have fun.

[inventolux]

You need to use the eGullet search engine, there's tons of info about him all over the site.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-...e%3Aegullet.com

160 hits via google to eGullet alone, have fun.

Thats a great trick, thanks for the info.

[Bux]

I wouldn't be surprised if you added "El Bulli" and got a few more pages.

[jhlurie]

I wouldn't be surprised if you added "El Bulli" and got a few more pages.

Full path for THAT search (216 results):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-...let.com+Adria+]

Edited August 22, 2003 by jhlurie (log)

[inventolux]

I wouldn't be surprised if you added "El Bulli" and got a few more pages.

Full path for THAT search (216 results):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-...let.com+Adria+]

Where do you guys come up with this stuff? Very impressive for an internet slomo like myself.

[Bux]

Where do you guys come up with this stuff? Very impressive for an internet slomo like myself.

You do what you do and we'll do what we do. We'll meet here and take over the world.

[elion_84]

Interesting article in Slate magazine about Ferran Adria and the avant-garde cuisine:

Make it new

Their main point is that Adria's food is not that far from "hypermanipulated" mass processed foods on supermarket shelves and fast food chains. When I saw "Into the Fire" show about Trio I was really bother by the concept of separating the flavor form the food. This article helped me put my concerns into words.

[Pan]

Thanks. I found the article interesting, though it's fair to point out that, like its author, I've never been to El Bulli. I haven't read the book either, though.

However, I think Dickerman made a mistake here:

Adrià has also embraced ingredients once limited to highly processed mass-market food: Alongside the wild strawberries are seaweed-based stabilizers (the industrial standard is carrageen; Adrià favors agar-agar)

Agar-agar was once limited to highly processed mass-market food? I don't think so. Agar-agar is traditional in Malay home cooking for Hari Raya (Muslim holy day).

[ExtraMSG]

I kind of thought the same thing when I was reading Fast Food Nation and they were discussing the people who make the flavorings for such foods as McDonald's french fries. Why are these additives demonized, but a foam is lauded?

[tan319]

I kind of thought the same thing when I was reading Fast Food Nation and they were discussing the people who make the flavorings for such foods as McDonald's french fries. Why are these additives demonized, but a foam is lauded?

'ya, know, you either like the guy ('s, if you count his brother, Albert) or you don't.

I would hardly condemn them for using a stabilizer, which not only is in most of the ice creams, sorbets, high end too, we consume, but the ones you eat in many 4 star restaurants.

If you look at the recipes, they're manipulating the ingredient's so slightly, albeit differently, with the addition of things like Agar Agar, gelatine, the chemical ( whose name escapes me at the moment) that they do their caviar with, that it's crazy to act like they're fake flavouring everything.

A bit of gelatine and some simple syrup and fruit, or an anglaise in a C02 siphon is really "bending" the rules, man...

[mongo_jones]

how's that emily dickinson poem go again?

"cook all the food, but cook it slant--

success in circuit lies

too jejune for our infirm delight

the food's traditional surprise"

or am i misremembering?

[Fat Guy]

The subtext of both the Adrià and the mass-market approach to food is the notion that eating has become boring and that for food to be interesting, it needs to be hypermanipulated. This is obviously the philosophy being peddled by mass-market food producers who would encourage us to snack ourselves to obesity with technological marvels like McGriddles (pancake sandwiches with the syrup "baked right in"), Dippin' Dots ice cream, and Hot Pockets. And even though Adrià and his tech-y ilk use exquisite ingredients (organic vegetables, fish that were swimming just hours before dinner), they are also deploying junk-food tactics without questioning where this industrial food aesthetic might be taking us.

I don't find this line of argument particularly compelling. The author is distracted by form and misses the substantive differences between what Adria, Blumenthal, et al. do and what "junk-food tactics" really are. Adria's commitment is to excellence, creativity, and the culinary avant garde, not to corporate profitability. What makes junk food junk isn't that it's manipulated, but that it's manipulated to a bad end. The author realizes that "No cooking is 'natural,'" but then draws the wrong distinction between the kind of cooking she seems to like (presumably local, seasonal, kind to the birds, fishes, and flowers, etc.) and the cooking of someone like Adria: "as trend-setting chefs and the food industry keep widening the gap between raw ingredients and finished food . . ." But that's not it. There can hardly be a wider gap than between wheat and bread, milk and cheese, grapes and wine. Transformation is essential to cuisine. Adria is simply practicing unfamiliar transformations. Thus, to blame Adria for the presumed end result -- "the consumer's ability and desire to create tempting, nourishing food at home continues to atrophy" -- is nonsensical. The conversation never gets there. In addition, to cut through the false logic, one needs only look at those who read Adria's cookbook. Not a non-serious cook among that crowd. It's also highly presumptuous to say that Adria has never questioned "where this industrial food aesthetic might be taking us." By all accounts, he's an extremely thoughtful guy. If he hasn't thought that issue through, I'll be shocked.

[tan319]

Emily Dickenson's ouvre is not my strong suit (as the spelling of ouvre may not be either).

Are you saying her point was not to fuck with the taste? Tradition is good enough?

If so, I have no argument with that.

I just love to see people push the envelope also.

Edited January 29, 2004 by tan319 (log)

[edsel]

However, I think Dickerman made a mistake here:

Adrià has also embraced ingredients once limited to highly processed mass-market food: Alongside the wild strawberries are seaweed-based stabilizers (the industrial standard is carrageen; Adrià favors agar-agar)

Agar-agar was once limited to highly processed mass-market food? I don't think so. Agar-agar is traditional in Malay home cooking for Hari Raya (Muslim holy day).

Comparing Kanten (agar) to an industrial stabilizer is a real disconnect from any number of traditional cuisines. If Adria were using Guar gum or some synthetic dextrose compound, that might seem a bit "industrial", but using a seaweed extract that's been used in Asia for centuries is hardly suspect.

Now if Adria starts cooking with Velveeta or Spam I'll have second thoughts...

[mongo_jones]

Now if Adria starts cooking with Velveeta or Spam I'll have second thoughts...

then again spam's become pretty "traditional" in a number of cuisines--see hawaiian or korean.

[edsel]

then again spam's become pretty "traditional" in a number of cuisines--see hawaiian or korean.

I have a can of Spam I bought in Kumi, Korea sitting atop my computer monitor. I think of it as a sort of "Kitchen god" to ward off evil (email) spirits.

[mongo_jones]

then again spam's become pretty "traditional" in a number of cuisines--see hawaiian or korean.

I have a can of Spam I bought in Kumi, Korea sitting atop my computer monitor. I think of it as a sort of "Kitchen god" to ward off evil (email) spirits.

here's a link to a related thread on spam and the question of "tradition" that went nowhere: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...=0entry448721

[ExtraMSG]

Now if Adria starts cooking with Velveeta or Spam I'll have second thoughts...

then again spam's become pretty "traditional" in a number of cuisines--see hawaiian or korean.

I don't think the problem is that he cooks with processed foods, but that what he and those like him make is akin to such processed foods as SPAM and Velveeta.

Gelees and charcuterie always remind me of "lesser" processed foods. I think the comparison of Adria's pizza with a Dorito sounds appropriate.

However, unlike others, I think this is an argument for lifting the Dorito, the Twinkie, the hot dog, SPAM, or whatever in our minds. Or at least open our minds to them as good food.

I think many people attack "junk" foods because of their form more than their quality. "Processed" has itself become an evil while ironically many of the most respected chefs are doing their own sort of processing.

I admire many of the goals of the slow food movement, but I think they make this error assuming that processed is bad. And I think the article pointing out the irony that the slow food movement and this haute processing movement have evolved at the same time is a good one.

Personally, I think they both have merit.

Fat Guy, I don't know why profitability is an evil. I think the goals of the corporation aren't far from the goals of most restaurants: to make food that people like and thus make money. Most restaurants as most corporate food makers have to balance quality with cost.

What's the essential difference between what Adria does and what the chemists for McDonald's (or their additive companies) do that makes the latter bad while the former good? Both are trying to improve flavor using novel means.

[edsel]

We've veered a bit off course here. I merely mentioned Spam and Velveeta as examples of foods that would be considered more "industrial" than "traditional". No disrespect intended to Hawaii or Korea!

The food press love to play up the mad scientist aspect of Adria's persona. The plastic bags, pipettes, etc., all play to that image. My take on Adria is that he seriously does adopt the scientific method when pursuing his investigations of new flavor / texture combinations. The "wall of spices" in the taller is not an affectation - it's a set of tools for exploring the world of taste and smell.

Full disclosure: like Pan, I've never dined at el Bulli. Unlike Pan, I have read the book (1998-2002).

[Fat Guy]

Fat Guy, I don't know why profitability is an evil. I think the goals of the corporation aren't far from the goals of most restaurants: to make food that people like and thus make money. Most restaurants as most corporate food makers have to balance quality with cost.

What's the essential difference between what Adria does and what the chemists for McDonald's (or their additive companies) do that makes the latter bad while the former good? Both are trying to improve flavor using novel means.

Well, of course most restaurants are McDonald's and its ilk. So I don't think their goals are any different than the goals of most of the mass-production-oriented food corporations. And I certainly don't think there's anything evil about what they do, but from the standpoint of food connoisseurship it's worse than bad. I hope that distinction makes sense to you.

Profitability is necessary, at least to some extent, in most food-service establishments (though I'm not sure El Bulli actually makes a profit). But the question is how profitability is combined with other goals -- it's the overall mix that matters. In a serious chef's calculus, quality has a very high value. Indeed, because it's part of what he's selling, it's intrinsically linked to his profitability. McDonald's and Frito-Lay, on the other hand, are not selling quality, and they don't give a shit about quality beyond the basic need to comply with the law and to satisfy the bare minimum of public perceptual standards of quality. To that extent, "big food" depends on public ignorance of quality issues. Public ignorance about cuisine benefits McDonald's. Public knowledge about cuisine benefits real chefs.

It's true that those who sell food try to make food that people will like. But the mass-producers primarily focus on maximizing fat, sugar, and salt -- the most simplistically appealing flavors for an uneducated palate. They also push as hard as they can -- down to the billionth of a cent -- to use the cheapest, shittiest ingredients they can get away with using as vehicles for those flavors. Real chefs, on the other hand, try to create flavors that are far more subtle, complex, and interesting. They try to obtain the best ingredients for the job, and they don't look to low-quality ingredients as a source of cost savings.

[Bux]

I don't know how I could convince anyone of the difference between the best charcuterie and the basest lunch meat in the supermarket. If you don't get what others appreciate, I suppose you don't get it and won't unless you take the time and effort to understand why others revere that which you're willing to dismiss. The same probably goes for an appreciation of what Adria is doing. At any rate, he's certainly not scared of working with industrial processes and I don't understand why he should be.

Fuel for arguments on both sides may be found at the Inicom site. You can start at the eGullet Inicom thread.

For too many of us, you're either for the local farmer or you're for agribusiness and genetic modification. There's plenty of middle ground and room for chefs to work with science and industry without being accused of selling out.

In the meantime, I strongly suspect few of Adria's critics here have eaten his food and from their perspective the emperor has no clothers and the world appears to be flat. I'll base my opinion that Adria's work is fascinating from having experienced it as well as having read about it. Those of you who want to continue trying to convince me that I shouldn't respect what he's doing on the basis that you don't respect it enough to try it can go right ahead.

[Fat Guy]

I don't think a writer needs to dine at a chef's restaurant to have a valid opinion about that chef's cookbook. Indeed, depending on the style of the review, familiarity with the restaurant can be a distraction. And I think the author here has not overreached: she's looking forward to dining at El Bulli. She's mostly commenting on the aesthetics of the book and the style expressed therein. That she's dead wrong shouldn't be confused with a lack of standing to have a meaningful opinion in the first place.

[docsconz]

Avant garde cooking like Adria's, Acchatz etc. and Slow Food are not at all mutually exclusive. Slow Food is primarily about diversity and process. Adria's food, while "processed" is certainly not fast food. It is very sophisticated cooking using many ingredients from the Slow Food canon. He prizes quality ingredients and then manipulates them in novel fashions. That, as Steven pointed ou, is one of the major differences between cooking like Adria and industrial production. Another point is that in his creations Adria while making novel dishes actually respects tradition and often uses that as inspiration.

I have yet to dine there (although I hope to next fall) but I have read and own the book. It is beautiful.

[ExtraMSG]

I think you're right to an extent Bux. But that claim cuts both ways. Just as easily, someone could say that they don't understand how you could like a duck liver pate more than a fried bologna sandwich.

There are many bases for saying that a food is good, but I think all the attempts at something objective -- complexity, simplicity, subtlety, luxuriousness of ingredients, price of ingredients, novelty, whatever -- consistently fail.

More useful are interesubjective/historical means: traditions, cultural norms, and agreement. Problem is trying to commensurate these.

You end up with people talking past each other and one group talking down to "low" food lovers of BBQ, or burgers, or Mexican while these "low" food lovers make fun of the admirers of the less familiar foams, pates, and gelees.