Juli Soler arrived at elBulli in 1981, after the departure of his predecessor Jean-Louis Neichel had left the restaurant without direction. When Soler embraced this challenge, he had no idea that this journey would lead him to such a great success.

Although he was not a chef, Juli Soler acquired a great knowledge of the culinary arts due to his impressive sensory perception and his extraordinary analytical vision. He played a key role in the elBulli revolution. He had given Ferran Adrià (with whom he was an equal partner) total freedom to develop his own cuisine, offering him unconditional support.

He was the architect and ambassador of a new service philosophy that would profoundly transform the gastronomic experience provided by the restaurant.

31 May 1949
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Juli Soler was born in Terrassa, a province in Barcelona, Spain, and was the son of Paquita and Juli. His father, who was the maître d’hôtel of a restaurant in a small spa resort, instilled in him his passion for service, the attention given to guests, and the importance of the relationship with each person at the table and throughout their stay at the hotel. Juli shared this passion with his father and helped him at weekends as an apprentice. At the same time, he started studying at the Escola Pia, then eventually went on to take a business course at the Escola Cultura Pràctica college in Terrassa.

1962-1965
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Juli entered the world of hospitality at a very young age, when Miquel Ristol took him on in 1962 as an assistant waiter at the Gran Casino de Terrassa. The following year, he spent his first season away from home, in Puigcerdà, where he worked as an assistant bartender at the prestigious Xalet del Golf hotel. At the urging and recommendation of Ferrer (head chef at the time), Josep Julià employed Juli at the age of 14 at Reno, a renowned Barcelona restaurant. A year later, having turned down employment on a luxury cruise liner, he joined his parents on a new business venture: managing the catering department at Josa, an electrical equipment manufacturer in Rubí.

1966-1980
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Juli abandoned his studies during this period. Having a love of British and American music, and travelling, he turned his hand to that and became an important figure in the club scene. Aside from running two of these venues, he lived with a sole passion: the music (R&B, soul, rock) he would import and which was danced to by an entire generation for more than a decade. In 1980, he closed the Transformer record shop that he had opened and decided to change his life.

1981-2011
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In 1981, the owners of Hacienda elBulli, Marketta and Hans Schilling, offered Juli the job of running their establishment at Cala Montjoi, which he accepted. For a while, he devoted himself to visiting all the leading European restaurants to study the market and learn the ropes. He also did an internship at a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Germany to familiarise himself with the internal operations of a type of restaurant that was uncommon in Spain at the time.
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As Juli would recall:

‘At the time, a table at elBulli was already different from the tables at other restaurants in Spain. Even the cutlery, glassware and china were imported from Germany, and they were inspired by the grand restaurants of the day, which belonged to Alain Chapel, Jacques Pic and others. The table service, the consideration – in a word, the way the restaurant was run – was also based on those models. … Doctor Schilling suggested that I should travel intensely for two months, visiting the best restaurants in France, Belgium and Germany. When I returned, in mid-March 1981, I was ready to face my first season as a manager. … elBulli was a charming place, and getting there was quite an adventure, but thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations from our customers, Germans, French and many Catalans came to sample our cuisine, which, while very different from what it is today, was already at the forefront of the new European trends. The menu by Jean-Paul Vinay was very much in line with nouvelle cuisine, with subtle influences from his home town of Lyon, and from Michel Guérard, whose restaurant had been one of the last places he’d worked. And added to all that was the quality of the best produce from our region: the best locally grown vegetables, succulent fish and seafood, and so forth. And then, of course, there was our philosophy, our desire above all to provide diners with pleasure so that they would leave satisfied and happy. In fact, inspired by our omnipresent unwritten philosophy, we believed, and continue to do so, that the ambience of elBulli was unique.’

In 1984, his career would be linked with that of Ferran Adrià. Together they turned elBulli into one of the leading restaurants on the international haute cuisine scene.

7 February 2013
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This date marks the birth of elBullifoundation, a private, family-based foundation led by Ferran Adrià and Juli Soler. Juli Soler was its honorary president until his death.

elBullifoundation was founded in 2010 as a result of the need to transform elBullirestaurante and give it prospects for the future. It was sustained by the will to continue to foster innovation and creativity through the culinary language and to leave a legacy to society.

Juli Soler was married to Marta Sala and they had three children, Panxo, Rita and Júlia.

He died on 6 July 2015 at his home, surrounded by his family.

The legacy left by Juli, whose spirit permeates all the action taken by elBullifoundation, was continued through the incorporation of his children Rita and Panxo as pillars of the foundation.