Archives: Proyectos

In 2006, Albert Adrià opened Inopia Classic Bar.

 

Located on Calle de Tamarit in Barcelona. Initially, its idea was to be just a typical neighbourhood bar, but it soon came to be considered a highly innovative concept, one of the promoters of ’prêt a porter’ haute cuisine and a pioneer of the ‘gastrobar’ concept.

 

Albert closed the bar in 2010 to create, along with the Iglesias brothers, an all-encompassing project bringing together several restaurants and gastronomic concepts under the name of elBarri.

 

 

 

 

41º opened in January 2011. A cocktail bar situated in the premises next door to Tickets and with which it connected internally.

 

The concept of 41º was to establish a dialogue between the worlds of cocktails and snacks.

At the end of that same year, Albert took a step forward in the evolution of the concept, opening 41º Experience, with the offer of a tasting menu comprising 41 dishes, giving the maximum expression to this dialogue and serving a small number of customers every night.

 

41º Experience was awarded a Michelin star in November 2013 and was ranked 74^th on the list of the best restaurants in the world by the renowned Restaurant magazine, in April 2014, shortly before its closure in August of the same year.

The small dimensions of the premises were the determining factor in Albert’s decision, with the project warranting further evolution. This forward step bore fruit in January 2017 with the opening of Enigma in a new site located in Calle de Sepúlveda, Barcelona, ending the tradition of including restaurants in the elBarri brand.

 

 

In 2017 elBulliLab started its transformation into LABulligrafía, the name given to our historical archive, which has been presented in exhibition format using the Sapiens methodology, the creative system instituted at elBulli.

 

elBulli1846 is an exhibition lab safeguarding the legacy of elBullirestaurante, dedicated to its public exhibition and offering an insight into why the restaurant changed the paradigm for the fine dining sector around the world.

 

In addition, the exhibition on display at Cala Montjoi is designed to allow visitors to the centre to reflect on the themes of connected knowledge, innovation, management and education.

It also functions as a working tool for teams participating in the different research projects held periodically, with the objective of experimenting, studying and researching in order to generate knowledge related to efficiency in innovation, both basic and applied.

This dual functionality exemplifies the concept of the exhibition lab, in which everything is in constant evolution, each and every day.

 

 

 

 

From April 2014 until the end of 2017, elBulliLab has been the main functioning headquarters and a research centre occupying a space of 2,000m² located in Calle de Méjico in Barcelona.

 

The research carried out at elBulliLab has Sapiens (a methodology developed to understand and organise knowledge around a subject area) as a unifying thread and lays the foundations for the projects under development at elBullifoundation:

• elBulli1846, an exhibition lab located in the old elBullirestaurante in Cala Montjoi.

•  LABulligrafía, which will occupy the same space as elBulliLab and house the historical archive of elBulli.

Consequently, elBulliLab has already begun its transformation. Many people, who believe in elBullifoundation and in this project, from all corners of the Earth, have dedicated innumerable hours of effort to turn it into reality, provoking interest and establishing relationships and institutional and academic collaborations of the highest level.

 

 

 

elBullifoundation is a private family-based foundation. Established on February 7, 2013 with the backing of Ferran Adrià and Juli Soler, it was founded through a desire to transform elBullirestaurante, pursuing a vision of the future based on an ambition to continue promoting innovation and creativity using the language of the kitchen, and to leave a public legacy.

 

Funding is provided by the Adrià and Soler families, together with contributions from our angels.

 

elBulli illustrated how a small company, with limited resources, could change the way a discipline is understood. With disruptive innovation as the defining factor, elBulli achieved something that had never been done before.

 

elBulli completely changed the paradigm of the fine dining sector. This success gave us license to face a new challenge encompassing not only the field of gastronomy, but also the field of innovation.

 

Through elBullifoundation we want to continue fostering creativity and innovation and sharing past, present and future experiences with any individual or organization that has the desire and courage to improve, evolve and innovate.

Heart Ibiza is the result of ten years of friendship and exchange of ideas between the founder of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberté, and Albert and Ferran Adrià.

 

Their shared passion for gastronomy, music and art culminated, following collaboration with the Casino de Ibiza, in this special project launched in 2015 dedicated to exploring the boundaries between these disciplines, in which Albert instilled the rigour of the Bulliniano philosophy. 

 

 

In 2011, Albert Adrià started an association with the Iglesias brothers (Juan Carlos, Borja and Pedro) from Grupo Iglesias Barciela, owners of a number of high-quality restaurants in Barcelona. Together, they undertook an exciting project called elBarri, so named due to the concentrated position of all their restaurants in the Paralelo neighbourhood of Barcelona.

 

Thanks to a team instilled with the values that Albert helped form in elBulli, they have raised the bar for gastronomic excellence. Each restaurant establishing its own style, but adopting the same principles:

• Tickets (2011), contemporary cuisine with a new take on the world of tapas in a fun and informal atmosphere.
• Pakta (2013), a Nikkei cuisine restaurant born of Albert’s admiration for Japanese and Peruvian cookery, in which he venerates the union of these two cultures and pays homage to his Mediterranean roots.
• Bodega 1900 (2013), where the Spanish tradition of having an appetiser is celebrated.
• Niño Viejo (2014), a tasty and welcoming taco restaurant that pays reverence to the most popular Mexican cuisine and shares floorspace with Hoja Santa.
• Hoja Santa (2014), a contemporary culinary expression of the purest Mexican sensations.
• Enigma (2017), the last restaurant in the group, successor to 41º Experience and where Albert offers his most exquisite and refined vision of a fine dining experience.

Fortunately, throughout our career we were able to count on the interest of many friends within the profession, who would spend a few days with us to see our work first-hand and share experiences that were mutually enriching.

Dear friends like Juan Mari Arzak, Pedro Subijana, José Ramón Andrés, Christian Escribà, Marcos Morán, Rudi Van Beylen, François Chartier and many others … They are also genuine Bullinianos.

 

With the publication of El sabor del Mediterráneo in 1993, we initiated a relationship with Francesc Guillamet that was both professional and personal, producing a truly fruitful and ground-breaking collaboration (elBulli General Catalogue).

Marta Méndez and Roberta Sucupira formed a key part of the team, especially in the design of the publishing projects carried out at elBullicarmen.

 

The latest generations of the luminaries of French cuisine visited us to see at first-hand our working methods.

Alexandre Blanc and Romain Chapel with Juli Soler

 

In partnership with Luki Huber, we envisioned and forged a path changing the way in which the relationship between industrial design, the world of cuisine and the gastronomic experience is understood.

With Pere Castells and Ingrid Farré, we set up the scientific department, even before the inauguration of elBullitaller in Portaferrissa.

 

In 1998 a collaboration was set up with Chocovic, to work with its creative team on all matters related to chocolate.

From that time, and every year until 2009, we additionally set up a course that became an annual appointment for professionals in the sector who wanted to know first-hand all the new techniques and concepts that had been incorporated during the season in elBulli. The Aula Chocovic became, in this way, a driving force for our evolutionary analysis of elBulli.

 

In the winter of 1993-1994 we began organising gastronomic courses at elBulli. Each course lasted three days and was aimed at professionals from the restaurant sector. These courses were held every year until 1999.

At first they were one of the solutions aimed at occupying the annual six-month period that the restaurant was closed. Now, however, we see that they were very important for our evolution because, for example, it was not until 1994 that we had ever had a meal in the restaurant, and this gave us a completely new perspective which helped us to think about the menu and its evolution.

This information became increasingly rich and varied since, although at the beginning those attending were mostly other chefs, as time went by they were joined by gastronomy enthusiasts. Running these courses also meant that we had to plan theory and practical classes. Organising these sessions unquestionably called for an effort we were not accustomed to, and they forced us to analyse our cuisine for the first time.

In 1998, an agreement was reached with the Casino de Madrid to provide a consultancy role in both its La Terraza restaurant and in its catering and banqueting services, eventually leading to the establishment of elBullicatering in Madrid.

 

The team, directed by Paco Roncero, and employing such talented professionals as Alfonso Vega, Fran Ramírez and Maria Jose Huertas managed to raise the dining service to a level of excellence that every Bulliniano aspires to in the projects in which they participate.

1994 saw the opening of Talaia restaurant in Port Olímpic in Barcelona. For a time, we carried out a consultancy role there, a turning point allowing us to venture further into our research into creativity.

 

 

Following our decision to close elBullirestaurante during the winter season, we needed a dedicated space to bring to fruition the ideas that were generated during the creative process. And so, often, between 4 and 7 in the afternoon we would go to the kitchen at Talaia to undertake our research.

 

Throughout that year our ideas were taking shape, although they weren’t fully realised until 1996, following the collaboration of Talaia chefs Marc Singla, Carles Abellán, Sergi Arola, Oriol Balaguer and Alex Montiel, among others. This resulted in an extremely fruitful two-year period in which we took decisive steps to move towards our dream of having a workshop open all year round, dedicated exclusively to the creative process. This came with the opening of elBullitaller in 2000.

Xavi Sagristà and Toni Gerez were key figures in the history of elBullirestaurante, following their arrival in 1984 and 1985 respectively. In 1994, in deserved recognition of their fantastic work, Ferran and Juli offered their support for Xavi and Toni to take a step forward and run their own hotel restaurant, Mas Pau in Avinyonet de Puigventós.

 

The quality of their work right from the beginning soon led to a Michelin star.

 

The team at Hotel Restaurante Mas Pau developed a distinctive and personal project rooted in the Bulliniano philosophy they helped shape during their years at elBullirestaurante.

Following its conception in Talaia restaurant and, importantly, its 1997 move to the Aquarium of Barcelona where the headquarters of elBullicatering were located, the concept of a creative workshop grew in relevance and also in terms of our needs.

This is how elBullitaller was born in the year 2000.

Led by Ferran Adrià along with Albert Adrià and Oriol Castro, it had the collaboration of the key people in the elBulli kitchen, together with other creatives with whom we had established an interdisciplinary synergy that also produced spectacular results in many other aspects, beyond the kitchen, of the fine dining sector.

Located in part of an 18th century palace in Calle de la Portaferrissa in Barcelona, ​​next door to the Boquería market, elBullitaller became the world’s first creative workshop opened by a restaurant and a path to follow for the many chefs who understood the importance of dedicating the necessary resources to the creative system for their projects.

By 2001 we understood that elBullitaller, inaugurated the previous year, had to remain intact as the nerve centre of the creative system of elBulli. For this reason, we opened elBullicarmen, a 260 m² office space located on Calle del Carmen in Barcelona, which we had acquired in 1999, and from where we carried out work generated by the activities associated with the various businesses developed around the restaurant.

 

Many collaborators passed through its doors, making the values of elBulli their own and adding their talent to amazing projects, many of which pushed the boundaries of the fine dining sector and the food industry.

When, in 1998, we took charge of a project at Hacienda Benazuza, our intention was to transfer the philosophy of elBulli to the restaurant of this hotel located in Sanlúcar la Mayor, near Seville. From the outset we acted as consultant for the La Alquería restaurant, in addition to taking responsibility for hotel breakfasts, which became one of the features of the Hacienda. Later we increased our involvement within the hotel, opening two more restaurants, La Abacería and La Alberca.

 

The fine conceptualization of the project, together with the strenuous efforts of professionals such as Rafa Morales and Rafa Zafra in the kitchen, and Alejandro Haurie, Pepe García and Juan José Morán in the dining service, led a few years later to some important awards, including two Michelin stars to La Alquería restaurant.

 

For us, it was a project that excited us enormously, and in which we aimed to incorporate our philosophy. The dream was to transfer the several hours of pleasure given at a dinner service to the 24 hours a day of a stay at the hotel.

In 1995, elBullicatering was born, with the idea of moving the gastronomic offer to a wider public, whilst adapting it to the demands characteristic of service for this type of event. It was an important initiative, since elBulli was one of the first high-end restaurants to enter the world of catering, something that was criticised at the time.

 

The main office of elBullicatering was opened in the kitchen facilities of the L’Aquàrium de Barcelona, under the direction of Eduard Roigé and, over time, became a reference for events focused on haute cuisine.

 

In 1998 elBullicatering was also established in Madrid at El Casino de Madrid, where, in addition, we acted as consultant to the La Terraza restaurant. Both projects in Madrid were led by Paco Roncero.