Yum, yum: love the mousse. But is it art?

Joanna Pitman

11 July 2009

Joanna Pitman talks to Ferran Adrià, widely hailed as the world’s greatest chef and named as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet. He doesn’t think he is Picasso

Can I interest you in some almond ice cream served on a swirl of garlic oil and balsamic vinegar? Are you game for a ‘chicken skin and orange blossom envelope’, fried tobacco balls, or a taste of rabbit brains with pistachio, green tea and demerara sugar? Although many of us would hesitate to put such things in our mouths, these startling dishes have all been created by Ferran Adrià, the 47-year-old Spaniard reputed to be the best chef in the world.

Reactions to Adrià’s work tend to be rich and gamey. Joel Robuchon, the French culinary star, has said he is simply the finest chef on the planet. Time magazine has named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world. His restaurant, El Bulli, located in a sleepy cove at Cala Montjoi on the Costa Brava, has been voted best restaurant four years running by the Restaurant Magazine. It is open for just six months a year, serves only 30-course dinners, and caters for 8,000 customers each season. Every year, some 300,000 callers request a table.

Two years ago, Adrià moved into a different sphere when he became one of just two Spaniards invited to participate in Documenta, the art exhibition held every five years in Kassel, and one of the biggest and most exclusive events in the international contemporary art calendar. Adrià’s ‘artwork’ was a dinner every night at El Bulli for two people, selected at random during the 100-day run of the exhibition and sent off with airfares and a voucher. A few took fright at the food, but most loved it.

The critics, however, turned up their noses, condemning Adrià’s work as the ‘banalisation of art’, and implying that as a chef, Adrià did not know his place. One critic, José de la Sota, wrote ‘Adrià is not Picasso. Picasso did not know how to cook but he was better than Adrià [at art]. What is art now? Is it something or nothing?’

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