Ferran Adria Quotes

In a city, it's very hard to do a restaurant, an avant-garde-cuisine restaurant, where each year you need to change the whole menu.

If a child plays sport early in childhood, and doesn't give it up, he will play sport for the rest of his life. And if children have a connection with, and are involved in the preparation of, the food they eat, then it will be normal for them to cook these kind of meals, and they will go on cooking them for the rest of their lives.

There's so much information that there is disinformation.

I can't live without activity; I can't be sedentary.

When we're ill, one of the last things we have that we can enjoy is food.

You may say, "Oh, no. You can't touch a traditional recipe." But we ask: why can't you? Back in 1350, a vinaigrette was a stew, so we ask, why not? This can be applied to any kind of cooking, and that's the shocking part of it. It kind of bends all the traditions. It's a good thing.

We need to think about what cooking is, what context it takes place in and what its relationship to the world of art is. If there were criticisms of my presence at Documenta, that's a good thing because it means we were doing something new. Your mission in creating something artistic is to produce something new and polemical.

I don't worry about the things I can't change.

I don't do my mother's cooking. Because I am a professional and she isn't. Even if she is a better cook.

Monkeys don't enjoy or appreciate flavours. Experts have told us that human beings are the only beings that can appreciate food at this higher level and the only living beings that cook.

If you go off the edge, it's not cooking anymore, so you have to push it to the limit ... What are the limits?

You need an entire life just to know about tomatoes.

I had a very normal childhood, and my mother cooked very normal food.

My idol was Johann Cruyff (a Dutch soccer player) and I wanted to be like him. But when I realized that I would never be, I decided to do something else. I met the kitchen by chance and quickly became completely enamoured by it.

Food is about being happy
at a table, thats probably where we spend most of our happiest hours ...

Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster.

The menu de degustation is the finest expression of avant-garde cooking.

I wanted to take nouvelle cuisine further, to the point where we were breaking down the essence of taste and sensation, reconfiguring food as a series of really intense hits on the tongue.

Ferran Adria making hamburgers ... some thought it was crazy. But getting them perfect was a challenge. Plus I'm fascinated by all aspects of food.

If I were a customer, and I was given a dish with peppers, I would hate it. I also don't like blood sausage.

When people arrive at El Bulli, everybody goes through the kitchen. It's a way of making them feel at home. When they leave, the only thing I ask is whether they've been happy. Everything in between, I don't particularly care.

Just to eat is a gift.

There's a little treat I like a lot called Bollycao. It's like a brioche with chocolate inside, but industrial.

We opened El Bulli; there were no secrets there. The recipes were not secret. Anybody who came, the recipes were there for them. This was unthinkable then.

El Bulli was created by 2,000 people that passed through it. And we didn't know that something big was happening. It was like a game in a way. You didn't really know how it was going to end up, and people who would leave, they would take a piece of it with them, but they would leave another piece behind.

When people think science and cooking, they have no idea that it's not correctly expressed. We're actually applying the scientific method. People think chemistry and physics are science, but the scientific method is something else ... It's the science that the world of cooking generates: science of butter; science of the croissant.

I believe that if you eat well, you work even better.

When you talk about avant-garde cuisine, the surprise factor is really important. For example, I love looking at blogs and the photos, but I'm not that keen on other people taking photos of my dishes.

There are a lot of products still to be discovered in the world and experimentation, for example with seafood and fish. There are thousands of products that we're not eating right now that maybe will be cultivated in a good agriculture situation, a sustainable, ecological way. Maybe there will be textures or flavors we hadn't even thought of. In the Amazon there are 400 fruits that are not cultivated right now. They're just incredible fruits. Textures, tastes that we don't know right now.

There are many cultural prejudices. For instance, even though fresh fish is a regional staple, Catalans don't like sashimi.

People wouldn't think of making avant-garde cuisine at home. When people play basketball at home, they can't play like Michael Jordan.

People need to understand. If they go to a show on Broadway and find seventy people working but only fifty spectators, how much would the ticket cost? That's what El Bulli's about. There are seventy actors who are playing for just fifty spectators. Is the price expensive? It's relative. How much does a normal dinner at a five-star hotel restaurant cost? Four hundred dollars. It's the same as El Bulli. But you can also think of it this way: How much would it cost to eat something that nobody else is eating?

At one point cinema and photography weren't treated as art. Now it's crazy to think they're not. The key question is "What is art today?" The most important artists of the last 20 years are Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive, because the influence they have had is incredible and they've changed the world. That is art.

The person who's receiving the food cooks as much as the chef. They have a very important role to play ... There's no other activity that the person who receives it can destroy the work, can participate in how it's being done. It's emotional. Sometimes journalists are going to have to start talking more about the diners than the chefs.

If you think well, you cook well.

When a customer receives a dish, they get food and design at the same time.

We knew the time would come that we'd have to step down because we'd been winning Oscars for 15 years. I discovered this one day when I got home, my mother was reading a newspaper and she said, 'Again? What are you doing in the papers?' And I realized if my mother thought that of me, what would my enemies think?

I am not a multimillionaire. I don't own a yacht or a Ferrari. I live in a 60-square- metre flat. My needs are simple.

I never even dreamed of being a chef, and that's fundamental.

Could you imagine people eating a painting
if they could introduce a painting into their bodies? It's probably the artist's dream, and we have the opportunity to do so.

I never cook at home. After 15 hours at work, I don't have much of a desire to cook at home. I do eat at home, but it's always something simple. Raw nuts. Almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts
these are marvelous products. I am, however, the type that likes to go out to eat a lot. I never tire of it.

I cook more theoretically than I do practically. My job is creative, and in the kitchen, the biggest part of my creativity is theoretical.

What's wrong with transforming food?

Innovation, being avant garde, is always polemic.

I'm not a materialist, I don't care for things. I don't like cars, I hate things that can be exploited. I live a simple life. The only luxuries I have in my life are travel and food.

When I was a teenager, my idol was the Dutch footballer Johan Cruyff. He's the only person I've ever asked for an autograph.

In my early days, I copied the great French chefs, like most chefs do. Copying is not bad. Copying and not recognizing that you are copying is bad. For me, when I go to a restaurant and am served a dish influenced by something we created at elBulli, if it's well done, it makes me extremely happy.

I don't have a favorite cooking tool. In the kitchen, I always have my pencil and notebook in my hand. I cook more theoretically than I do practically. My job is creative, and in the kitchen, the biggest part of my creativity is theoretical. The pencil has a symbolic meaning for me. The type of person who carries a pencil around is the type of person who's open to change. Someone who walks around with a pen isn't; he's the opposite.

Throughout the history of el Bulli, there have been many changes in its organisation or philosophy. This is another one of those moments. There will be risk, and freedom, and creativity. But there won't be opening hours, or reservations, or routines.

You can see it on the Internet now. New society demands that people share their knowledge. It's asking multimillionaires to share their money and creative people to share their creativity. Whoever doesn't share their wealth, be it knowledge, money, or creativity, will be dead.

Friends are really important, especially when you've had the successes that I've had. I've gone really far in my career, so they're the ones that keep you humble, keep your feet on the ground.

When I go to a fine dining restaurant, I'm excited and I do expect to find proposals to wake my senses.