Alex Trelinski
EL BULLI, repeatedly voted the world’s best restaurant before it closed in July 2011 is reopening as a museum to tell the story of how it sparked a culinary revolution.
The premises at Cala Montjoi on Catalunya’s Costa Brava have been renamed as El Bulli1846- in reference to the 1,846 dishes that chef Ferran Adria says were developed at the restaurant.
Adria pioneered molecular gastronomy, the culinary trend that deconstructs ingredients and recombines them in unexpected ways.
The resultant dishes produced interesting combinations and textures, such as fruit foam, gazpacho popsicles and caramelised quails.
The restaurant was ranked in top spot five times on Restaurant magazine’s Top 50 list of the world’s best eateries.
“It’s not about coming here to eat, but to understand what happened in El Bulli,” Adria, 61, said of the restaurant he ran for more than two decades.
The museum will open on June 15, some 12 years after the restaurant was forced to close due to big financial losses.
Visitors will be able to see hundreds of photos, notebooks, trophies and models made of plastic or wax that emulate some of the innovative dishes that were served at the eatery.
A foundation set up to maintain El Bulli’s legacy has invested €11 million in the museum with the project first announced in 2019.
Plans to expand the building on Cala Montjoi cove had to be changed after running into opposition from environmentalists.
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