Top restaurant’s secrets to creativity

By Do Je-hae

What goes into the making of a world-renowned restaurant?

Until its closure, elBulli, the beachside Spanish restaurant repeatedly crowned the world’s best, was more than just a place to dine.

For years, head chef Ferran Adria’s creativity and enigma had drawn not only the world’s top culinary artists and food critics but also chefs looking to become apprentices there.

Located in Roses, Catalonia, northeastern Spain, the restaurant pushed the boundaries of cuisine for more than two decades under Adria. Closed since last year, it is to reopen as a foundation dedicated to culinary creativity in 2014.

The restaurant was famous for its limited season, closing for more than six months a year to train chefs and develop new cooking techniques and flavors. The 2010 season, for example, ran from June 15 to Dec. 20. While it could accommodate only 8,000 diners a year, it received more than two million requests for reservations.

As Adria has repeatedly said, “The ideal customer doesn’t come to elBulli to eat but to have an experience.”

The Restaurant Magazine judged elBulli to be No. 1 on its Top 50 list of the world’s best restaurants for a record five times — in 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Creative menus

The exceptional success the restaurant enjoyed was mainly attributed to its consistent devotion to creative menus, according to the latest book on the restaurant.

The book, “180 Days at elBulli,” is the Korean translation of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adria’s elBulli,” which traces the 6-month training course at the prestigious restaurant and culinary think tank.

The book has received positive reviews from the international press and the quality of the Korean translation is very good.

In it, the author Lisa Abend, The New York Times’ Spain correspondent, explores the remarkable system that Adria uses to run his restaurant and to train the next generation of culinary stars.

She follows 35 young men and women as they struggle with the hardships of becoming chefs. For six months, they must deal with cutting-edge techniques, grueling hours and interpersonal tensions that come with working at this celebrated institution.

Abend’s lively narrative captures an enthusiastic cast, including a young Korean cook who camped on the doorstep of elBulli until he was allowed to work under Adria and an ambitious chef from one of Switzerland’s top restaurants struggling to create his own artistic vision in the kitchen.

Taken together, their stories form a portrait of the international team that has helped establish elBulli’s status. They also reveal a closer look at Adria, one who is not only a genius chef and artist but also a boss, teacher and businessman.

Adria said that his goal is to “provide unexpected contrasts of flavor, temperature and texture. Nothing is what it seems. The idea is to provoke, surprise and delight the diner.”

When he was not working at the restaurant, Adria spent time perfecting recipes in his workshop “El Taller” in Barcelona. He is well-known for his 30-course gourmet menu.

Korea has yet to produce culinary stars or restaurants that have worldwide fame.

This book is particularly useful not just for aspiring chefs, but also for restaurant owners and relevant experts in government and business.