Ferran Adria Quotes

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 cant live without activity; I cant be sedentary.

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.

We'll work with any designer producing something linked to gastronomy. So a chair for the dining area, a van to move food around. Anything that's connected to the gastronomic process.

It’s very hard to be an innovator at the highest level in any discipline. For some chefs it’s merely about combining ingredients, but that’s something you can do with your eyes closed.

Innovation, being avant garde, is always polemic.

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

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

We didnt create dishes. We create preparations to create many dishes.

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

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

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.

Chefs have only been able to work in restaurants, high-end cuisine. Why? Why haven't they been able to find other scenarios? For those chefs who want to do avant-garde cuisine, should they be finding their income in a restaurant? These are the kind of questions we are asking ourselves. So the new scenario will allow them to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it.

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

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.

There's so much information that there is disinformation.

You need an entire life just to know about tomatoes.

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.

In more day-to-day restaurants, things have undergone a seismic change towards informality and sharing, which has been years in the making. Nowadays, people don't want just one dish; they want to order lots of things and they want to do it in fun places, places that give them an experience. The experience that a restaurant needs to offer is no longer just based around the food.

Creativity means not copying.

I use the kitchen as a pathway to achieve this happiness.

Risk is to do something that 99 percent of the time would be a failure.

Salt is the only product that changes cuisine. There's a big difference between food that has salt and food without it. If you don't believe that, ask people who can't eat salt.

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.

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.

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

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

You cannot get an influence from the cuisine of a country if you don't understand it. You've got to study it.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

What's wrong with transforming food?

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.

You can't please everyone, especially if you're doing very radical things at the vanguard of cooking. That's life; it's a polemic I've lived with since I started cooking.

Like all disciplines where information is shared and work contributes to their advancement, cuisine should be no different. The kitchen is our life, and we are available to share. We want to share our work so that future generations can cook and create a more efficient, easy and unquestionable quality.

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

The avant-garde has always existed throughout the history of mankind. The good things from the avant-garde last and eventually, after many years, become tradition and people forget they were ever part of the avant-garde. The kitchen is a living discipline, always evolving, and there will always be cutting edge things that over the years, ends up being part of tradition.

For me to go to a restaurant and eat something that is not only good, but totally new, is a double thrill. Double the enjoyment.

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.

In an avant-garde cooking restaurant, it's the experience that's the difference.

What you feel like eating at any given moment is what you should have.

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.

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

Our kitchen is a kitchen that makes food designed to be tasted with the five senses and it requires concentration to appreciate all that we want to express.