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RESTAURANT

Spain’s top chef to launch R+D restaurant

Spanish chef Ferran Adrià has announced a September start date for work on elBulli1846, 'the world's first Culinary Innovation, Research and Development Centre' in Catalonia, which will also see his El Bulli resturant re-open in a different guise, with 50 percent of guests getting tickets via a free prize draw.

Published: 7 February 2014 17:44 CET
Spain's top chef to launch R+D restaurant
Adrià says that the project will eventually be handed over into public ownership but that he would be in charge "as long as he was alive". Photo: TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA / AFP

El Bulli opened in 1964 in the small Costa Brava village of Roses and went on to earn three Michelin stars and international acclaim as the best restaurant in the world before closing its doors in 2011.

Its owner and mastermind, Ferran Adrià, revealed at the time that he planned to transform the site into a unique resource that would further the creative techniques that he had developed during his years there.

The culmination of those plans was presented on Friday at a press conference in Barcelona for the official announcement of elBulli1846.

Financed by €9 million ($12.26m) from Adrià's own private El Bulli Foundation, the centre is forecast to open in 2016.

The Catalan regional government has donated the use of neighbouring land to the project, giving elBulli1846 a total of 4,385 square metres.

Thirty cooks and other food professionals will work there for eight months a year, experimenting and developing new ideas in a lab called ElBulliDNA.

For another month a year it will open as a restaurant – but not all places will be for sale. Half of the seats will be given to the winners of a free prize draw.

Adrià's stated goal is to make elBulli1846 a centre for research into culinary creativity that he says he hopes will last "for 100 years".

He added: "If El Bulli was to return, it would only ever be for something big."

The regional government has ruled that the centre constitutes a site of public interest and has donated land from the Cap de Creus Natural Park where the restaurant is located.

This will hasten the centre's construction by removing some regulatory barriers to planning.

The new centre's architect, Enric Ruiz, explained that many of the centre's facilities will be underground, connected by a system of stone walls to fit in with the surrounding landscape.

     

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FOOD AND DRINK

Why do they pour cider like that in Spain’s Asturias?

The green northern region’s drink of choice is cider but it’s the method waiters have of pouring it from a great height that catches the attention of ‘out-ciders’.

Published: 29 February 2024 15:40 CET
Why do they pour cider like that in Spain's Asturias?

They say Asturian blood is 50 percent water and 50 percent cider, and given the 40 million bottles produced every year in the region, it doesn’t seem too hard to believe.

However, it’s the method of serving cider in Asturias which really captures the imagination. 

The bottle will either come attached to a contraption which sucks up the cider and splurts it into a wide but thin-rimmed glass.

Or the waiter will come out every few minutes to grab your bottle and glass, lift the former high up with one arm and the latter down low around waist height before pouring some of the cider into the glass from at an arm’s length. 

There’s even a verb for this action – escanciar – to decant.  

The objective is for the cider to be shaken and aerated so that its natural carbon dioxide ‘awakens’.

When it is poured from above and hits the glass, carbon dioxide bubbles are produced that make the aroma of the cider come alive.

It’s good and normal for there to be splashback when pouring Asturian cider, but the aim is still to get most of it in the glass. (Photo by MIGUEL RIOPA / AFP)

These bubbles go away quickly so once served, the customer should quickly drink the culín (small bottom) up in one swig. 

The action of escanciar imitates how cider would be traditionally served when it went directly from big oak barrels to the glass, as cider has been the drink of choice in Asturians since before Roman times. 

READ ALSO: Why Spaniards’ habit of drinking alcohol every day is surprisingly healthy

This is after all natural cider which doesn’t come with the sugar, additives and pre-carbonated mixes of brands such as Strongbow, Magners or Kopparberg.

“It took me some time to get the hang of pouring cider, I missed the mark a lot, and my arm used to get very tired at first,” a Latin American waitress at a bar in Gijón told The Local Spain. 

Many sidrerías (cider houses) and restaurants have cylindrical tubes on wheels where escanciadores (the waiters in charge of pouring cider) can put the glass in to avoid making a mess on the floor or splashing customers, as there is always some splatter even if they don’t completely miss the mark. 

A waiter pours cider for customers at a cider bar in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo (Photo by RAFA RIVAS / AFP)

The more old-school chigres (cider house in Asturian) prefer to have sawdust all over the floor to absorb the spilt cider.

To pour, tirar (throw) or escanciar (decant) cider like an Asturian, you should tilt the bottle slowly from above and aim for the cider to hit the top part of the inside side of the glass, which has to be held at a 45-degree angle. It’s this that brings out the effervescence out in la sidra natural.  

So when you visit the beautiful region of Asturias and you tuck into their famously ample servings of fabada asturiana (Asturian bean stew) or cachopo (meat, cheese and ham all together in breadcrumbs), washed down with one or two bottles of sidra, now you’ll understand what’s behind this eye-catching tradition.

READ ALSO: Eight fascinating facts about Spain’s Asturias region

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