At a press conference held on February 23 during the Gastronomy Forum in Santiago de Compostela, capital of the Spanish region of Galicia, Ferran said that this foundation will offer scholarships for up to 25 chefs and front office professionals. These carefully selected recipients of the scholarship will work with the creative team of the restaurant as “a breeding ground for new ideas and for new talents to go together, hand in hand, even further.”
The dining room of the restaurant will continue in its present shape and set up but a new audio-visual lounge and library will be added as part of his long-term aim to compile an exhaustive and detailed encyclopedia of the contemporary cuisine. The restaurant will continue to welcome a certain number of customers each year to taste the kitchen’s creations, according to Adrià. .
In addition to the avant-garde cuisine for which El Bulli is famous, the foundation will also branch into more traditional cuisine, as well as cocktails and even breakfasts.
Each year the foundation will publish its findings via a series of books, audio-visual productions, on the net, chef conferences and in gastronomy schools, according to a media report.
In the 21 years since Ferran Adrià became head chef at the restaurant in Roses on the Costa Brava, his rise to success has run parallel with the explosion in fine dining and the attendant phenomenon of gastro-tourism. During the past two decades, a golden age for the restaurant business, Adrià has become the most significant player in the culinary world, loved and respected by customers, cooks and critics. He has been credited to have invented the molecular gastronomy, a term which he does not recognise and instead likes to call his cooking Avant Garde and deconstructive.
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