In October, Gotham will publish Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food by Colman Andrews. The author recently took a few minutes to chat about how he convinced Adrià to let him write the book, and how getting access to the great chef’s kitchen was really no big deal.
PW: You had to convince Adrià to write a biography of him. What did you say to his retorts that he was not old enough to be the subject of a biography, and that there are too many books about him already?
CA: I said, ‘Let’s not call it a biography; let’s call it a portrait of yourself and of the restaurant up to this point.’ I said, ‘If I don’t do this book, somebody’s going to do it without your permission or cooperation. Wouldn’t you rather have it done this way?’ He knew who I was and trusted me. He knew that I knew the background and milieu that he came out of. Those were all contributing factors.
PW: You had unrestricted access to the El Bulli kitchen and dining room, and to Ferran's workshop in Barcelona. Were you ever overwhelmed with having such amazing access?
CA: I grew up in L.A., and my mom was a terrible cook and my father made good money, so they ate out every night. I was hanging around restaurants when I was a kid. Subsequently, on my own, I’ve gotten to know a lot of famous chefs. I don’t want to sound like I’m unappreciative, but I don’t ever think I felt intimidated. I felt comfortable. Ferran is such a humble, charming person, and once he welcomes you and decides to cooperate, he couldn’t be nicer.
PW: You had finished the first draft of this book when you learned that Adrià planned to close El Bulli for two years at the end of the 2011 season. What was your initial reaction, in regards to the book?
CA: On my last visit there (or what I thought was my last), we spent an afternoon talking about the future and he said he wasn’t going to be doing this forever. He gave me some hints about how and when he thought it might be over, in 2012, because he felt he had moral contracts with his top chefs which lasted until about then, and it was more or less 50 years from the time that the restaurant had opened as a beachfront shack. So it didn’t completely catch me by surprise. Of course my first thought was “what does this mean for the book?” I immediately made the decision that I would leave the book in the present tense since the book would be coming out roughly two years before the closing. The second thing I did was e-mail [Adrià] and say, what’s the story here? There was a story in the New York Times that said he was going to close El Bulli permanently. He said, ‘This wasn’t well reported; come over and I’ll tell you the full story.’ That story hasn’t been published, but there’s no telling what’s going to happen in two years.
