The Legacy of El Bulli

Once the world’s best restaurant, the legacy of El Bulli was always bound to blaze a trail, now there's a dedicated museum that reflects on the incredible success and innovation of three-Michelin-star El Bulli.

In the very space where the restaurant once sat, located on scenic Cala Montjoi, a bay on Catalonia’s Costa Brava, not far from Girona, a new museum is ready to be explored, known as El Bulli 1846. Whether you were able to visit and experience first-hand this legendary, highly coveted restaurant or not, El Bulli became an international headline in fine dining circles with maverick Spanish chef Ferran Adrià the name on foodie lips the world over.

Working his way up from work experience in the El Bulli kitchen, Ferran Adrià was responsible for changing the way we perceive gastronomy, credited with making the first edible ‘foam’ and playing around with taste, perception and sense, he was a culinary genius and innovator, challenging how we experience food – he famously made a liquid olive, tomato granita and spherical melon caviar among many other delicious morsels.

With such epic waves created within gastronomy it was perhaps inevitable that the El Bulli could not last forever and in 2011 the restaurant abruptly closed down whilst at the peak of its great success, leaving wannabe diners craving more.

Exploring the legacy of El Bulli and with an opportunity to pay tribute to those, alongside Ferran Adrià who played their part in the restaurant’s success, the museum set in the  Cap de Creus national park and will build on the historical traditions including the El Bulli manifesto when it comes to cooking and innovation, the restaurant’s milestones of success and a timeline of gastronomic innovation. The museum also name checks their core team of ‘Bulliniaros’ – the kindred souls who made El  Bulli what it was from Ferran’s brother Albert, the head pastry chef to co-owner and manager Juli Soler.

An interesting aspect of the museum is the El Bulli foundation Lab which funds research into gastronomic innovation and which continues to support the hospitality sector including the production of a fine dining encyclopaedia called Bulliepdia.

Those pining for the heady El Bulli days of molecular gastronomy won’t get their taste buds tingled here, but you’ll come away feeling inspired by one of the greatest chefs and culinary movements of our time.