Ferran Adria. Photograph: Sophia Evans
Adrian Searle has been art critic for the UK’s The Guardian newspaper for over a decade. Last week, he was trying to come to grips with the notion of food as art, and the result is a fascinating and engaging article about his dining experience at El Bulli, celebrity chef Ferran Adria’s mega-famous restaurant on the Costa Brava, North of Barcelona. Ever since he was invited to participate at last year’s Documenta 12 art show in Kassel, Germany, Adria has been at the epicenter of a heated global discussion about art, food, gastronomy, creativity, value, taste, and the meaning of life.
I have been lucky enough to eat at El Bulli. It was a very long time ago (early 90s), when waiting lists there were only a couple of months long, rather than a couple of years. The food was excentric, surprising, inspired, endlessly varied and delicious. I’m not queasy when it comes to eating – bone marrow, frog’s legs, snails, pig’s trotters and shiokara (fermented calamari intestines) are all on my top ten list. So I enjoyed the slightly awkward ingredient combinations and the beautiful presentation of the long list of dishes served.
What surprises me about the current debate, however, is that with all the discussion about whether Adria’s food is art and whether chefs are artists and so on, the possibility that his cooking might actually be closer to design than to art has never been mentioned. I realise it makes it all far less transcendent – apologies for that. But quite frankly, it seems pretty obvious when you think of it. Food has an essential practical side to it, a driving functionality behind its making. There is a complex planning strategy involved at the outset (menu, ingredients, processes, tools, etc.), a sophisticated manufacturing process that has become increasingly technological in Adria’s case (molecular gastronomy!), an exquisite aesthetic input to round things off, a serial production of model dishes and specific instructions for the appropriate use and consumption of the resulting food. Furthermore, Adria spends his winters doing research and development at his Barcelona Lab, El Taller (‘The Workshop’) and then produces the selected new menus during the summer months at El Bulli. You can even visit El Bulli’s website and browse their complete online General Catalogue, listing all their products ‘manufactured’ between 1983 and 2005.
So my vote goes to Ferran Adria as one of Barcelona’s greatest designers.
BCNDesign 