Ferran Adrià's El Bulli restaurant reopens 12 years after as museum

Famous Catalan chef Ferran Adrià reopened his Michelin-starred restaurant on Thursday. However, it is not a place to sit and enjoy a meal, as ElBulli1846 is a museum honoring the establishment located on the same grounds, named El Bulli.

Exactly 12 years after serving its last dinner, Adrià reopened the site of the best restaurant in the world to honor the place and to start a new pioneering change in the world, to "enliven" but also to "explain" the legacy of the famous bistro.

ElBulli1846 will, for the moment, be open for three months, but the chef and director of the ElBulliFoundation, Ferran Adrià, does not rule out extending the schedule a little bit longer from next year.

"We are using this year as practice, and to see how it goes," he emotionally said for the "new era" he faces.

Dishes, photographs, and cutlery

The museum will be open from Monday to Saturday, welcoming 600 people daily in three turns of 200 visitors. There will be 69 artistic installations, including audiovisual formats, 13 outdoors and 56 indoors.

The tour will have an audioguide in Catalan, Spanish, English, and French, and will be included in the price ticket.

Among the elements exhibited, there are some of the 1846 dishes prepared during the years the restaurant was opening, the reason why the museum has ElBulli1846 as its name, but also in honor of August Escoffier, the father of modern cuisine, as he was born that year.

Visitors will even see table number 25, also known as the preferred one for guests, as it overlooks Cap de Creus natural park, and 160 notebooks with the brainstorming behind some recipes.

These are some of the many things people will discover during the visit, but also the cutlery used, the dining area as it was back in the day, and even waiters and staff photos hanging on the walls.

Revolution

El Bulli was a gastronomical revolution back then, and Adrià considered that currently the world's cuisine has a very high level, but did not say if it will be possible to see a new revolution as the one seen in the Catalan restaurant.

For this reason, he hopes the museum is an opportunity for new generations to understand the site's legacy and how it was to be behind its kitchen.

"People tend to forget about things, but everyone needs to be aware that here, in Catalonia, a revolution was made and changed the world's gastronomy paradigm," Adrià said to journalists from the restaurant grounds, overlooking the picturesque Costa Brava cove of Cala Montjoi.

El Bulli was a global culinary sensation, winning three Michelin stars and being named the world's best restaurant five times by Restaurant magazine, a record since equaled by Noma in Copenhagen.

€27.5 tickets

Tickets to enter ElBulli1846 will cost €27.5 and include parking in the city of Roses and the transfer to Cala Montjoi cove.

The place has been under refurbishment for over a decade, with a budget of €11 million, allowing the site to grow by 30% compared to the original El Bulli area, reaching 4,000 square meters.

Catalan cuisine

The Adrià brothers' innovative and experimental approach to traditional dishes and ingredients helped bring Catalan cuisine fame around the world.

Listen to the podcast below to learn more, a celebration of Catalonia's rich and innovative gourmet culture with chefs Carme Ruscalleda and Jordi Vilà and Cuina magazine's Judith Càlix.