Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food [Hardcover]

Colman Andrews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2010

The first-ever biography of Ferran Adrià, the chef behind Spain's renowned El Bulli restaurant, by one of the world's foremost food authorities.

More than just the most influential chef of the late-twentieth and early-twenty- first century, Ferran Adrià is arguably the greatest culinary revolutionary of our time. Hailed as a genius and a prophet by fellow chefs, worshipped (if often misunderstood) by critics and lay diners alike, Adrià is imitated and paid homage to in professional kitchens, and more than a few private ones, all over the world. A reservation at his one and only restaurant, El Bulli, is so coveted that scoring a table is harder than nabbing fifty-yardline tickets to the Super Bowl.

In his lively close-up portrait of Adrià, award-winning food writer Colman Andrews traces this groundbreaking chef's rise from resort-hotel dishwasher to culinary deity, and the evolution of El Bulli from a German-owned beach bar into the establishment voted annually by an international jury to be "the world's best restaurant." Taking the reader from Adrià's Franco-era childhood near Barcelona through El Bulli's wildly creative "disco-beach" days and into the modern-day creative wonderland of Adrià's restaurant kitchen and the workshop- laboratory where his innovations are born and refined, Andrews blends sweeping storytelling with culinary history to explore Adrià's extraordinary contributions to the way we eat.

Through original techniques like deconstruction, spherification, and the creation of culinary foams and airs, Adrià has profoundly reimagined the basic characteristics of food's forms, while celebrating and intensifying the natural flavors of his raw materials. Yet, argues Andrews, these innovations may not be his most impressive achievements. Instead, Adrià's sheer creativity and courageous imagination are his true genius-a genius that transcends the chef's métier and can inspire and enlighten all of us.

Entertaining and intimate, Ferran brings to life the most exciting food movement of our time and illuminates the ways in which Adrià has changed our world- forever altering our understanding and appreciation of food and cooking.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"An essential biography...about the most creative groundbreaking and important chef of the last decade."

(-Anthony Bourdain )

"A fascinating portrait that everyone who cares about the evolution of food will want to read."

(-Ruth Reichl, author of Tender at the Bone ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Colman Andrews was the cofounder and a former editor in chief of Saveur, and is the author of four acclaimed cookbooks, including Catalan Cuisine, which introduced the now-trendy cooking of Catalonia, Ferran Adrià's home region, to American food-lovers. The recipient of numerous honors (including six James Beard Foundation awards), he was most recently the restaurant columnist for Gourmet. He divides his time between New York City and Connecticut. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Gotham (October 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159240572X
• ISBN-13: 978-1592405725
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > Spanish

More About the Author

Colman Andrews' first cookbook, "Catalan Cuisine", originally published in 1988, was recently named one of the "50 Best Cookbooks of All Time" by the Observer Food Monthly; his most recent one, "The Country Cooking of Ireland", was honored as Best International Cookbook by the James Beard Foundation in 2010 and beat out all other entries in all categories as foundation's Cookbook of the Year, and won the 2011 Best International Cookbook prize from the International Association of Cooking Professionals. Andrews was a co-founder of Saveur, and its editor-in-chief from 2002 to 2006. After leaving the magazine, he became the restaurant columnist for Gourmet, serving in that capacity until its untimely demise. A native of Los Angeles with degrees in history and philosophy from UCLA, he was a restaurant reviewer and restaurant news columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and for three years edited "Traveling in Style", the Times travel magazine. Throughout the 1980s, he was wine and spirits columnist for Los Angeles Magazine, and published widely as a freelance writer, covering food, wine, travel, music, art, architecture, design, and the entertainment industry. The recipient of eight James Beard awards, Andrews is the co-author and co-editor of three Saveur cookbooks and five of his own books on food: "Everything on the Table"; "Flavors of the Riviera"; "Catalan Cuisine" (which introduced the now-trendy cooking of Spain's Catalonia region to America); "The Country Cooking of Ireland"; "Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food" (a biography of Catalan superchef Ferran Adrià, also available in Spanish, French, and Italian translations); and "The Country Cooking of Italy". Andrews is now editorial director of The Daily Meal, a food and wine mega-site (www.thedailymeal.com). Adds Andrews, "Judicis argutum labor hic formidat acumen."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not exactly what the title says it is, December 9, 2010

By 

Charles E Robinson (Charleston, SC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food (Hardcover)

I have been intensely interested in avant garde cuisine since I first discovered it around 2004. Ferran's name came up because he was an early pioneer and shared recipes, techniques, and technical information freely. I wanted to know more about Ferran's thought process and how he came up with his ideas. This book seemed to promise that.

It doesn't. In fact, I'm left scratching my head and wondering what just happened. To start with, the layout of the book is bizarre. The chapters had no relation to each other and there was no flow from one to the next. It jumps all over the place, from modern day back to Ferran's childhood, to El Bulli's backstory, to a lengthy interview with one of Ferran's most belligerent opponents. Many times it was a challenge trying to figure out what on Earth is going on.

I did eventually glean some useful information, mostly to do with what Ferran will be doing with elBulli after the restaurant closes in July 2011. And it was interesting learning the backstory to El Bulli and finding out more about how Ferran rose to his position. It is not, though, much of a biography of Ferran himself.

13 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food, October 14, 2010

By 

Gerry Dawes (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food (Hardcover)

Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food

Excerpted from my article on Ferran Adrià in the October issue of Food Arts magazine.

"Colman Andrews first began thinking about writing a book about Ferran Adrià at the historic Culinary Institute at Greystone's "Spain and the World Table," conference in November, 2006. At that conference there was a particular poignant moment that was the climax of what Andrew's calls "a hugely ambitious, highly successful . . . program," when The French Laundry's Thomas Keller introduced Ferran Adríà to tumultuous applause. Coming after the 2003 The New York Times Sunday Magazine article, Arthur Lubow article that posed the question, "Is Spain the New France?", the French-trained, Francophile Keller's introduction was something very much like the passing of the torch to Spain and to Adrià, who for nearly a decade now has been called "the world's greatest chef" and his restaurant, elbulli, "the world's greatest restaurant." That moment at the CIA-Greystone well may have been the greatest event in Spain's long culinary history.

Andrews-with the help of elBulli (the official name of the restaurant) alumni, Ferran Adrià confidant and chef-restaurateur José Andrés "kept after" Ferran for nearly a year. At one point, Andrés told Andrews, "If he thinks this is my idea or your idea, he will maybe not be so eager to say yes. He has to think it is his idea." They both persisted until Ferran told Andrews, "the next time you are Barcelona, we'll talk." Andrews quickly booked a flight to Barcelona, where he long felt at home since he spent a lot of time there two decades ago writing his seminal book on the food of Catalunya, Catalan Cuisine: Europe's Last Great Culinary Secret (Atheneum, 1988).

Andrews managed to pin Ferran down over dinner at Inopia, Ferran's brother Albert's happening tapas bar (he just sold it; see accompanying article). At the end of a meal that featured traditional Spanish tapas-white asparagus , five kinds of olives, jamón Ibérico from Salamanca, esquiexada (Catalan shredded raw salt cod salad), fried artichokes, fried boquerones (anchovies), pa amb tomaquet (Catalan grilled bred rubbed with tomato and garlic) and small grilled shrimp, washed down with a crisp Catalan white wine, Andrews asks himself about whether he had the green light to do this book, "Was this (Ferran's) capitulation?"

All those who needed a book on Ferran-I am one of them, even though I have known him for nearly fifteen years-that tells you everything you need to know, but were always afraid to ask, about the man, his restaurant, his dimension-bursting food, his partner Juli Soler and the truth and mythology that surrounds elBulli, this fine, eminently readable treatment is a blessing. Colman Andrews has done a brilliant job with this nearly 300-page book, despite what the misguided review in The New York Times a week ago claimed.

Readers will come away from Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food with an infinitely greater understanding of the "world's greatest chef," who indeed reinvented (and continues to reinvent) food in the 21st Century. The only negative in the American edition is that there are no photographs; the European edition apparently has them."

2.0 out of 5 stars Buyer, beware - no photos in this Gotham/Penguin edition, January 5, 2012

By 

Graeme Withers (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ferran: The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food (Hardcover)

When it was published first, by Phaidon, [ASIN:0714859052 Reinventing Food, Ferran Adria: The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat] it was embellished with many photos. I think they add a couple of stars to my two, and are worth any extra outlay, if, like me, you regard Ferran Adria as a master miracle worker. And the photos are not just mercantile bulk-making as in [ASIN:0714859036 Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine], but genuine additions to and reflections on the text. (Unlike the vegetable 'portraits' in the Noma - what were they thinking of? I can lay three asparagus spears on a plate, stare at them, and where will it get me?)

As for the text, it too is illuminating. Despite some other reviewers of either edition, it is biography, not hagiography, though I have been known to refer to the subject as Saint Ferran as I drool over the earlier elBulli books. Andrews is an acolyte maybe, but genuinely concerned it seems to me to get across the detail of the development of Ferran's art and expertise. Better that than a snitchy fault-finder [naming no names].