Albert Adrià: “There are more and more people who are less interested in desserts”

 

To talk about Albert Adrià is to talk about one of the most avant-garde, visionary, and versatile professionals on the global gastronomic scene. His extensive experience at elBulli and at the helm of restaurants such as Tickets, along with his renowned mastery of the languages ​​of cuisine and patisserie, have allowed him to achieve a great creative maturity that he now develops with mastery at his restaurant Enigma in Barcelona.

 

We quickly noticed this creative maturity as soon as we began our new visit in so good.. magazine 35 to this unmissable temple of haute cuisine. Enigma is unique not only for its interior design but also for the technical and gustatory brilliance of each of the dishes that arrive at the table. 

 

If in 2018 he already surprised us with impeccable desserts, now Adrià goes even further, stripping his cuisine of labels and creating dishes of apparent simplicity but studied execution, to the greater glory of seasonal produce.

 

We share the interview we conducted with him during our visit, exclusively on our website.

Photos: José “Piru” Rivera

 

Discover so good.. magazine 35

 

How is Enigma doing these days?

Things are happening. Before the pandemic, we usually counselled the restaurants in elBarri. Then we had Ibiza… Now we don’t have any of that; we’re one hundred percent focused on Enigma, and that has given us enormous growth potential since we reopened a little over three years ago. I thought we’d reached our peak by now, but we haven’t. We’re moving at a very good pace, learning and also striking that balance between what the customer is looking for and what we can offer them. But with complete freedom.

 

When we first approached Enigma in 2018, you described Enigma’s cuisine as eclectic because it incorporated many culinary styles. Adjectives like subtle and elegant came to mind… How would you describe it now?

I’m not worried about using adjectives. On the one hand, it’s true that we’re currently carrying out a more technical cuisine. Forty years in the business, and that means you acquire a certain technique, especially as a pastry chef and cook, which also greatly helps you express yourself. On the other hand, I’d say we practice a kind of brutalist cuisine, an architectural term. We strip everything away to show the product as it is, without geometric shapes, without structures, leaving everything very bare, very raw. I’m not so concerned with aesthetic beauty as with the power of the product when it expresses itself on the palate, the product and the combination. But we do make many dishes that have only one ingredient, like porcini mushrooms or raw almonds, for example. I don’t dwell on our style. What I do is stop to see where we are and where we can go.

 

We’re one hundred percent focused on Enigma, and that has given us enormous growth potential

 

With the product as the protagonist, elevating it.

We spent about four months looking for the ideal duck, one that wasn’t chewy, but had that meaty texture that, as you chew, reveals itself. It’s something we try to do with every product that comes in. We try to make market-driven cuisine as much as possible. It really bothers me to lose touch with seasonality. One dish this season that reflects this is the green pistachio with edamame. We take advantage of two seasonal products that are very similar to carry out a basic idea: we open the edamame pod and fill it with pure green pistachio. There isn’t much visible technique; the techniques are based primarily on extracting the best from the product.

 

From the product to the plate, not the other way around.

Exactly. In the vast majority of dishes, yes, because we start with the product, unlike what we did at elBulli or even here before. Although there are dishes that are inherently technical. The snack section is very eclectic, but then we quickly get into the flavors, and it’s something that works here, in China, and in Argentina. Let’s not forget that over eighty percent of my diners are from abroad. This makes it complicated both when cooking and when telling stories: how do you explain a romescada? We make a sobrasada fat and infuse the lobster in that fat at 80ºC, until the lobster reaches about 56ºC. Everything is timed precisely. Then we can give it a very quick sear over hot coals. We serve it with our own particular romescada sauce, made in our own way, without boiling the romesco. With the heads, we prepare a creamy Américaine sauce, and when it’s time to serve, we heat the portion and then add the romesco, while it’s still warm. How do you explain this to someone who doesn’t know what romesco is?

 

 

But do we have to explain it?

No. In fact, at Enigma we give diners three options for the experience: find out what the dish is beforehand, find out afterward, or skip it. Many people choose to find out afterward.

 

How important are sauces in Enigma’s current menu?

It’s another one of our big bets on flavorful cuisine. We’re using Chinese cuisine a lot as inspiration. I’ve always been passionate about it, but every day I think more and more that, technically, it’s something else entirely. And it’s helped us with the sauces. What’s the best chicken sauce in the world? We all have in mind the juices left over from roast chicken. The same goes for the juices left over from steak. That’s where the essence lies. At Enigma, we make our sauces daily.

 

We practice a kind of brutalist cuisine, an architectural term. We strip everything away to show the product as it is, without geometric shapes, without structures, leaving everything very bare, very raw

 

Do you feel that, in the culinary world, we’ve lost a bit of our naturalness by always striving for a narrative?

That’s precisely why I don’t even want to talk about having a narrative. It’s true, we’ve all become philosophers, with some serious mental gymnastics. In the case of young people, they end up drawing on the same references everyone has; they’re highly knowledgeable, well-educated professionals. But when you ask them about their philosophy or influences, that’s when you realize they’re still lacking. I don’t know if they’re unaware of it or if they simply don’t recognize it.

 

Do you think it’s necessary to reclaim the authorship of ideas? 

It seems the value of novelty, of knowledge, of the avant-garde has diminished. No one cares anymore if there are restaurants that truly break new ground, new avenues, and offer something different—neither better nor worse, simply different. That used to be invaluable, because you’d think, “I can’t eat that anywhere else,” and it would take months or years to get your hands on it. Today, information travels so fast that you also feel obligated to present it yourself. Before, it was at conferences; now it’s on Instagram, because authorship is lost. I’m worried that questions like “Who did this?” or “Who was the first?” are losing their appeal. Now there are restaurants making copies of copies, especially abroad. In Spain, there’s a quality and know-how that gives a young person in their early stages tremendous potential. Then they get stuck because they face the question, “What now? How do you reinvent yourself?” In the end, you have to run a business, and that’s more complicated than ever these days. You work more, you bill more, and you earn less.

 

 

Is creativity undervalued? 

We all talk about creativity too easily. It used to be approached with a bit more care and caution: why is someone creative or not creative, whether they actually create or not… Wanting to be creative doesn’t mean you are. It’s not enough to hire three or four people and have a creative workshop. In reality, one of them has to stand out, or you have to be the conductor of the orchestra, so that the things that come out are truly new. And that requires three things: money, money, and money. With it, you buy time, you buy equipment, and you buy space. We have a creative workshop here, but I don’t want to be tied down. I don’t want to be creative.

 

What do you mean?

I’ve already dedicated many years to creativity. I don’t want to be tied down to having two or three people here and being constantly thinking, “Let’s do this or that,” because that’s not what it’s about. I want people to eat and say, “Wow, that’s great, I liked it.” It’s different. I do like it when people say it’s different because that’s something they expect from me. I say that in our R&D, the R is Rubén and the D is me. And that’s it. In the end, we make sixty or seventy dishes a year, inspired by seasonal products. Since we have a large recipe book and extensive knowledge, we’re very quick.

 

But there are new things at Enigma.

There are two dishes we make that you won’t find anywhere else in the world. These things come up from time to time, but we don’t go looking for them every day. I wish, but the thing is, it doesn’t keep me up at night. When we were at elBulli, it did keep us up at night: it was like a never-ending cycle, one thing followed another, it was total predation. When you run the 100-meter dash, you know that when you reach the finish line, it’s over; for better or worse, you’ve made it. It’s not like that in creativity. There’s like a precipice, you’re right there on the edge, and you keep falling, falling, falling, and falling, because one thing follows another. I don’t feel that anxiety of not having an end.

 

It can’t be that in a tasting menu you spend an hour and a half on the savory courses and three-quarters of an hour on the desserts. It’s something that worries me

 

Is there a dish that particularly captures the path you want Enigma to take?

No. A creative person has to shed their past. It’s essential. Leaving behind the spherical olive, the air baguette. Later, you can bring it back, which I intend to do, or you can revisit it, but it can’t stay with you forever. In the end, it’s like a burden. What we do is ask ourselves: how did this year’s porcini mushroom dish go; how did the hare dish go… There are dishes we like more and sometimes dishes that I personally didn’t think were the best, like this year with the tomato. It’s always very complicated to make dishes with tomatoes. Just look at the archives.

 

Has what diners look for in a gastronomic experience changed?

I want to believe (and I think it’s true) that the vast majority of people who visit us come to eat. It’s not a place to show off or pose. And that challenge is complicated, because in a single service you have to juggle serving someone from Australia, Texas, China, Italy, and a couple of chefs who come to eat and have a good time. It’s complicated. I like to offer them new products, and I’m concerned about finding them.

 

Given your focus on seasonality, how do you manage your sourcing?

There are dozens of people—suppliers, fishmongers, farmers, and mushroom pickers—who are increasingly attentive, and everything arrives in better condition. We segment Spain by ingredient production areas. So, we know that peas will start in one region, continue there, almost end up somewhere else, but then another variety comes from another place. Or that squid—we have the ones from here, the ones from the north, and also from Galicia. We have someone who manages all the suppliers so that, if I want squid, they research where we can find 40 of them, 12 centimeters long, every day.

Sometimes farmers visit us because they’re tired—and it’s understandable—of the tyranny imposed on them by the distributor. They come offering, for example, tomatoes. The problem is when you tell them, “I need 40 tomatoes like this every day.”

 

 

To what extent do you look for local producers? 

There’s a lot of misinformation surrounding local sourcing. With the intention of giving the customer something different, unique, sometimes mistakes are made, and a product is said to come from one place when it’s actually from another. If you’re offering white truffles from Bulgaria, say so. If it’s truffles from Australia, say so. It’s not a big deal. These days you can have almost anything you want, and that product can practically arrive quickly. It’s your decision. You want truffles in the summer? They’re available. The same goes for cherries, apricots… We decided not to do it. It’s because of that selfishness of being able to say, “This dish with this product turned out so well this year, but it’s sold out.” It’s also about feeling disappointed when a product was excellent but the season was too short, and we couldn’t create a truly great dish. It happened to us with cherries, and that makes you think about a great dish with them for the following year.

 

How do you see restaurant pastry at the moment? 

The truth is, it hasn’t evolved much. It’s happening like with alcohol: more and more people are less interested in desserts. And the reason for that is partly our fault. It can’t be that in a tasting menu you spend an hour and a half on the savory courses and three-quarters of an hour on the desserts. It’s something that worries me. As a pastry chef myself, I want to give it the importance it deserves. La Dolça at Tickets was about this: giving a voice to desserts, with eight pastry chefs. And people responded. Despite everything, pastry chefs are highly sought after. The problem is finding one who understands your style of cooking, who adapts to you and not the other way around. You have to avoid a break at the end of a tasting menu where you tell a story. Luckily, I have Alfredo and Hugo, who have been with me for over a decade and understand me perfectly.

 

Alcohol consumption is down, but cocktails are experiencing a boom. 

That’s because there was a restaurant called elBulli that laid the foundations for what we now know as creative mixology. Young bartenders are inspired by their elders, who are doing what we did at elBulli. Here, we’re doing important work, focusing on natural juices, seasonality, and balance. Just like the cuisine at Enigma.

 

Discover these creations by Albert Adrià in so good.. magazine 35