Mention elBulli and its chef Ferran Adrià, and food enthusiasts will directly listen to what you are going to say next. Hence, we could not believe our luck when learning that there is an exhibition on elBulli: Ferran Adrià and The Art of Food running at the Sommerset House in London.

The language of cooking

Ferran Adrià described the event in a video interview with Tim Hayward, a Cambridge based food writer and broadcaster: “It’s an exhibition that explores the true meaning of elBulli. Everyone talks about it but very few people really understand it. Here, it’s about understanding the cooking, not eating the food. Cooking is a language that can be used to communicate many things, some that you don’t even understand. ”

ElBulli opened in 1961 and Ferran Adrià became its head chef in 1987 at the age of 25 and eventually its co-owner in 1990. The restaurant closed its doors in 2011 but the place is still the talk of many in what the Catalan official said as “The Global Dimension of Ferran Adrià and elBulli.”

A three-star Michelin restaurant at the northeast coast of Spain, elBulli (the bulldog) was reported to receive two million requests during its peak days but could only accommodate 8000 diners for 6 months of its operation in a year.

Among elBulli’s innovative approach to cooking was the culinary foam and a new take on the bases of dishes using mushroom and truffle juices, mollusk waters and herb purees. At elBulli, a world of lighter jellies began to take shape, giving rise to jellied soups, jellied sauces and moulded preparations. Ferran Adrià also used frozen menu for savory sorbets, different than the already known sweet desserts.

Chef Ferran Adrià, one of the pioneers of avant-garde cuisine, has been publicized as one of the most original culinary innovators of our times and played a decisive role in developing a new language of cooking. More than 2500 media articles with more than 14,000 pages covered the chef and his restaurant.

Organized in partnership with Estrella Damm, the Spanish beer company, elBulli: Ferran Adrià and The Art of Food is the world’s first exhibition dedicated to a chef and his restaurant.

Displaying the evolution of elBulli, from the beginning until the end, the exhibition features an in-depth, multimedia display of each of the essential ingredients that make up the extraordinary culinary products by Ferran Adrià and his team at elBulli.

Upon entering the two-floor exhibition hall, we saw panels of magazine covers, from all over the world, many with Adrià’s faces, proof of his popularity. A video of elBulli’s last waltz, its last dinner of 49-course on 30 July 2011, welcomes visitors while ellbulli mascot, made out of white meringue looks on.

As promoted by the Somerset House, visitors will be able to see the research (handwritten notes and hand-drawn sketches); preparation (plasticine models, which were made for all the dishes served as a means for quality control of color, portion size and position on the plate, and the specially-designed utensils used); presentation (original tasting menus, cutlery laid on the tables and shots of the food, and recognitions (original restaurant reviews and other press clippings).

In detail, the exhibition is categorized into Origins, the years when it was founded until Ferran Adrià became its head chef in 1987; The Search for a Style, recreating the ambience of the restaurant through an audiovisual with props; and The Time of Major Change showcasing elBulli’s kitchen and its plasticines.

Moment 0, depicts concepts, techniques and multisensory experience; The Consolidation of Style shows the creation and cataloquing of Ferran Adrià’s technical-conceptual cooking resulting in 1846 dishes; while the elBullivirus is an illustration of dialogues with various areas of knowledge.

The Spirit of elBulli is a documentation of the chefs, staff and 2,000 stagers –some became world renowned chefs, and friends who have shared their thoughts.

elBulli Foundation describes two new centers planned: a Center-Museum containing materials from this exhibition, and a Creative Center to disseminate creativity and to share the language created by elBulli through new communication technologies. In cooperation with Telefonica Digital, Ferran Adrià is developing the Bullipedia, an interactive online sources that will contain past gastronomic discoveries, rules and recipes, latest developments, and new creations.

The Evolutionary Map shows the products, techniques, elaborations and philosophy with videoclips.

Responding to critiques about the state of the art exhibition minus the real food Ferran Adrià said “If you go to the Barcelona football museum, you don’t expect to play soccer. If you go to an aviation museum, you don’t fly in an airplane. You will learn about food, not eat it.”

The exhibition in London, that follows a similar set up in Barcelona last year, will run until 29 September 2013 with New York as its next destination.

At the end of his video interview with Tim Hayward, Ferran Adrià said: “ There is a lack of places to experience food other than in restaurants. That’s why this exhibition is important. Because it will open up a new world for many people so they can form new ideas about food outside the restaurant environment. It’s not a normal exhibition, it’s a different story.”

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Images: Gordito 1869, Omar Niode Foundation