First he announced a Mexican restaurant and then a Nikkei one. The Spanish chef Ferrán Adriá has returned to building, together with his brother Albert, in order to give shape to a project founded in the culinary customs of the Japanese and Peruvians. The restaurant will open in Barcelona.

You are preparing a Nikkei restaurant…
Well, this project came from Albert. It’s going to be like returning to cooking.  The Nikkei project, in a certain way, is going to be my return to thinking about how to make and perfect the dishes, with the food that I most like, which is Japanese, and the other type of cooking that I have discovered, which is that of Peru.

And why?
The best part of Nikkei cooking is that it allows you to be more free. Because if you make a restaurant with just Peruvian or Japanese food, you are set in that. On the other hand, with Nikkei, this type of cuisine is still being built and there is still a long way to go, and this is fantastic. But we are still going to be strict: Peru and Japan and no other country.

So no “refusion”…
No. In Japan, if you talk about Nikkei, they don’t know what it is, it’s incredible. In the dining room there is a Peruvian guy, Franco, and in the kitchen there is a Japanese girl. We want to incorporate - something that doesn’t exist in the Japanese or Peruvian cooking - working with vegetables.

You want to make them protagonists of this style of cooking?
Exactly. Yesterday I asked and in Japan there aren’t that many vegetables. I made a list of about 10 and we are going to do the same with 10 Peruvian vegetables. And with that list, we’ll think of Peruvian and Japanese techniques and make something light and current. In the end, this project is very cultural and very small; there’s only seating for 30.

In Barcelona, people must not know much about Peruvian food.
Not anymore, now that Tanta (Gaston Acurio’s Peruvian bistro) has opened, and the documentary “Peru sabe” will be presented on Oct. 1. And now with Nikkei… With these three things we are going to put Peru on the map. Our intention is to help and share with all of the Peruvians. We can be a strong inspiration for the Peruvians to do things much better. And to conceptualize things. Now, with Nikkei cuisine, do you have to be from Peru? That’s a big question.

And what do you think?
I think that Nikkei cooking isn’t Japanese, just like chifa isn’t Chinese. Fifty years from now, if you do things right, it will be incredible. Because there is a cultural element that’s coming out of it.

You said that this restaurant will bring you back to the kitchen.
I said that in the first year (after the closing of El Bulli) I wasn’t going to think of the kitchen like that. But then I got ahead of myself and in January I started. We will start the foundation, conceptually, in January 2013. The architectural part of the project has finished; we start work in February or March. The concept, with the most important business school in Barcelona, will be put to paper in a year and a half: everything that is the Bulli Foundation. Bullipedia, which is the school that we will present on Oct. 25 in London, is the starting point. And in order to not get stuck in the theory, which is dangerous for a cook, I have decided that in January we will begin with the workshop. What we will do is put everything out there so that anyone can play the devil’s advocate and we can test everything.

This will be a trial run for the Bulli Foundation…
Yes. This is a very new, very different project.

 

 

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COMMENTS:

Total coments: 3
Commented By: MARTAPMONGE@YAHOO.COM
On: September 28, 2012

THE PERUVIAN COUSINE, IS READY TO CONQUER EUROPE.

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Commented By: NYpoodle
On: September 29, 2012

Hmmmmmmm, really?

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Commented By: JIMMYJAMES
On: September 29, 2012

THIS GUY IS AMAZING! I WOULD WISH HIM GOOD LUCK, BUT HE IS A MASTER CHEF/ PLANNER.... AMAZING!!!!

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