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Ferran Adrià Announces Two New Restaurants, Calls Coke ‘the Spark of Life’

Photo: Melissa Hom

If your mind was thoroughly numbed by Ferran Adrià’s 90-minute chat at the French Culinary Institute (fifteen minutes of it are online) and his two-hour presentation at Harvard (that whole thing is online), here’s something to perk you up. Ferran and his brother Albert have issued a press release announcing that they’re opening two new venues (connected by a corridor) in Barcelona’s Flotats building: a classic cocktail bar called 41* and a tapas bar called Tickets.

The press release is dense with the usual verbiage about “creativity, ideas and hopes,” but here’s what we gathered from it: When Tickets opens on January 11, it’ll have a seafood bar upfront — “a place for dreams and surprising looks,” and also a beer bar — a “perfect place where we will serve a delicious golden star as bright in color as sunbathed wheat and as cold as a spring iceberg.” We think that’s a reference to the logo of Estrella Damm beer (Adrià has gotten sponsorship happy, after all), and guess what? Coca-Cola is also involved!

The spark of life, popularly known as Cocacola, which is a famous cola soft drink, will play a part for its taste and colour and it had to have a space in the life of tapa, which we want to show with this global project.

Then there’s an area, Marx’s Cabin, that will be “a little space for swine and rogues” — which we think refers to the hosts, since “they will be the ones to receive the clients who enter the place and they will also make flattering comments, as Romeo to Juliet, to men and women who deserve it.” In addition to that, there’s a futuristically designed high bar for “chuchis,” such as “hedgehog with avocado and mint jelly” and Manchego ice cream; a grill that will serve as “a pampered place for meat, snacks and grilled sandwiches, steamed bread”; and a carnival-esque dessert area.

As for 41*, it’ll have an “industrial aesthetic which will seem a cinema set” when it opens in November, and along with classic and creative cocktails (presumably including the snow-cube margarita), it’ll serve “fried aromatized cereals” and oysters with smoked-Iberian-ham fat. Is all of this enough to win back the “world’s greatest chef” spotlight from Rene Redzepi? Probably not, but it sure sounds fun!

TICKETS la vida tapa and 41º, the new gastronomic project by Albert and Ferran Adrià together with Iglesias’ brothers [Official site via Eater]

Ferran Adrià Announces Two New Restaurants, Calls Coke ‘the Spark of