"The chefs told me I was underrated, and now they've given me an award."

TurinChef Albert Adrià spent one of his best professional nights in the Italian city of Turin last night, where the World's 50th Best Restaurants awards gala was held. He won the most highly valued award in the English ranking, the award voted solely by chefs, The Chefs Choice, sponsored by Estrella Damm, while his restaurant Enigma entered at number thirty-four and suddenly became the only Catalan restaurant at the top of the English ranking. "We've gained a foothold," said Adrià, to make it clear that Enigma had moved from 59th place in 2024 to 34th in 2025. This is a climb of twenty-five places in just one year in an awards show that has never been comparable with Eurovision, and perhaps. And Albert Adrià assessed all of this by saying that The chefs had told him this year that he was the most underrated chef, "and now they themselves have given me an award."The statue recognizing him as the winner of the 2025 Chefs Choice Award was given to him by chef Joan Roca of the Can Roca Winery.

Albert Adrià opened the Enigma restaurant on June 7, 2022, and in the first year the chef doesn't tell him because he believes he didn't do the best communication in the world, and even, he adds, "we were fooling around." And he says this because he's referring to the attempt he made to offer only lunchtime menus, and not evening menus, which he believes made him lose a year. Now that's not the case; he thinks that in the last two years the concept of the restaurant has changed, as well as the hours (only evening services from Monday to Friday), and the chefs' award he collected in Turin, added to the 34th position, will be a good boost to consolidate the project.

Two hundred and forty euros for the menu

To consolidate it and perhaps also to attract more Catalan and other Spanish diners, "Currently, 14% of reservations are from Catalans, 6% from the rest of Spain, and the other half from foreigners," says Adrià, who adds that he understands that the prices of the tasting menu are high (€240). Well, he commented, "the cost of the ingredients is also very high; right now I'm paying €22 for the tomatoes for the summer dishes that I've already started preparing, and in winter the products are even more expensive."

Regarding the seasons on the Enigma menu, the chef explains that. A new dish on the summer menu will be a lettuce soup, with land lettuce and sea lettuce, which will be granulated and completed with pistachios. Regarding the English ranking and the awards given this year, Adrià said that "chefs only speak well when they are doing well." I am, but I feel good and I like that position," he noted.

Finally, the award-winning chef revealed that he has just finished the mortgage on the Enigma restaurant. "I've been working for forty years, and I'd like to retire."", he added seriously, but then went on to explain the future projects that he has been preparing for some time and that will soon become a reality: next year he will open a hamburger shop in Barcelona; the ice cream shop on the Rambla in Barcelona makes him happy because it follows the mythical phrase that says that if you want to make people happy you have to sell ice cream, and will open a new Cake & Bubbles in Dubai (the first one is open in London)). A lot of work and many years of work still ahead that could make the Enigma restaurant enter the top ten of the prestigious list of The World's 50 Best Restaurants in the near future.