Albert Adrià: "I want to open in Barcelona a new restaurant of traditional Mediterranean cuisine"

BarcelonaI interview chef Albert Adrià one afternoon before the Enigma restaurant opens its doors. In his studio, he has some blank sheets on which he has drawn eight possible new dishes. Apart from the dishes, we also talk about the series Gènesi, in which actor Carlos Cuevas has played Albert Adrià. And above all, we discuss the 50th Best Restaurants list: this Wednesday in Lima, Peru, the results of the fifty best restaurants will be revealed. Last year, Enigma was placed at number 34, which means it climbed twenty-five positions from where it was in 2024. Everything points to the climb continuing in 2026.

Which dishes do you have drawn on the sheet that you have on the table?

— The change of products every season marks me to think about new dishes. If the tomato goes away, what sense does it make for us to make dishes with tomatoes? On the other hand, now there will be sea urchins, so I will make a dish with saffron milk cap mushrooms. Sometimes it is not only the season that makes me change the dish, but the scarcity of the food, which is what is happening to the sea cucumber, of which there is little and it has stratospheric prices.

Are you going to remove the foie dish with the anchovy oil?

— Yes. It is not that I am tired of it, but rather I think that a creative person must break with their past. The avant-garde looks forward. It is also true that it is a pity that the Bulli olives cannot be eaten anywhere. Since I feel bad about it, that is why I have thought that one day I will bring them back. I will do it in a different way, but I will bring them back. So you cannot always eliminate everything. I did it because the olives were very representative of Tickets.

Let's talk about Tickets. You had the project to open it again.

— Right now it looks very bad. We have been in conversations with many people for years, but nothing comes of it. They offer us many proposals. I have the registered trademark. But nothing comes of it. It doesn't keep me awake at night either, because I am very focused on Enigma, which is the most important thing. I am full every day; we have had two very good months, but we will see when February and March arrive.

Why are February and March difficult months?

— Historically they always have been. The Mobile World Congress is no longer what it used to be. We used to have many reservations, groups. Today it no longer represents economically what it was before. The congress participants have grown tired of Groundhog Day, that is to say, repeating the same thing over and over. Previously we had two events; this year we did not have any. And I think that has happened in general in other restaurants as well.

I am asking you about another project: the burger joint at Tibidabo.

— We have not signed yet. We have a letter of intent, but it is on hold because some permits are missing. The project is at a standstill. We will do it with a lot of love, but it is not one of my major projects.

Will it be possible to open next year?

— No way. I always think that in the end all the projects I have will get unstuck at once, and then it will be a collapse.

What other project do you have apart from the possible opening of the new Tickets and the burger place at Tibidabo?

— I want to open a new traditional Mediterranean cuisine restaurant in Barcelona. We are looking at a venue, but we haven't signed anything yet. It will be a restaurant separate from Enigma, and I won't focus only on Catalan cuisine, because for the product, the production costs are very expensive. Then there is the handling of this product, for which you then need a lot of staff. And, to continue, you need a chef who knows how to make stews. All of this makes it difficult. Look at how much the average check at a traditional Catalan cuisine restaurant costs: it goes up to 120-130 euros. And I have the perception that restaurants that operate in the ticket segment between 90 and 150 euros have little profit margin. So, if we go ahead with it, we will try to make Mediterranean cuisine.

I am asking you about the Enigma. You have changed the service schedule for Fridays.

— Yes, we are open from Monday to Thursday at night; on Fridays only at noon. Closed on weekends. What we have noticed about Friday lunchtimes is that people are in no rush to leave. We have noticed this in the month that we have been opening on Friday lunchtimes. So we have thought about opening a space next to the restaurant that is like a bar-cocktail lounge. It will be a way for the restaurant dining room to clear out, so the staff can finish their shift, and the bar-cocktail lounge next door will remain open, so that people can stay there until seven in the evening, because they will have come in for lunch at two in the afternoon. The waiters have to fulfill their eight working hours.

It reminded me of the 41º cocktail bar, located next to Tickets.

— The Enigma one will be a space where we will invite people to finish having a drink in a different place from the dining room. I must tell you that the soul of the Enigma restaurant came from the 41º. Because from a cocktail bar it went on to become a restaurant where we made forty-one preparations. It became too small for us, and that was when I took on a monster like this one where we find ourselves, the Enigma.

Changing the subject. Are you going to the 50th Best Restaurants gala, which is being held in Lima.

— Yes, I am leaving on Sunday [November 1st] until next Friday. Lima is very far. The other day we were reviewing with the team the place we finished in last year, because we didn't know. We finished in 34th place, but for me the most beautiful thing about last year was the prize that the jury gave me, made by the chefs themselves. It was a very nice prize.

What do you have left to do?

— I am very clear that I do not want to die cooking. I am fifty-seven years old. At sixty I want to slow down; I will take my foot off the accelerator because I will not want to continue working fourteen hours a day. I will not retire, but I will ease up.

Will your child join you?

— No, Àlex has already spent a few days at Enigma with me as a trainee. He is now studying gastronomy and management in Madrid. The surname he carries weighs heavily; it is like a slab. Let him do what he wants, he has to find it for himself. I see myself with him in a beach bar working at the beach.

One day you gave me a definition of being a cook.

— Yes, I keep it. Cooking is making people happy.

Have you seen the series Genesis? What did you think of it?

— I haven't seen it, no. Only the first two chapters on the day of the presentation. Do you know that I left El Bulli for a season to go and harvest mussels in France? Later I returned. We don't have mussels here at Enigma. We work with lobster; we don't work with oysters (for every five people there is one who doesn't want them) nor clams nor prawns. We have lobster from Galicia. And soon we will begin with white truffle, black truffle, with peas, that is to say, foods that have a very high price.

To finish, how much does it cost to eat at Enigma?

— Two hundred eighty. It is a price that is justified: we are sixty people working. The prices of the ingredients I have just mentioned are very high. Before, if we had four foreigners in the reservation, we would manage, but now we need foreigners to fill the restaurant. If something happens in the world and they do not come, we are dead.