"The first time I went to Peru I fell in love with Gastón Acurio. Thanks to him, children were dressed as chefs, and not in Messi shirts," says Ferran Adrià, who recalls that cooking is a social weapon and that no one has exemplified this better than the Peruvian chef. "I supported him, and people thought that the Peruvian government was paying me a fortune. I never charged anything; it was a matter of affection. And today here as well, because there is affection with the Velasco family. The father and the son."

On Monday evening TV3 premiered Gènesi, the six-episode series that, through a biopic of the chef Ferran Adrià, explains the gastronomic revolution that El Bulli represented. So far we have only seen two episodes, and what is most striking is the performance of actor Miquel Fernández stepping into the chef's shoes. He finds the optimal balance of the character without making it a parody or falling into a free reinterpretation that distances us from the protagonist. He imitates him so well that we don't understand him when he speaks, as has always happened with Adrià. But he also achieves a facial expression with which he does not need to open his mouth for us to recognize the genius of the kitchen. The performances of the rest of the cast are uneven, but the physical resemblance to the originals is commendable. The images in the final credits are a wonderful idea.The series is infected by Ferran Adrià's ambition. It forces the television production to live up to it. There is one aspect in which Gènesi could not fail: when it came to showing the food and the gastronomic creations. It is difficult for food to be appetizing on television, for boxes full of fish to seem like attractive treasures and for each dish to seem masterful. It requires an advertising meticulousness that the series achieves successfully. The viewer must want to taste what they see, they must feel tempted and seduced by the culinary proposals. All this also demands rigor in the documentation to be faithful to the history of El Bulli. The locations are in tune with this approach. Not only are the spaces recreated very well, but a visual elegance is achieved in the production. Beautiful places and settings with a desire to establish a poetics between the landscape, the product, and the mood. It is the materialization of the gastronomic experience that goes beyond the palate to produce sensations. Representing this through the image demonstrates the importance that the series wants to give to the act of thinking, which has a lot to do with the essence that is intended to be highlighted about Ferran Adrià. There is a moment when Juli Soler reproaches the protagonist for not talking much. And this is where, perhaps, this psychological ambition goes a bit overboard. The supreme intellectuality and the genius of the chef are boosted so much that at times the series errs on the side of being pretentious. The direction is very affected and affects the framing and the rhythm. The lyricism and the message between the lines are forced so much that you distance yourself from the story and remember that you are watching a recreation. The emotional intention of the music is so explicit and brazen that the soundtrack seems more manufactured than composed.The secondary plot of the Canabachs loses interest due to being imaginary and by simple contrast with the power of the desire for truth that attracts the viewer. The great appeal of the series is, at the same time, its main flaw: being based on real events (with a significant dose of sweetener). This has a very elementary problem: there is no plot conflict to resolve. That it is based on a true story awakens the audience's interest. If it were pure fiction, it would hardly hook us.

Miquel Fernández (Barcelona, 1980) has a long career in theater, cinema, and television. He has appeared in series such as Nit i dia, La Riera, Cites, Benvinguts a la família and Fariña and has demonstrated his talent as a singer in various musicals and the contest Tu cara me suena, which he won. Now, however, he takes on one of the biggest challenges of his career: playing Ferran Adrià inGènesi, the series about the gastronomic revolution that El Bulli represented. In addition to Fernández's performance, another of the production's assets is around seventy of El Bulli's most iconic dishes, which were cooked specifically for the filming. This Monday, the fiction, which Adrià wants to be "the best culinary series in history," premieres at the San Sebastián Festival and is released on TV3 and 3Cat. Later, Netflix will distribute it in Spain, Latin America, and the United States.

Black is Paco Méndez's favorite color: it reigns over a good part of his left arm and on the logo and walls of his restaurant. And also, of course, in his profile picture, with his initials inside a circle, which is the shape of another of his passions: vinyl records.Where does your passion for haute cuisine come from?

“For me it is very important to be here,” said Ferran Adrià. “Today we have become a family again,” stated the chef. We are at Can Jubany, at an event of homage to Santi Santamaria, organized by his son Pau, fifteen years after his death. Today everyone has come. “How nice that we are all here,” said Roser Torres, the woman who has organized the biggest gastronomic events of recent decades. She is known as Mama to many chefs. And like a good mother, today she looked happy that, finally, a hard and bloody battle for those who lived it was being – posthumously, of course – brought to an end, and that time has ended up reconciling.

Chef Ferran Adrià wants to help restaurants with a management plan because he knows that six out of ten close. He stated this on Monday at the CaixaBank Auditorium before the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Salvador Illa, the Minister of Industry, Jordi Hereu, the President of CaixaBank, Tomás Muniesa, and economic authorities and chefs, including Joan Roca, Nandu Jubany, Jordi Vilà, Albert Raurich, and his brother, Albert Adrià.

There was only one certainty in Ferran Adrià's opening presentation at the Gastronomy Forum Barcelona: the chef is writing a book on Catalan gastronomy, in which he will explain what Catalan cuisine is and what haute cuisine is. "We have many excellent cookbooks, The Teak, those of Josep Lladonosa, those of Corpus of Catalan Cuisine"And that's all we need." "That's all we need," said Ferran Adrià, "because when we want to explain to a foreigner what Catalan gastronomy is, we don't know what to say, and we don't have any books to give them either," said the chef, who held up a dossier of books to a packed auditorium. Bullipèdia, the project he has been working on since closing the restaurant in 2011"We're working on this book about Catalan gastronomy, and five or six other books, at the same time," the chef explained in an interview with theNow we eat After the presentation.

The sun was setting over the sea. We are at the Trinitat Castle in Roses, the watchtower that defended the town and which today is the bastion of memory, as we are at a tribute dedicated to Juli Soler, who died 10 years ago from a degenerative disease. Juli Soler was many things: a passionate music lover, a fun professional, everyone's best friend, and also the soul of El Bulli. Without him, none of what happened would have happened.

"I have a reputation for being politically incorrect because I say things that people don't dare say," said Ferran Adrià today in Escaldes-Engordany. The chef from Hospitalet de Llobregat received the honorary Andorra Taste Award and in his speech, he didn't mince his words when it came to sharing his vision of the world of gastronomy. Some of his reflections included that "we must distinguish between food and gastronomy: gastronomy is linked to quality, and a restaurant that has all its seafood frozen is not gastronomic."

In a Palau de la Música packed with chefs, producers, and officials, the Generalitat (Catalan government) presented this Monday the commercial that will spread the word around the world that Catalonia has the best cuisine in the world. The spot begins with producers singing the chorus of the song. Nyam, yam, bon appetit, and concludes with the chefs awarded by prestigious guides who stand together—dressed in their usual jackets—and toast with dishes from our recipe book. You can see Joan Roca, Jordi Cruz, Carme Ruscalleda, the Torres brothers, and also the three chefs from the Disfrutar restaurant: Oriol Castro, Mateu Casañas, and Eduard Xatruch.

All of this was supposed to be a conversation, but it ended up being a monologue. Geniuses have it made. They grab the ball, or the spoon, and don't let go. In this case, and as it has been done for many years, removed from the stove, What Ferran Adrià barely wanted to share was the microphone, which he practically denied to the companion in hardship who was supposed to talk with him, the theoretical physicist and expert in the history of cuisine, the Oxford doctoral student Javier Maurino-Alperovich.