Chef Albert Adrià confesses to being "mentally strong" because he was able to rest for a month between December and January, which allowed him to travel to Málaga and China, where he visited restaurants and observed that "we owe a lot to France in terms of front-of-house service." In fact, he says, "Chinese restaurants either become Europeanized or they won't be great restaurants because they don't know how to bring one dish to the next." In contrast, in China, they bring all the dishes to the table at once, without order, as if we were eating tapas. However, in China, he "saw that a single dish can cost between 800 and 2,000 euros."

This year, Albert Adrià's restaurant Enigma has managed to go from one to two stars. A year ago, and two years ago as well, popular predictions were that it would climb from one star to three. Some even compared it to chefs from other countries who had experienced a similar situation. But then came the star awards ceremonies, and Michelin left Albert Adrià out. Last year, to drive the point home, friends and family were so certain he would win three stars that when the chef of Casa Marcial appeared on stage, they mistook him for Adrià (from behind, he could resemble him) and he started receiving congratulatory messages on his phone. This happened to those watching the ceremony on YouTube, because those watching it live... They saw "the idiotic face" that Albert Adrià says he had when he realized, yet again, that he had not two or three stars, but that he still had one.. To continue, last summer, in the city of Turin, The English ranking The World's 50 Best Awards awarded the chef the Chefs Choice awardThis is what only chefs vote for on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list, sponsored by Estrella Damm. This year, rumors suggested that Michelin would award Albert Adrià another accolade. Such is the pressure these lists and their awards carry; there are times of the year when everyone wins and everyone loses, but chefs, like Albert Adrià, maintain that the only real reward is filling the restaurant's dining room every single day.

Chef 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.

The ray is an ancient fish, at least we can say so because the medieval recipe book Sent Soví's Book, which celebrated its 400th anniversary last year, dedicated three recipes to it: in a panada, roasted, and baked in a casserole. Of course, back then, only the wealthy could afford and eat the fish, and it was also associated with the season of Lent, but the fact that it appeared in the book is considered a sign that the fish was known and eaten, at least by a portion of the population. Thus, the ray was well described in the Middle Ages. Today, in our country, only the restaurants Enigma, by chef Albert Adrià, and Cocina Hermanos Torres, by brothers Sergio and Javier Torres, have it on the menu, and for the general population, it is an unknown fish. The twin chefs maintain that the fish's shape surprises them, so much so that Sergio and Javier Torres took a photo holding it in their hands in the first days of spring when it arrived at the restaurant, awarded three Michelin stars. These and many other interesting facts can be found at the Global Seafood Expo, the most important fish fair, which has just begun at Fira Barcelona (Gran Vía) and will end on May 8.