Albert Adrià at Hotel Café Royal: 'I am not coming to cook but to create an experience.'

Cornish pasties with absinthe? Head to Oscar Wilde’s old haunt and Catalan chef Albert Adrià might just oblige, says Frankie McCoy
By Royal appointment: Albert Adrià is about to embark on an experimental 50-day residency at the Café Royal Hotel
Daniel Hambury
Frankie McCoy13 January 2016

We know London has shaken off its lacklustre gastronomic rep but it’s still gratifying to hear it from the brother of legendary chef Ferran Adrià, whose three-Michelin-starred restaurant on the Costa Brava, elBulli, was judged the World’s Best four times before it closed in 2011.

So cheers, Albert Adrià. The Catalan chef, who worked with his brother for 23 years before branching out on his own, is about to embark on a 50-day residency at the Café Royal Hotel. He insists that “nowadays London is the centre of the world” with “Café Royal located on the belly button”.

Meeting him at the one-time haunt of Oscar Wilde — now something of a refuge between the neon hell of Piccadilly Circus and softcore Soho — is challenging. Not only do my questions require translation but the terrifyingly energetic chef continually fields calls about crockery (specially made in southern Spain for the residency) and urgent cutlery questions.

And I mean urgent. As Adrià explains, for his new dish the 50 Days Tartare “the spoon you eat with is made of corn, so you eat that too”. Extra spoons are required for diners who accidentally devour their cutlery before their tartare.

Such gastronomic gimmickry made elBulli a pilgrimage site for food lovers. The Adriàs created imagination-defying dishes such as Vanishing Ravioli, Two Ways of Presenting Chicken Curry and In-situ Spherification of Cucumber Soup, each of which requires a thesaurus and hours to describe. It’s fair to say elBulli was special, born of the brothers’ passion for mind-altering menus.

With six restaurants of his own, ranging from Japanese to tapas, the residency at Café Royal is set to be Albert’s most personal yet. “It is the first time I have put my name to anything — the first ‘something by Albert Adrià’. I am not coming to cook but to create an experience.”

Nostalgia rules: the Oscar Wilde Bar at the Hotel Café Royal, which will serve Adrià’s special cocktails

The “experience” (Adrià loves this word) takes place over two floors. Guests start in the opulent, gold-leafed Oscar Wilde Bar for cocktails before slipping upstairs to the Domino Restaurant to eat. The precise menu is a surprise — but Adrià’s enthusiasm means he can’t help but let slip titbits about a dish featuring jellied eel, lobster and violet, and a “tea” service with consommé poured from a teapot.

As a pastry chef, has he any time for great British classics such as Cornish pasties? Adrià leaps up, wildly animated. “Yes, yes! Cornish pasties! My own version, in Oscar Wilde!” They’ll be served alongside — gulp — absinthe. Wilde would approve.

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Adrià and mixologist Marc Alvarez developed a dialogue between cocktails and snacks at Barcelona bar 41 Degrees: “It has to make sense between what you’re drinking and what you’re eating.” Adrià hopes to continue the conversation at Oscar Wilde. And anyone can join in. Those unable to nab a table for the full “experience” can still try Cocktails by Albert Adrià, chowing Michelin-starred bar snacks and sipping either absinthe or something untranslatable involving vermouth, which can only be excellent.

Adrià acknowledges that many will come expecting elBulli. “elBulli is history,” he says “but my intention is that the experience is like elBulli 2016.” It might be a “completely different story” from the original — but then why would he want to repeat the past? He insists upon respecting his British surroundings, and the menu reflects this. Name-checking London’s Spanish restaurants Pizarro and Barrafina, Adrià enthuses that “now is the time here for beautiful Spanish restaurants”. But, he insists, “that is not what I am doing”. Quite what Adrià is doing at Café Royal, even he’s not sure — but with his manic zeal it’s guaranteed to be a pretty unmissable experience.

See you in the Oscar Wilde. I’ll be the one clutching the absinthe.

50daysbyalbertadria.com; Cocktails by Albert Adrià is in the Hotel Café Royal's Oscar Wilde Bar from February 12 to April 9 (020 7406 3344, cocktailsbyalbertadria@hotelcaferoyal.com)

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