The foodie world has been in mourning ever since the revolutionary chef Ferran Adrià closed El Bulli, which some have called the world’s best restaurant. Notoriously difficult to get into, the Michelin three-starred restaurant would be booked within an hour of the next year’s diary being opened for reservations. (El Bulli will soon morph into an academy for advanced culinary study.)
But now we have a welcome piece of news out of Barcelona. Adrià and his brother Albert (an acclaimed pastry chef) have just opened their new eatery, a contemporary tapas place called Tickets. A joint project with the Iglesias brothers (the local restaurateurs behind the seafood restaurant Rías de Galicia), Tickets is attached to 41°, their cocktail bar serving up creative snacks with classic cocktails and stellar Spanish wines.
Rest assured- Tickets isn’t any old tapas bar. Dishes are innovative (sometimes shockingly so) as one would expect from the chef celebrated for his avant-garde culinary ideas at the forefront of the molecular gastronomy movement. Small plates include hedgehog with avocado and mint jelly; baby cuttlefish with onion cooked in ink and almond pasta; grilled watermelon with tomato concasse.
To quote Ferran Adrià: “There will be risk and freedom and creativity. But there won’t be opening hours, or reservations, or routines. The food is not traditional- it’s new tapas, original and spontaneous. I’m not going to cook, but I’ll be on the other side of the bar, sampling.”