Brett Littman: Ferran, I think many people are going to come to The Drawing Center thinking that they are going to see finely rendered drawings of the dishes you made at elBulli. But instead we titled this exhibition “Notes on Creativity” and are going to focus on the sketches, charts, lists, creative notebooks, and diagrams that underpin the practical, intellectual, and philosophical breakthroughs you have made in gastronomy. I want to ask you, what does the term “creativity” mean to you? Ferran Adrià: For me, creativity is not a job; it’s a way of understanding life. I have used cooking as a language to develop that creativity and also to have a dialogue with other disciplines like design, science, art, and architecture. To get up every morning not knowing what is going to happen during the day is what inspires me to continue creating. Why has creativity been so central to your thinking? In 1987 I decided that reproducing the same dish again and again wouldn’t be the driving force behind my career. I wanted to create new dishes. Logically speaking, creativity in cooking is something that has to be developed in a restaurant. This is what we did at elBulli. On the one hand, there was the creative process, which evolved over time. On the other hand, there was the subsequent reproduction of our creations. To make an analogy, the first part (the creative process) would be the composition of a piece of music. The second part (reproduction) would be equivalent to the interpretation of this work by an orchestra. You have said “creativity means not copying.” This idea of creativity, in a way, forced you to re-organize the whole concept of how elBulli would operate. The essence of elBulli was not to run the most commercially successful restaurant in the world but to support the development of, what in the end, turned out to be 1,846 new dishes added to the history gastronomy. Can you talk about some of the innovations you introduced at elBulli to help foster such a creative environment? When we say “creativity is not copying” we are using a metaphor but, in fact, we are talking about honesty. Every creator sometimes uses the ideas of other creators. However, it’s crucial to be honest and if these creations
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