Top chefs in this year’s World Region of Gastronomy are looking back as they shift from avant-garde cuisine to something more homespun
T
hey revolutionised cooking worldwide with radical techniques and a highly technical cuisine of playful trompe l’oeil – but now many disciples of Catalonia’s iconoclastic chef Ferran Adrià believe it’s time to get back to their roots.
Catalonia has been named World Region of Gastronomy 2025 by the International Institute of Gastronomy, Culture, Arts and Tourism and later this month 60 Michelin-starred chefs will launch a campaign to position Catalonia as a unique and exceptional gastronomic destination.
While not rejecting the techniques of so-called molecular gastronomy introduced by Adrià at his restaurant El Bulli, with its foams, spherification and liquid nitrogen, the emphasis will be on local produce and the region’s gastronomic culture. El Bulli closed in 2011.
