Guess where you're not eating: "World's Best Restaurant" to close for two years

El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant widely considered the best in the world, at least by people who have never eaten drunk at Jack in the Box at three in the morning, will close for two years starting in 2012 -- and may not ever return, chef Ferran Adria announced today...

By Joe Tone

January 27, 2010

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El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant widely considered the best in the world, at least by people who have never eaten drunk at Jack in the Box at three in the morning, will close for two years starting in 2012 -- and may not ever return, chef Ferran Adria announced today. The Daily Mail and other outlets are reporting that Adria, the mad scientist behind El Bulli's 200-Euro-per-person dinner -- for which people make reservations a year in advance -- will spend the two years researching ways to make his food even more mind-fuckingly strange.

These are not going to be years of sabbatical. [They] will be devoted to thinking, planning and preparing the new format for subsequent years.

'During this time, all the know-how about elaborations, techniques and styles acquired after 30 years of creative research will be analysed, and the results of said work will be compiled in a comprehensive a thorough encyclopaedia.' El Bulli's dining room

'In 2014, we will serve food somehow. I don't know if it will be for one guest or 1,000.'

Gastronomic oddsmakers predict that if the restaurant does reopen, the food will actually eat the customers.

The announcement, made by a tearful Adria at a Madrid food fair, sent really tiny, artfully displayed shock-waves throughout the culinary community. Meanwhile, men across Europe told their wives, "And I was totally going to take you there in '12, too. What a shame."

Read more about Adria in this Esquire profile, which is one of the better pieces of food journalism you'll read. In your life. Do it.

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