El Bulli closes permanently?!?

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We interrupt the constant coverage of awkward sweaters and fake snow with an important alert. Sorry to rain on your Winter Olympics parade, but there's some

serious

international food news we must deal with: El Bulli is closing

permanently

As reported by the New York Times' Diner's Journal and Eater (which cleverly called it "El Bulligedon"), the world's best restaurant, El Bulli (located in Roses, Spain), will be closing for good. Just not yet. It will have one final season, from June to December, when you can experience the food of the man who's widely considered the World's Greatest Chef, Ferran Adria, who initially said he was only going on hiatus for two years.

As a budding culinarian (pretend I didn't say that), this is big news for me. It's like being a golfer and watching Tiger Woods say he'll go on hiatus, and then never come back....Doesn't feel so good, does it?

I know there are plenty of people who argue that what El Bulli does is more science than food, and that the price (around 250 euro) is not realistic for the average eaters of the world. That the place is elitist, loopy (yeah, this might be him with a glass vase of strawberries and foam and dry ice in the background) and good riddance to the inventor of olive-appearing, self-encapsulated olive oil!

But over the past 25 years, NO ONE has had the effect on the food world that Adria has had: the ingenuous techniques, the creation of a food genre, the encyclopedia-style documentation. All this came at a a price, though, because he was apparently hemorrhaging money.

When Adria closes his restaurant in ten months, there are many chefs who now may fit the bill as World's Best Chef. and he's planning to open an academy where he'll train the next generation of superchefs. But the fact that he won't be creating menus to serve to the dining public (and be stolen by other restaurants) is a great loss to the food world.

Unless, of course, this is a publicity stunt or something? God, I hope so.

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