Although Ferran Adrià left aside his role in professional cooking some time ago, he continues to participate in activities related to training, research and dissemination. Recently in one of his public appearances on the podcast Talent Hospitality. He wanted to strongly differentiate going to a restaurant to live a gastronomic experience and doing it as part of anyone's social life. And for the chef, these are situations that should be differentiated very well.
“95% of people who go out to eat at restaurants are to socialize. The food comes second.” In most cases, these places are the excuse to get together with friends or family, so the food takes a backseat, overshadowed by the company, the conversation or the atmosphere of the space.
“If I go to a restaurant with my friends, the first thing I want is good service and good food. But if you ask me the next day what I ate, many times I don't even remember.” We all seek to enjoy a dream dinner when we visit a restaurant, but the culinary quality of the place is perhaps not what weighs so heavily on the memories that remain in our heads. It happens differently when the chef goes to a gastronomic space in a professional manner. “When I go to a place as God intended, a gastronomic place, I go focused,” insists the expert.
Quality is more important than price
We know well that the quality of a restaurant has nothing to do with haute cuisine and that in a classic inn you can have a culinary experience premium just like in a space with Michelin stars behind it. Beyond that, the expert points out that everything depends on what each person is looking for at a given moment and gives McDonald's as an example: “What McDonald's does is a work of art.”
He insists on the success of this well-known franchise: “I am not capable, seeing who comes and does it, for what a hamburger costs, do it better than McDonald's.” Despite this, he emphasizes that it is key to prioritize quality whenever possible, although he understands that economic difficulties also bias our food decisions: “We must bet on quality, but understanding that we do not have to be populist. The majority of people do not make ends meet.”
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