ElBarri, the dream that Albert Adrià undertook with the Iglesias brothers in the form of a conglomerate of restaurants that, after elBulli, gave Barcelona Michelin stars, is dissolved due to the restrictions applied by the pandemic in the city of Barcelona. It was made up of the Restaurants Tickets, Hoja Santa, Pakta, Bodega 1900 and the only one that will remain for the moment is Enigma, with a Michelin star achieved thanks to its culinary creativity. “Enigma is mine – it is not part of the alliance with the Iglesias brothers – and I don’t know if I’ll open it this year or next year,” Albert Adrià explained to Efe this Thursday. On the future of the rest of the restaurants of the Adrià group this Friday commented to The country that you prefer not to confirm anything until you decide a solution with your partners, next week.
For one of the chefs who has promoted creativity the most in Spain, the closure of elBarri means burying “ten years of a person’s dream, which will be part of a beautiful memory” because, he explains, it was “quite a challenge” to set up five restaurants that achieved critical acclaim – with Michelin stars and Repsol suns – and the public in Barcelona.
“I am not a person who looks back”, indicates someone who still does not know which restaurants can be saved from an entry in the ElBarri group competition, generated not only by the absence of tourists in Barcelona, but also by the limitations of schedules that have restricted openings.
Albert Adrià, one of the architects of elBulli’s success, considers that this represents the “closing of another stage” after another “ten years of work at a hellish pace” in elBarri restaurants. None of the restaurants of this group opened after the total confinement decreed in March 2020. For his part, his partner Juan Carlos Iglesias pointed out that the elBarri group that they maintained with Albert Adrià “disappears” due to the entry into the competition, although that does not means that they do not meet again. The Iglesias brothers, Adrià’s partners, also run Rías de Galicia, La Cañota and Espai Kru, sites that have either remained closed due to the pandemic or have opened with time restrictions. “There are many entrepreneurs who are bankrupt but do not know it; the tool of the contest is not to close them, it is to try to continue with the activity ”, explained Juan Carlos Iglesias about the solution applied to elBarri.
The pandemic, which forced the closure of the entire restaurant for several months and which has caused many of these establishments, which can now open for the meal shift (until five in the afternoon), have not reopened, has known and the closure of several temples of Barcelona gastronomy, such as Senyor Parellada, Cal Pinxo or El Agut.
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