Cooking and Science: A Conversation on Creativity
with Ferran Adrià (El Bulli, Barcelona, Spain)

With over 2 million requests annually for only 8,000 reservations at El Bulli, the renowned restaurant is harder to get into than Harvard. During his visit to the MRSEC in December 2008, El Bulli founder and globally celebrated chef, Ferran Adrià, talked with students in the Innovations course, discussed ways of bringing Center research on soft matter to the development of new foods, and gave an enthusiastically received public lecture on the dynamic relationship between modern science and modern cuisine. His visit was covered by Time and the local news stations. The MRSEC plans to develop a new course with Adrià that uses cooking as a means to introduce science to the public.