In January, Ferran Adrià announced that at the end of the 2011 season he planned to close El Bulli, his mythic restaurant on Spain’s Costa Brava, with plans to reopen it two years later as a foundation, in which food service will be only a part. El Bulli has often been called “the best restaurant in the world” (whatever that means). Of course, it has been called many other things as well: an art performance space, a miracle, a shrine, sheer heaven, pure hell. I’m always a little surprised, in fact, by the diversity — and intensity — of the reactions a meal at El Bulli engenders.

Granted, the experience is genuinely unique. It’s not just a matter of unusual food, of unexpected combinations and unfamiliar forms — the famous spherifications and deconstructions and the like that have influenced chefs all over the world.

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It was as if a rock star had swung into town. Camera-toting crowds usually reserved for celebrity superstars swarmed Spanish chef Ferran Adria at the Capella resort in Sentosa Island, Singapore, where he was scheduled to speak and introduce A Day At El Bulli, a documentary about his famed restaurant, El Bulli (pronounced el booley).

Adria was undoubtedly the top draw at the 14th World Gourmet Summit (WGS) last month – an international gastronomic extravaganza to showcase the work and innovations of some of the world’s top chefs.

Hailed the “best chef in the world” – a title he humbly rejects, claiming “there is no such thing” – Adria is arguably the renaissance man of haute cuisine. But his diminutive frame and his affable personality belie a fierce creative energy that seems insatiable.

Having first rocked the culinary world in 1988 with a soda siphon which he used to create cappuccino-like foam that tasted of carrot, beetroot and even popcorn, Adria has continued to mystify the world with his revolutionary creations – Parmesan snow, golden caviar beads made of olive oil, a perfect white egg shell made from coconut milk.

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Danish cuisine reigns supreme, according to the some of the planet’s most prominent eaters.

S. Pellegrino’s annual “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list was released on Monday at a celebrity-chef-studded event in London, England, marking the ninth edition of the much buzzed-about (and hotly debated) catalogue of the international culinary landscape.

The No. 1 spot goes to Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark. The restaurant, helmed by chef René Redzepi, ranked No. 3 in 2009. The Guardian newspaper’s restaurant critic Jay Rayner — better known to U.S. food fans as a judge on “Top Chef Masters” — agrees with the judges’ decision.

Writes Rayner on The Guardian’s food blog, “Is that the right result? Allowing for the fact that I think the rankings are far less interesting than the list itself, I would say, yes. Redzepi, the 32-year-old chef at Noma, pursues a regional, seasonal agenda that is right on the cutting edge: if it isn’t available in the Nordic region, he won’t cook with it. The result is a very idiosyncratic style of food that speaks to concerns about the way a global food culture turns our eating experiences a uniform beige.”

Noma’s ascension to the top slot ends the reign of a culinary titan.

After four consecutive years ranked as the World’s Best Restaurant, Spanish restaurant El Bulli takes a seat at No. 2. However, that won’t make it any easier to snag a table. Only 8,000 reservations are accepted every year, out of a reported million requests.

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The first European Congress of Tourism and Gastronomy was launched at the Spanish Embassy in London this week by El Bulli’s chef-patron Ferran Adrià and Spain’s Secretary of State for Tourism, Joan Mesquida.

It was also revealed that Adrià has become the Spanish Tourist Board’s new ambassador and the face of Spain’s new tourism advertising campaign.

The Congress, which will be supported by the Spanish government, will take place in Madrid on 24 and 25 May, and will feature presentations and demonstrations by some of Europe’s top chefs including Heston Blumenthal, René Redzepi, Michel Bras and Alain Ducasse.

The event, Mesquida explained, would examine opportunities for the food and tourism industries as the importance of food tourism in Europe continues to grow.

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So El Bulli, as we’ve all heard by now, will close.

But was it ever really open in the first place?

For too many people it wasn’t, because they couldn’t plan as far ahead as El Bulli has long required them to and make a reservation some 6 or 9 or even 12 months ahead, fixing a far-off vacation with that sort of exactitude, letting one restaurant and one meal stand as the tent pole around which a year’s worth of travel was organized. El Bulli has a limited number of seats; a table there is yours for the night; the restaurant shuts down for extended periods of the year. And yet tens of thousands of gourmands worldwide clamor to get in, because a visit there is synonymous in many circles with real gastronomic erudition. The arithmetic is brutal.

While this justly storied restaurant signaled the rise of Spain and the advance of what was sometimes referred to as sci-fi cuisine, it also reflected, better than any restaurant in the last decade, a sort of madness that came to infect the food world, a strain of merciless competition that split food lovers into two camps: those with the economic means and single-minded focus (or professional affiliation) to gain access to experiences as exclusive and rarefied as El Bulli, and those who had to listen to the rapturous accounts, nod appreciatively and cop to envy, which they were absolutely supposed to feel.

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Ferran Adrià, the Catalan chef who for two decades has been the leading catalyst and inspiration for avant-garde cuisine, has decided to permanently close his restaurant El Bulli, considered by many to be the world’s greatest, and to replace it with an academy for advanced culinary study, Mr. Adrià said in an interview on Friday.

In January, Mr. Adrià had said that the restaurant would go on a hiatus starting in 2012 , but that it would reopen in 2014. For many years El Bulli, in the Mediterranean town of Roses, north of Barcelona, closed for half the year so Mr. Adrià and his chefs could spend the off months developing new techniques, like the foams, airs and other culinary wizardry that he has created.

He told The Wall Street Journal at that time that his research would “be focused on sustaining and growing our brand however possible. A brand with goals like ours requires a big capital investment.’’

On Friday he said he decided to close the restaurant for good because he and his partner, Juli Soler, had been losing a half million Euros a year on the restaurant and his cooking workshop in Barcelona.

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• 2010 RestaurantNews.com Franchise Guide
• How To Start A Restaurant Following A Profitable System
• Restaurant Franchising
• Quick Service Restaurants, Franchising, and Multi-Unit Chain Management
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• The Restaurant: From Concept to Operation
• The Restaurant Business Start-up Guide
• Design and Layout of Foodservice Facilities
• Design and Equipment for Restaurants and Foodservice: A Management View
• Successful Restaurant Design
• Contemporary Japanese Restaurant Design
• Restaurant Planning, Design, and Construction: A Survival Manual for Owners, Operators, and Developers
• Restaurants Clubs and Bars, Second Edition (Library of Planning & Design)
• The Restaurant Manager’s Handbook: How to Set Up, Operate, and Manage a Financially Successful Food Service Operation
• Running a Restaurant for Dummies
• Foodservice Organizations: A Managerial and Systems Approach
• How to Open a Financially Successful Pizza & Sub Restaurant
• Restaurant Financial Basics
• Opening a Restaurant or Other Food Business Starter Kit: How to Prepare a Restaurant Business Plan & Feasibility Study: With Companion CD-ROM
• The Encyclopedia of Restaurant Forms: A Complete Kit of Ready-to-Use Checklists, Worksheets and Training Aids for a Successful Food Service Operation: With Companion CD-ROM
• Start and Run Your Own Coffee Shop and Lunch Bar

El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant repeatedly crowned the world’s best, will temporarily close in 2012 and 2013, its famed avant-garde chef Ferran Adria announced on Tuesday.

“No meals will be served in El Bulli in 2012 and 2013,” he told a news conference at Madrid Fusion, the annual international culinary conference focussing on the cutting-edge in haute cuisine.

“But El Bulli is not closing down. These are not two years on sabbatical. I need time to decide how 2014 is going to be… I know that when I return it will not be the same,” said the father of so-called molecular gastronomy.

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