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FEATURE 7 DE MAYO DE 2014

THE UN-PARAL·LEL-ED KING On a rundown avenue in Barcelona’s former theatre district, culinary maestro Albert Adrià is building a mini foodie empire.James Blick joins him at the chef’s table, and discovers there’s a whole lot more cooking along the Paral·lel

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Albert Adrià doesn’t own roller skates, but his staff says he could do with a pair. Every evening the über-chef dashes between his clutch of restaurants dotted around Avinguda del Paral·lel, a once fizzing, now neglected Barcelona thoroughfare. “I love the tranquillity I find here,” says Albert, eyes closed. We’re sitting in Tickets, his flagship Michelin-star eatery and part of his five-restaurant plan, the 5.0 Project. Pin-sharp Mediterranean light rinses the carnival décor: coloured bulbs, Gaudi-esque bar tops, a kitschy Virgin. At 44, Albert’s face is soft and boyish. And his affable manner seems at odds with his place as one of the world’s most celebrated chefs and sibling to the most celebrated. For 23 years Albert worked alongside older brother Ferran at five-times-voted the world’s best restaurant El Bulli. But toiling in Ferran’s shadow meant Albert never got much attention. Until now. For the last three years he’s been building a high-profile, high-class restaurant empire along the Avinguda del Paral·lel, which runs from the passenger ship port up to the central Plaça d’Espanya. Tickets serves playful El Bulli-style tapas in a space that’s part-dining room, part-three-ring circus. Next door is his petite bar 41ºExperience, where diners embark on 41-course, cocktail-soaked, Michelin -star gastro-journeys (this will close later this year and reopen as Enigma, in a larger venue). Over the road, casual Bodega 1900 is modelled on an old Barcelona vermouth bar. And around the corner, Pakta dishes up Japanese-Peruvian cuisine. His fifth restaurant, a raucous Mexican cantina called Niño Viejo, opens in June (its grown-up gourmet sibling, Hoja Santa, launches in September). “Each venue has its own language,” Albert says. “In Tickets it’s fun. In 41ºExperience it’s emotion. In Pakta it’s discovery. In Bodega 1900 it’s memories, while at Niño Viejo and Hoja Santa it’ll be viva la vida.” And the restaurants’ proximity (they’re within a block of each other) means Albert can skate – metaphorically for the moment – between establishments each night, keeping an eye on the cooking. But why here? With four lanes of traffic, a hodgepodge of shops and no tourists, Paral·lel seems a strange slice of Barcelona for Albert to drive his haute-cuisine stake in the ground. Well, there’s history. Albert opened Inopia tapas bar just off Paral·lel in 2006 with friend Joan Martínez. The bar made a killing, and four years later, when a larger space opened up one block away, Albert jumped on it. He amicably parted ways with Joan and used the space to launch Tickets the following year. But Albert’s decision is also grounded in nostalgia. “As a child, I remember looking out the window of my parents’ car at the cinemas, the theatres… at all the lights here.” Paral·lel was once the Broadway of Barcelona; for much of the 20th century it was a boisterous strip of bars and burlesque, of cafés and cabaret that attracted the likes of Fellini, Dali and European royalty. “This was the avenue with the most theatres per square metre in the world,” claims Elvira Vázquez, director of the recently renovated, iconic El Molino cabaret music hall, and president of the El Molino Foundation, an organisation tasked with revitalising the avenue. But policies from Franco’s 36-year dictatorship hit the area hard and by the late 1970s, Paral·lel’s party was over. Albert longs for the avenue’s vanished sense of wonder and clearly hopes his restaurants might help recapture it.

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And he is not the only one. In 2009 the Barcelona city council (in conjunction with the El Molino Foundation) decided to revamp the avenue, taming the traffic, expanding pedestrian areas and introducing dynamic street lighting. “This street is culturally important – there are fantastic theatres and, increasingly, excellent restaurants,” says María Sisternas, Barcelona’s urban planning director. “We want to make Paral·lel more inviting, so people flow into it.” The timing of the two projects is coincidental, but the council’s plans tie in nicely with Albert’s growing operation and he says the renovation, which should be finished by mid 2015, will “open up the city”; drawing locals and tourists back to an area that’s only ten minutes walk from La Rambla. Other local businesses welcome both the revamp and Albert’s presence: “Albert Adrià is invigorating the area, helping create a better future for Paral·lel. We need to take advantage of his fame,” says Manel Tort, president of the Poble-sec and Paral·lel Business Owners Association. Gemma Hereter, sales manager at the four-star Silken Concordia Hotelon Paral·lel, agrees. “Albert’s helped put this street, which was somewhat forgotten, back on the map.” Last year, the hotel opened its own restaurant Bistro Triple Sec, which, Gemma explains, is an effort to hook into the avenue’s new gastronomic zeitgeist. Such signs of rebirth are apparent up and down the avenue. Ikibana, a hip Japanese-Brazilian eatery with swish interiors from Albert’s same design crew, opened last year. Meanwhile, El Molino, broke and closed in 1997, re-opened in 2010, after a complete makeover. What was a virtual ruin is now an ultra-modern venue with an eye-popping, neon-lit façade. But for now, there’s dinner to serve. Opening time at Tickets, Pakta and 41ºExperience is nearing and Albert’s chefs appear with questions and titbits. He taste-tests an experimental roll cooked by Niño Viejo’s young Mexican chef, Paco Méndez. “He lets us experiment,” says Paco, “but he’s also demanding. Today something might be black, tomorrow it’s white.” If Albert expects a lot from his chefs, diners expect wonders from Albert. The waiting list for Tickets is two months long. Reservation-less punters often queue outside the restaurant, hoping for a miracle. But tonight, I’m in the books and I take my seat. Waiters swarm, ferrying plates of startlingly inventive food to wide-eyed diners. Finally it all makes sense – the dangling bulbs, the flashy signage, the waiters’ usher uniforms, the sketch of El Molino on the menu. “This place wouldn’t be called Tickets if it weren’t here,” smiles Albert. He’s created a perky, Michelin-star homage to Paral·lel’s theatrical heyday. Clearly he knows the good times, and the bright lights, will return to this mythic corner of Barcelona. -­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐-­‐    EAT  41°Experience 164 Avinguda del Paral-lel, tel: +34 696 592 571 es.bcn50.org Tickets 164 Avinguda del Paral-lel es.bcn50.org

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Pakta 5 Carrer de Lleida es.bcn50.org Hoja Santa & Niño Viejo 45 Avenida Mistral Bodega 1900 91 Carrer de Tamarit, tel: +34 933 252 659 ca.bodega1900.com Ikibana 148 Avinguda del Paral·leltel: +34 934 244 648 ikibana.com SEE  El Molino 99 Calle Vila i Vilà, tel: +34 93 205 51 11 elmolinobcn.com STAY  Silken Concordia Hotel 115 Avinguda del Paral-lelm tel: +34 933 249 180 hoteles-silken.com, doubles from €105