Spain's avant-garde chef Ferran Adria hits back at critics

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

MADRID (AFP) — Ferran Adria, the Michelin-starred guru of Spanish avant-garde cuisine, has hit back at critics who say his "molecular gastronomy" is unhealthy, in the latest salvo in a feud between Spain's top chefs.

Adria told the newspaper El Mundo that the chemicals he uses have been part of haute cuisine for years.

"I don't understand (this controversy). It's nonsense, from a legal and health standpoint," said Adria, whose restaurant El Bulli on Spain's northern Catalan coast was in April named the world's best for the third year in a row by Britain's Restaurant magazine.

"Homemade ice-creams, those which are excellent, must have a stabilising substance to avoid crystallisation. Sugar goes through a chemical and physical transformation. Chocolate...