Lifestyle / Gastronomy

Albert Adrià Begins London Residency

Starting this month is a new pop-up at Café Royale in London worth paying attention to.

Feb 13, 2016 | By null

“50 Days by Albert Adrià” marks the famed (can you say elBulli) Spanish chef’s maiden project outside of Spain. The Cafè Royale, a landmark in its own right, will be a perfect fit to Adrià’s sterling reputation.

Apart from hosting notable luminaries such as Winston Churchill, Mick Jagger and Bowie, the hotel is also well known for being the second home of Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. While Wilde simply dined and polished off bottomless glasses of absinthe in search of inspiration, Adrià is set to leave his own impression of the hotel. The locations of his pop-up are set to be in the hotel restaurant The Domino Room and in the Oscar Wilde Bar.

Guests can choose between the full cocktail and dinner experience which starts at the bar before moving up to the restaurant for dinner, or opt simply for the cocktails. Pre-dinner drinks and dinner is estimated to be a two and a half-hour affair.

Adrià is best known in the food world for serving as brother Ferran’s other half at the experimental Girona restaurant elBulli (sometimes called El Bulli in the press), which famously snagged the title of World’s Best Restaurant five times before shuttering in 2011. Time magazine has also called him one of the most influential chefs in gastronomy.

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“50 Days by Albert Adrià” is the latest collaborative project for the Spaniard, one of several chefs at the forefront of a gastronomic movement that elevates dinner into an artistic, musical and theatrical experience.

In a partnership with Cirque du Soleil, the brothers opened what was pitched as an adult theme park at the Ibiza Gran Hotel last summer.

At Heart Ibiza, the hotel’s dining and entertainment complex, dinner became a multi-sensory experience with video and light projections, live performances, virtual reality installations and international DJs.

Meanwhile, Adrià’s London pop-up runs Feb. 12 to April 9 and bookings must be reserved ahead of time.

Tickets are £150 ($217) for the full experience and require a £50 ($72) deposit. A waiting list has been opened.

Tickets for Cocktails by Albert Adrià require a £10 ($14) deposit. 


 
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