El Bulli, a small restaurant nestled in the Catalonian region of Spain-- run by Chef Ferran Adria, is considered almost exclusively to be the best place in the world to experience the indulgences of food. Restaurant magazine has rated Chef Adria's establishment as the number one restaurant in the world a record five out of the past seven years. El Bulli has garnered the coveted three-Michelin star rating, one of only fifty restaurants outside of France to be awarded such an honor. Its been described as "the most imaginative generator of haute cuisine on the planet" with its scientific approach to food preparation and complex dish combination as a foray in the field of molecular gastronomy.
Interested in a visit? Get ready to pry open the check book, and exercise some patience. The average cost per plate is 250 euros, though that is the least of your worries as the wait for a table is around three years. The 48-seat restaurant has a six-month season with about 8,000 covers a year. It receives 300,000 applications for those seats (though this article says a million and this one two million), selling out the whole year's reservations on the same day that bookings open for the season.
Despite all this demand for a seat, El Bulli has operated at a loss since 2000 and announced this week that they would close permanently in 2012. Losing over half a million Euros this past year, Chef Adria and his partner had initially stated they would take a 3 year hiatus and reopen in 2015-- but now have decided to cast the vaunted restaurant by the wayside and focus more on the concept of El Bulli as a whole. "At that level of contribution,’’ he said of the losses, “I think we would rather see the money go to something larger that expands the concept and spirit of what El Bulli represents.’’
With such a reputable and celebrated brand already at their finger tips (in the same class Green Bay Packers season tickets, few other experiences have patrons placing such foresight into a visit) why wouldn't they bump up the price from 230 to 330 euros, to simultaneously manage demand and eliminate the losses? Price elasticity can't be that high-- ie if people are willing to wait three years and pay 250 euros, it is likely that they value the experience enough to pay an extra 100 euros.
Tyler Cowan says that the lower prices make going a harder-to-obtain event, open up the restaurant to more people than just the very wealthy, and maximize the publicity value of Adria's name. I would agree and say this serves to both build an maintain his worldwide rapport as the greatest chef who walks the earth opening wider doors down the road to market his talent to more than just 8,000 people a year.
Though he may have lost money the past 10 years at his restaurant, we can consider El Bulli a laboratory and Adria a mad scientist biding his time-- he has accrued something much more valuable in the world of food-- name recognition and a shelf full of prestigious awards. With the recent release of a book (among the recipes included are melon with ham, pine nut marshmallows, steamed brioche with rose-scented mozzarella, rock mussels with seaweed and fresh herbs, passion fruit trees, and other), expect our friend Chef Adria to become a much more prominent and vocal figure in the world of eating things..
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