HALF the diners at a new restaurant of Spanish superchef Ferran Adria will eat for free.

The lucky 50% will win their places via an online raffle, while the rest will pay high prices to help fund the cookery centre.

“Fifty per cent of places will be free and allocated through an online raffle,” confirmed Adria. “While the other 50% will be used to raise funds for the centre”.

It comes as Spain’s superchef announced that he is to reopen elBulli again, in a new guise at the beginning of 2016.

The restaurant ‘elBulli1846’ is named after all the dishes created at the restaurant over the four-and-a-half decades it was open until 2010.

Rebuilt on the same site as the former restaurant in Cala Montjoi, in Roses, near Barcelona, the project will cost around nine million euros, and will be funded entirely by the elBulli Foundation, the private institution led by Adria.

Construction work will start in September and should be completed by 2016.

The Catalan chef said: “”When, on November 20, 2010, we closed El Bulli to reflect on the future, nobody thought it was necessary so as not to cling on to the same things. We made avant-garde happen. And avant-garde has an expiry date. We needed to create a new concept of future. And I hope elBulli1846 will last the next century”

It is understood that the centre will only be operated as a restaurant one month a year initially.

The restaurant opened in 1964 with Adria joining in 1984. He became head chef in 1987.

Subscribe to the Olive Press

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.