Constructing Food Theory: Ferran Adrià

The exhibition  Innovation in the Art of Food: Chef Ferran Adrià, currently on show at Boston Museum of Science, makes a statement on where creative research has value nowadays: Food. In a video projection, Ferran Adrià,  speaking right in front of your face, explains the big shift in 1993/1994 from creating new individual dishes and recipes (from start to end) to bigger methods, concepts, techniques, and styles (from those methods, new dishes are born). For example, how technical and conceptual research on foam and deconstruction, has generated families of foamy and deconstructed dishes. Isn't this process the making of theory?

Creative Pyramid, 2013, Ferran Adrià. Ink on paper. Image source: Slate. In the similar diagram presented in the exhibition, Ferran Adrià, compares the innovation of a puff pastry recipe with that of the use of mini-skirt (invented by the Greeks, and conceptualized by Mary Quant). He claims: "What is important is not to be the first but to conceptualize it."