The courage to be bold at the core of a unique partnership

Food philosopher, iconic figure and all-round innovator Ferran Adrià has rewritten the rules of contemporary cuisine, becoming one of the most influential figures on the planet. He transformed the kitchen into an avant-garde workshop at the crossroads of science, art and creativity, with a razor-sharp focus on the overall sensory experience: not just taste, but an explosion of visual stimuli, perfumes, textures, fragrances and sounds.

His “avant-garde cuisine”, in which scientific principles and innovative techniques are incorporated into the preparation and presentation of his creations, has inspired generations of chefs and paved the way to an era of unprecedented experimentation and daring.

The creative spark: the first meeting with Giuseppe Lavazza

The deep bond between Lavazza and Ferran Adrià, founded on values and friendship, has existed for over twenty years. And in all this time, the innovation, creativity and ideas have never stopped flowing. Our company’s thirst for research and the courage of its experiments, combined with Adrià’s creative genius, have brought about a vibrant collaboration of ideas resulting in important innovation projects.

This special relationship is described in the documentary The Unexpected Coffee – A conversation with Lavazza and Adrià: a tale told in two voices against the backdrop of elBulli1846 in Roses, Spain, in which our Chairman Giuseppe Lavazza and Ferran Adrià take us on a journey to discover an extraordinary collaboration, exploring the projects, synergies and deep ties that drive them.

The meeting between their two worlds was orchestrated by the great photographer and gourmet Bob Noto, who Adrià calls “the king of Turin”. Over twenty years ago, on a memorable summer evening that will go down in history, our Chairman and the world’s most influential chef met for the first time. The setting where Noto introduced them was the legendary elBulli restaurant, with its breathtaking view of Cala Montjoi on the Costa Brava.

Giuseppe Lavazza, a true visionary, wanted to transform the perception of the company, which until then was recognised only for the excellence of its coffee. While Adrià, a serial innovator by vocation, was seeking unexplored horizons for his art. The ‘spark’ was immediate, and those first conversations laid the foundations for a revolutionary creative experiment.

This synergy was the launchpad for Coffee Design: a journey of exploration into striking pairings and recipes, but also into design techniques and objects capable of transforming coffee into an unprecedented sensory experience, pushing into areas where no company had yet dared to go.

elBullifoundation: food, knowledge, humanity

In 2011, elBullirestaurante closed its doors to make way for elBullifoundation, an innovative gastronomic research centre. Its mission is to catalogue all the world’s culinary knowledge, framing food as a multidisciplinary cultural activator. Here, philosophers, scientists, physicists, biologists and sociologists study the entire history of humanity, interconnecting it through food. It’s a method that Adrià called ‘Sapiens’: a holistic approach to fine dining.