Santi Santamaria's death brings end to feud with Ferran Adria

Santi Santamaria's death brings end to feud with Ferran Adria
The sudden death of Santi Santamaria on Wednesday in Singapore brought an end to a very public rift that caused shock waves through Spanish culinary circles and beyond.


The Catalan chef, who championed the use of fresh local produce in his style of traditional Mediterranean cuisine, for which he won a total of 7 Michelin stars, provoked a scandal when he openly lambasted rivals, including Ferran Adria, the godfather of molecular gastronomy, for their experimental culinary style.
The public clash came when Santamaria used a presentation at the 2007 edition of Madrid Fusion, an international chef's convention, to launch an attack on the fashionable food movement.
"Can we really be proud of a cuisine that fills plates with gelling agents and laboratory emulsifiers?" he asked referring to inventions like Parmesan snow, warm ice cream and spherified olive gel, that have made a table at Adria's El Bulli the most sought after in the world.
"Cooks should not be preoccupied with creating sculptures or painting pictures with their work," he went on."A table is not an art gallery."
He labelled such chefs as "a gang of frauds – cooking for snobs" but his criticism was dismissed as the petty jealousies of a traditionalist chef who had had his day.

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