Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, so when Hot Dinners read the headlines yesterday that Ferran Adria, he of El Bulli fame, was opening a tapas restaurant, we presumed that someone had happened upon our April Fool's story from last year and not got that it was a joke.
But on closer inspection of the story, it turns out that while Adria actually is opening a tapas restaurant, sadly it's in Barcelona rather than London.
41 ° which has just opened, is actually more of a cocktail bar than a tapas bar, but it will feature all manner of Adria marvels on the menu including tomato water meringue sandwich with marinated bacon and almon eggs, with smoked Iberian ham fat, with raifort and litchis pureé.
If the thought of that wasn't enough to have you rushing off to Easyjet to book yourself a ticket to Barcelona pronto, you'll be even more delighted to hear that next door to 41, Ferran and his brother Albert are about to open a contemporary tapas bar. That one will be called Tickets, will have 50 covers and will apparently herald 'a peaceful revolution of the tapa'. Crucially for anyone flying all the way from the UK, will also take reservations. It's expected to open some time this month.
Tickets will be split into three distinct areas - one focusing more on seafood with 'various oysters in Galician style,red shrimps and baby Norway lobsters from Costa Brava, conches and razor shells from Galician coast. The second area will be a bar serving the perfect cold glass of beer to go with your tapas. The third area will be a futuristic bar serving bread-based tapas which will be created in front of you. We're intrigued by the sound of some of the dishes on offer here like 'hedgehog with avocado and mint jelly, Manchego cheese ice cream, and artichokes with smoked Idiazábal cheese serum, hazelnut oil and grey mullet eggs.'
We're also slightly puzzled by this piece on the Tickets Bar official site which states that alongside great wines and first-class beer there will also be a role for that most famous of gastronomic tipples, Coca Cola. 'The spark of life, popularly known as Coca Cola, which is a famous cola soft drink, will play a part for its taste and colour,' says a press release on the website, 'and it had to have a space in the life of tapa, which we want to show with this global project.'
