If the world's greatest chef cooked for a living, he'd starve

"El Bulli itself may not make money, but the brand has spawned plenty of other things that do. Those 100,000 big books that he has sold containing the Bulli secrets, going back to when Adrià first joined the restaurant in 1983 cost £100 each and are printed by El Bulli's very own publishing house. Then there's his range of supermarket books (50 new tapas you can make at home, 10-minute recipes, that sort of thing); a hotel in Andalucía; three fast-food outlets called Fast Good (two in Madrid, one in Santiago, Chile), with four more on the way; and his endorsement of a top-selling brand of olive oil. He charges many thousands for each lecture he gives. He has a collection of kitchenwear, a joint venture with Armand Basi. He has his own brand of plates and cutlery (including a spoon with small holes in it so you can eat your cereal without drinking the milk).He has deals with Lavazza coffee, Pepsi, United Biscuits and Spain's biggest hotel chain. One could go on but he is, in short, the David Beckham of the food business."

'There was one thing Maximin said to us that has always stayed with me. Someone asked him, what is creativity? And he replied, "Creativity is not copying". So simple and so obvious, I suppose, yet that was a key moment for me. Because until then I had always copied, but from that moment on everything changed. I understood something I had never understood before. I passed from being a technician to a creator.'

Next year's El Bulli menu will be in every respect different from this year's. 'If not,' says Adrià, as he shows me around, 'why bother?'

-- "No, that piece of paper is desert!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtJFZu9AIrU