Dinner for four with Ferran Adria cost US$36,750

The dizzy tab contributed to a $913,605 sale at Sotheby's last week that was based on the revolutionary Catalan cook's stellar wine collection, which he sold along with kitchen gear, two years after closing his Michelin three-star El Bulli restaurant near Barcelona.

A first half of the auction was held at Sotheby's in Hong Kong at the start of April, raising about US$1.8m, including just over $28,000 for a similar dinner-for-four with Adria at his brother Albert Adria's restaurant Tickets. Adria is using the proceeds to set up his new foundation, housed in the former El Bulli restaurant.

Sotheby's did not name the winner of the dinner auction, which had been estimated to be worth just $5,000, but said it was a private gourmet from Asia.

The same went for the purchaser of four bottles of 2004 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, a Burgundy which sold for US$52,062, almost double the high pre-sale estimate of $27,500.

Of the top 10 sales, seven were won by Asian bidders, two by private Latin American collectors and one by a US trade buyer. Sotheby's said 93% of lots on auction went under the hammer, with the total auction bringing in considerably more than the US$768,250 pre-sale estimate.

The total from the two sales on either side of the world was US$2.7m, compared with a total pre-sale estimate of US$1.95m.

Adria, who joined the kitchen staff of El Bulli in 1984 has, since the late 1990s, rocked the world of gastronomy by using science to deconstruct and rebuild food in what he has termed "molecular cuisine."

His foundation, set to open in 2015 on the site of the former restaurant in Cala Montjoi, north of Barcelona, will host a large experimental centre.

"We want people to understand what avant-garde cuisine is," he explained.

Adria describes his foundation as "a little Cirque de Soleil, a little Dali museum and a little medialab."

The auction featured thousands of bottles of wine collected over the years by Adria, whose restaurant was ranked the world's best a record five times by Britain's Restaurant Magazine.

Also on offer last week were a kitchen jacket used and signed by the chef, menus, wine lists, dishes and a knife collection.

"With these sales the dream becomes a reality," Adria said after the auction.

At Sotheby's, the head of international wine sales, Serena Sutcliffe, said buyers had been able to get "a piece of the El Bulli legend."

"Ferran Adria is widely acknowledged as the world's greatest chef and we are delighted to have raised over US$2.7m to help him realise his vision of culinary creativity and investigation at the El Bulli Foundation," Sutcliffe said.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge