Obituary

He started the magic of elBulli

Juli Soler PHOTO: TWITTER.COM/FERRANADRIA

NEW YORK • Juli Soler, a restaurateur who put Ferran Adria in charge of the kitchen at elBulli in Spain and helped him transform the restaurant into one of the most innovative centres of gastronomy in the world, died on Monday at his home in Rubi, near Barcelona. He was 66.

Adria announced the death in a Twitter post on Monday. The cause, reported in the Spanish media, was degenerative nerve disease.

"The saddest news I wish that I have never had to bear: Juli Soler has passed away. Your memory will always be with us," Adria wrote.

Soler became manager of Hacienda El Bulli, as it was then known, in the early 1980s, when it was one of Spain's few Michelin-starred restaurants. He removed "Hacienda", which he hated, and hired a talented, modern-minded young French chef, Jean-Paul Vinay, who added a second star to the restaurant in just two years.

When Vinay left to start his own restaurant in 1984, Soler began looking closely at a young chef he had hired as a line cook, whose ferocious work ethic and creative streak intrigued him.

"Ferran was Frank Zappa," Soler, a passionate rock 'n' roll fan, told Colman Andrews, the author of Ferran: The Inside Story Of El Bulli And The Man Who Reinvented Food.

Within 18 months, Adria was head chef and Soler turned him loose to experiment wildly in the kitchen.

In 1990, when he and Adria became joint owners of elBulli, the two began using the restaurant as a base of operations to develop a host of ventures and experiments that sealed its reputation as the most daring and influential restaurant of its time.

"Without Juli, elBulli would not have happened," Adria told Madrid newspaper El Pais. "He invented the concept of the modern dining room, of a dynamic restaurant that was comfortable and informal."

Juli Soler Lobo was born on May 31, 1949, in Terrassa, north of Barcelona. As a boy, he worked as an apprentice waiter at a small spa hotel where his father was the headwaiter. He later helped his father run a factory canteen and worked front-of-the-house jobs at several restaurants.

A rock enthusiast, he ran a record shop for several years in the 1970s and helped a friend open a discotheque before landing an interview with Dr Hans Schilling, who owned elBulli with his wife, Marketta.

"The doctor seemed to like my plain-speaking explanation of how, as far as I was concerned, the most important thing was for people to have a good time and that they also knew how to do so," Soler wrote for the restaurant's website.

"However, my worldly wisdom and experience of fine food and wines, and even knowledge of the trade, were not up to par, even for a beginner."

He embarked on a tour of self-education that took him to the finest restaurants in France, Belgium and Germany. After elBulli closed in 2011, Soler served as honorary president of elBulli Foundation, a kind of culinary think-tank.

He stepped down a year later because of declining health. He is survived by his wife, Marta; a daughter, Rita; and a son, Pancho.

NEW YORK TIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on July 09, 2015, with the headline He started the magic of elBulli. Subscribe