Ferran Adria and prestigious friends and comrades

Ferran Adria in Tokyo for G9 summit

Chef and president of G9 leads talks over the future of gastronomy and social responsibility

 

Ferran Adria was in Tokyo yesterday as part of his role as president of the G9  - the world summit of gastronomy, a gastro event where the world's leading chefs gather to discuss the future of gastronomy and social responsibility. The G9 is a venture led by the ambassadors of the Basque Culinary Center: Ferran Adria, Yukkio Hattori, Massimo Bottura, Michel Bras, René Redzepi, Gastón Acurio, Alex Atala, Heston Blumenthal and Dan Barber.

One of the ideas of the summit is to produce a manifesto defining the role of chefs in the future. Last year the chefs (minus Blumenthal) attended the first-ever G9 summit in Peru. There, the chefs produced a document called the Lima Declaration - a type of open letter addressed to the chefs of tomorrow - a report on which you can find on the great gastronomy site Fine Dining Lovers.

In Tokyo, Adria paid tribute again to the importance of Japanese cooking, saying “it's not only the product, it’s the feeling. The perfect pairing between our pragmatism and their poetry, adding that the influence of Japanese cooking, with its touch of “poetry,” had been “the most important fact of the last 10 years of elBulli’s history.” He also admitted that the economic crisis had led to “Spanish cooking suffering a lot,” but said that although many “comrades” have had to close their businesses, there are some “very promising chefs” throughout the world.