Albert Adrià opens ice cream shop on the Rambla

Al­bert Adrià, the chef of the Enigma restau­rant, with a Miche­lin star sec­ond best chef in the world ac­cord­ing to The Best Chef Awards rank­ing, will open an ice cream shop on Ram­bla 134, next to the Tor­rons Vi­cens mu­seum store, and next to what used to be the Club Capi­tol the­atre. It will be called Gelato Col­lec­tion.

How did it occur to Al­bert Adrià to open an ice cream shop? “Dur­ing the pan­demic, my pas­try chef, Al­fredo [Machado], worked at one of the most im­por­tant ice cream brands. At that time, we were in a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion. But when we got out of the pan­demic and were back at the restau­rant, one day I asked Al­fredo to make ice cream for us to eat. He made some and it tasted amaz­ing! Im­me­di­ately, I told him that we had to set up an ice cream shop”, he ex­plains. One day, talk­ing to my friend Àngel Ve­lasco, from Tor­rons Vi­cens, with whom I have been col­lab­o­rat­ing for a long time, we touched on the sub­ject of ice­cream. ’Angel owned a shop on La Ram­bla, as well as a per­mit for mak­ing ice cream.

Al­bert Adrià has been col­lab­o­rat­ing with Tor­rons Vi­cens for ten years, and they first sur­prised and broke with every­thing that had been done until then with the in­no­v­a­tive gin and tonic nougat. Then, an­other un­usual nougat would come, the Lay’s Gourmet fries. And so, with dozens of tastes. “This year, I made one with cream and wal­nuts, which was my mother’s favourite, and an­other with tan­ger­ine and yuzu, a Japan­ese cit­rus fruit that looks like a lemon and is also grown here,” he ex­plains.

He will also make in­no­v­a­tive flavours in his ice cream shop – which is due to open in the mid­dle of June – and wants to turn ice cream into a plea­sure that can be eaten all year round, as has al­ready hap­pened with nougat (tor­rons). “We want to make a sort of a bank of ice­cream recipes, and we will start with the most tra­di­tional ones. In fact, we are al­ready work­ing on many”, ex­plains Adrià, who says that they will group the tastes into four fam­i­lies. The first fam­ily will be the clas­sics, such as vanilla ice­cream (“we’re work­ing on a white and yel­low base, with egg yolk”), choco­late, pis­ta­chio (“we’re try­ing an un­roasted pis­ta­chio ice­cream, which is very fresh, and an­other toasted”) and straw­berry. Then there are the sea­sonal ice­creams and sor­bets, with fruits and herbs of the sea­son (“a fig sor­bet and a fig leaf ice­cream”). A third cat­e­gory will be sig­na­ture ice­creams (with rose, ly­chee and rasp­berry). A final cat­e­gory will be for adults, which will be with al­co­hol, in the style of their cock­tails. In the ice cream shop, there will be twenty ice­creams, which will vary.

“We want to in­ves­ti­gate. I have al­ways tried to go a lit­tle fur­ther, but at the same time, we will em­pha­sise our phi­los­o­phy, the work done for al­most 40 years.”

fea­ture GAS­TRON­OMY