But the star everyone is here to see is Ferran Adrià, the "best cook on the planet", according to Joël Robuchon, and he should know, with his world-record 26 Michelin stars.

"I never said I wouldn't feed people," Adrià smiles when I ask what he will miss when he closes his door at the end of this, his last season. "After July, El Bulli won't be a restaurant, not open every day. But I will still need feedback." Adrià's plan is for a nonprofit centre for "culinary creativity" opening in 2014, with a stream of new recipes posted on the internet. "We are excited," he says through an interpreter (Adrià doesn't trust his English to be precise enough for our purposes). "Bulli has always been about change. Why does Madonna with all her money need to earn more? She could share, not her money but her creativity. The young share, and we at the top should, too.