The waiters' pending revolution
“It was our fault” Ferran admitted, in a rare display of self-criticism on this kind of anniversary. They were celebrating thirty years, it could have been thirty-something or twenty-something, of that culinary revolution he himself spearheaded, with an overwhelming concentration of star chefs crammed onto the Madrid Fusion stage for a large group photo. Someone mentioned the scant attention paid t
“It was our fault” Ferran admitted, in a rare display of self-criticism on this kind of anniversary. They were celebrating thirty years, it could have been thirty-something or twenty-something, of that culinary revolution he himself spearheaded, with an overwhelming concentration of star chefs crammed onto the Madrid Fusion stage for a large group photo. Someone mentioned the scant attention paid to front-of-house professionals during that great awakening of Spanish gastronomy, and it was then that Adrià offered his mea culpa.
The figure of the chef, not only in Spain, but worldwide, became so prominent from the 1990s onward that "we left no room for them." It's also true that Juli Soler, who could have been the great revolutionary of waiters, "capable of greeting customers in a Rolling Stones t-shirt with a cigarette in his mouth," disappeared from the scene far too soon. It's not that the profession hasn't had its role models in recent years, 'Pitu' Roca, Sara Fort, José Polo, Abel Valverde, or Joan Carles Ibáñez, to name just a few, but their public profile is light years behind that of their white-collar counterparts.
The glorification of creative impulse, the plate as the center of the universe, or the blinding brilliance of accolades have sometimes made us forget that what we artificially call a gastronomic experience is the result of a collaborative effort in which the waiters, the good ones, play a crucial role. “I would even say that service accounts for 70% of the value in haute cuisine, perhaps we should say fine dining? because at that level, it's assumed that we're going to cook well” his brother Albert declared the day before in a debate about the relevance of the tasting menu.
Most professionals in the sector probably agree with them, but the fact that the Adrià brothers themselves are voicing this sentiment at a forum like Madrid Fusión carries symbolic weight, suggesting a potential paradigm shift. The congress director, Benjamín Lana, took up the challenge and announced that the 2026 edition of the world's most influential gastronomic summit will seek ways to address this historical neglect of the front of house.
