Ferran Adrià and an exhibition on Catalan cuisine take the spotlight in Berlin

The Berlin Food Week, Germany's most emblematic and influential urban food event, celebrates its 10th anniversary by recognising Catalonia's role in global culinary innovation with a masterclass by Ferran Adrià and an exhibition on the global significance of Catalan cuisine.

Ferran Adrià's session, which festival audiences could follow in person and streamed in German, drew a wide selection of chefs from leading Berlin restaurants along with specialist media and prominent German food figures. Adrià gave a 45-minute talk entitled "The influence of Catalan haute cuisine on gastronomy".

Toni Massanés, director of the Alícia Foundation, introduced the exhibition "Catalonia, the cuisine of wonders. From medieval recipe books to World Region of Gastronomy 2025", shown in the Lichthoff hall of the Acht venue in the Mitte district. Across six spaces the exhibition guides visitors through the elements that have made Catalonia the region that has most often, and with the most restaurants, topped the 50 Best Restaurants of the World list — a distinction currently held by the Barcelona restaurant Disfrutar.

The photographic display begins with medieval references, since the international standing of Catalan cuisine today has a precedent in its medieval prestige.  Biodiversity, the landscape and Josep Pla's phrase ("Cooking is the landscape in the pot") appear in one of the exhibition spaces to sum up how the diversity of landscapes (mountains, Mediterranean sea and inland plains) creates great diversity and quality. A mosaic connected by Mediterranean traditions and flavours — oil, wine, wheat, fish, meat, fruit, pulses and so on — but with the distinctive accent of a unique body of recipes, from which representative dishes and foods have been selected such as suquet, esqueixada, escalivada and llonganissa.

Several maps complement the exhibition's explanations: one locates Catalonia's main research centres, infrastructure and cookery schools; another lists foods with European quality labels, highly valued in the German market; and a third maps the leading restaurants with Michelin stars and high placings in prestigious international lists.

In the words of Toni Massanes, "Catalonia has an exceptional cuisine, with a thousand-year culinary tradition, a diversity and richness of products and foods and a culinary knowledge that makes it excel worldwide. We have been fortunate that Ferran Adrià, who would have been a genius in whatever trade he chose, became a chef in this fertile environment, which allowed him to mark a before and after in cooking around the world".

Prodeca has published a special publication entitled "Catalonia, the Cuisine of Wonders. 1975 – 2025. Fifty years that changed world gastronomy", in collaboration with Cuina magazine, which was given to all guests along with a bottle of extra virgin olive oil courtesy of the Catalan PDO-PGI Federation, with the participation of Catalonia's five olive oil PDOs: Siurana, Les Garrigues, Terra Alta, Baix Ebre-Montsià and Empordà.

The publication explains how Catalan cooking has evolved over the past five decades, from a historic yet almost invisible cuisine to one that shook up the culinary world map and made it richer and more diverse. Over this half century Catalonia has rediscovered a cuisine of its own with a brilliant past, steeped in Mediterranean character, which has fired the imagination and talent of a generation of unselfconscious chefs — to the point of bursting the seams of both tradition and modernity. Today they are the protagonists of a paradigm shift and of the new direction of world gastronomy, richer and more diverse than ever thanks to their contributions.

To close the event, the director of the Berlin Food Week fair and festival, Alexandra Ambrinus, said that "thinking about culinary innovation, creativity and genius, the first name that came to mind for our anniversary was Ferran Adrià. To say his cooking has influenced modern gastronomy is an understatement. He redefined it, and his creations and his language remain current, transforming kitchens around the world. The work of the elBulli Foundation and the Alícia Foundation goes a step further still, researching and developing healthier, better and more sustainable food. We are extremely proud and grateful to have him in Berlin as a guest to talk about his influence on world haute cuisine".

The event forms part of the international promotional activities for the Catalonia World Region of Gastronomy 2025 distinction.

In addition, from Friday, products from various Catalan agri-food companies can be bought in the House of Food space, where a Catalonia stand will show a range of agri-food products available in the German market.

Germany, a strategic market for Catalonia

Germany is a well-established market for the Catalan agri-food sector: the €970M exported in 2023 accounts for 6.4% of the worldwide total and it is currently the third destination market for Catalan exports. The main Catalan products exported to Germany in 2023 were Fine Food or multiproduct, worth more than €305M, and Fruit and Vegetables, with more than €275M exported in 2023.

Evidence of the region's growing importance for the Catalan agri-food sector is the export trend over the past 20 years, in which sales of Catalan products have practically doubled (exports up 94% since 2003).

It currently more than 800 food and drink companies export there, 515 of them regularly (more than four consecutive years exporting without interruption). Over the past 10 years the number of regular Catalan exporters has grown by more than 30%.

Although it is a market that is characterised by a high level of competitiveness and maturity, as a result of the high degree of segmentation and food supply, factors such as health, sustainability, quality and convenience are key.

Prodeca commits to agri-food commercial positioning in Germany

As a strategic market, Prodeca has worked intensively in recent years to showcase the products and support and accompany Catalan companies interested in exporting there. In collaboration with the Catalan Government Delegation to Germany, Prodeca has organised various commercial positioning activities for Catalan agri-food products aimed at trade audiences, such as journalists, sommeliers, restaurateurs, importers, distributors and managers of the country's main supermarket chains.  

Prodeca has produced a promotional catalogue of Catalan products from Catalan companies aimed at German distributors and importers, organised several tastings of products as characteristic of Catalan cuisine as wine and Olive oil, as well as organising several point-of-sale promotions in supermarkets MitteMeer or El Colmado, among others.

Catalan companies have also had the chance to take part in the country's main agri-food fairs, European and international benchmarks in their sector, such as ANUGA, one of the world's most important multiproduct agri-food fairs, Prowein (Düsseldorf), a benchmark in the wine sector, Biofach (Nuremberg), Europe's most important organic food fair, Fruit Logistica (Berlin), the meeting point for the fruit and vegetable industry, and ISM (Cologne), the leading international fair for sweets and snacks.