Q: The closing of El Bulli, did it make you think about the end of Alinea?
Achatz: Since 1999, myself, everybody I've worked with at Trio, Alinea, now here at Next, we thought of Ferran as the mountaintop. So you pause. We have been following and following — and now what? Adria: Yet we're talking about El Bulli, so it can't be gone. The people who worked at El Bulli will transmit knowledge. If we had continued as a restaurant, we'd have reached a point where it died. But not now.
That "so you pause" really got to me for some reason. This is taken from a really interesting conversation between wunderkind Grant Achatz, wunderman Ferran Adria, and the Chicago Tribune about the closing of El Bulli and the future of avant-garde food. It's a great read.
(note: emphasis mine.)