3Cat's 'Gènesi' Series on El Bulli Premieres at San Sebastian — SkimNews
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- 3Cat premiered two episodes of the six-part series "Gènesi" at the San Sebastian Film Festival on Sept. 21, with the show airing on the Catalan broadcaster the same day.
- Ferran Adrià and director David Pujol attended the festival alongside actors Miquel Fernández (cast as Adrià), Carlos Cuevas, and Joana Vilapuig to present the series.
- The series was conceived in 2025 to coincide with Catalonia's designation as a World Gastronomy Region, and features prominent Catalan gastronomy figures including Oriol Castro, Santi Santamaría, Fermí Puig, and Christian Escribà.
- Around 70 El Bulli signature dishes were recreated for filming by former El Bulli chefs Marc Cuspinera, Alain Devhaive, and Eduard Bosch-Lalo, with Adrià insisting the dishes had to function as "characters," not props.
- El Bulli closed in 2011 at the height of its success — logging more than two million reservation requests a year for just 8,000 available places — driven by co-owner Juli Soler's illness, Adrià feeling he had hit creative limits, and brother Albert pursuing his own projects.
- Netflix will distribute "Gènesi" across the rest of Spain, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S., with international sales handled by New Regency.
Why it matters: For global food-TV audiences, Netflix distribution of "Gènesi" puts Catalonia's newly designated World Gastronomy Region status and Adrià's own account of closing El Bulli at peak success in front of international viewers. The 70 dishes recreated by alumni chefs mark an unusually faithful approach to dramatizing a working kitchen rather than faking it.
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