Tickets founder Albert Adrià to open dessert-only UK restaurant this autumn

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Albert Adrià, chef-patron of Barcelona’s Michelin-starred restaurant Tickets, will open his debut UK restaurant this November.

Cakes & Bubbles will launch at Café Hotel Royal, which is the same site that Adria chose for his ’50 Days by Albert Adrià’  pop-up in 2016.

Joining Laurent Tourondel’s French restaurant in the hotel, Laurent, the dessert-only restaurant will be the first site outside Spain for Adrià, who was named The World’s Best Pastry Chef by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Cakes & Bubbles will serve a menu of desserts; champagnes; and sparkling wines.

In keeping with Adrià’s signature style, many of the menu items will be “playful”, including the likes of a hazelnut and white chocolate cake made to look like a wheel of Spanish cheese, as is served at Tickets; Airwaffles with caramelised banana; and chocolate ninyoyaki cake balls.

More conventional options will include traditional pastries; egg flan with dark caramel; pineapple cake with palm honey; and strawberry cake with orange jus.

Champagnes and sparkling wines will be available by the glass to accompany the desserts.

“It’s a project that excites me as a pastry chef – I’ve never opened anything specifically related to the sweet world,” says the chef of the upcoming opening.

“Our approach and menu will be a cross between the classical and contemporary. I am looking forward to bringing this concept to Hotel Café Royal, London’s only modern grand hotel and the place I feel I belong whilst in the city.”

Adrià made a name for himself having masterminded the legendary and now-closed three Michelin-starred restaurant elBulli alongside his brother, Ferran. His famous tapas restaurant, Tickets, is number 25 in the list of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

He oversees a portfolio of constantly fully-booked restaurants, including one Michelin-starred Mexican table restaurant Hoja Santa, and his newly opened “culinary theme park”, Enigma.