El Bulli joint-owner Juli Soler dies, aged 66

Barcelona

JULI Soler, a restaurateur who put Ferran Adrià in charge of the kitchen at El Bulli in Spain and helped him transform the restaurant into one of the most innovative centres of gastronomy in the world, died on Monday at his home in Rubí, near Barcelona. He was 66.

Mr Adrià announced the death in a Twitter post on Monday. The cause, reported in the Spanish media, was degenerative nerve disease.

Mr Soler became manager of Hacienda El Bulli, as it was then known, in the early 1980s, when it was one of Spain's few Michelin-starred restaurants. He removed the "Hacienda", which he hated, and hired a talented, modern-minded …