Live on TV, Chef James Martin Mangles the Name of the World’s Most Famous Restaurant

TV chef James Martin raised a few eyebrows and prompted a few laughs on Saturday morning, when he appeared — live on air — to muddle both the name and place of work of one of the most famous chefs in history.

During his show, Saturday Morning with James Martin, the presenter was top-and-tailing a watermelon when — for reasons not entirely clear from the clip subsequently circulated — he referred to “an amazing chef who used to work for a guy called Al Bulli — or had a restaurant called Al Bulli, Adrian Ferrer, which is this amazing sort of...”

It is thought he was referencing Ferran Adrià, pioneer of molecular gastronomy and head chef and owner of the seminal, now-closed restaurant El Bulli on the Spanish Costa Brava.

Martin is a seasoned TV presenter having — until 2016 — fronted the popular Saturday morning cookery show Saturday Kitchen on the BBC for 10 years. He moved to ITV in 2017 to launch his own competitor show Saturday Morning with James Martin.

Before moving into the world of TV, Martin cooked in some of the most prestigious London kitchens in the late 1980s and 1990s: At Alastair Little in Soho, The Square in Mayfair, and Marco Pierre White’s restaurant, Harvey’s, in Wandsworth.