Image | Daragh Ward

AP is reporting that Spanish chef Ferran Adria, arguably the most famous chef alive (other than Chef Boyardee), is closing his restaurant, El Bulli, also widely considered the best in the world, in order to free himself up for an old fashioned, mid-life professional sabbatical.

The Spanish chef who brought the world such treats as ravioli made from squid and freeze-dried foie gras is closing his acclaimed restaurant for a while to tinker with new ideas for molecular cuisine.

Ferran Adria said Tuesday his restaurant elBulli, which boasts three stars in the Michelin guide, will close to the public in 2012 and 2013 but continue to serve as a research lab, and then reopen in 2014.

“With a format like the current one it is impossible to keep creating,” Adrian, 47, told reporters at a gastronomic fair called Madrid Fusion. “In 2014, we will serve food somehow. I don’t know if it will be for one guest or 1,000.”

So now instead of the two years it takes to get a reservation it will take four. Awesome. More in the Guardian.