Bill Shinker at Gotham has bought North American rights to a definitive biograpy of Catalan super-chef Ferran Adria, to be written by Colman Andrews - whose book Catalan Cuisine (originally published in 1988 by Atheneum and currently available in paperback from Harvard Common Press), introduced the cooking of Spain's now-trendy Catalonia region to America.

Adria's El Bulli restaurant, on an isolated stretch of seacoast just below the French border, opens only six months a year and turns down literally hundreds of thousands of request for reservations annually, and Adriá is widely considered to be the most influential chef in the world today. A co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Saveur and now restaurant columnist for Gourmet, Andrews will shadow the chef over the next two years and examine his revolutionary style of cooking in historical and cultural context. The deal for the book, tentatively entitled Reinventing Food, was brokered by Michael Psaltis of the Culinary Cooperative/Regal agency.

The terms of the deal have not been announced.

I was brought up to believe that one shouldn't discuss one's finances or one's medical condition in public," says Andrews, "but I can tell you that the advance was bigger than the one I got for 'Catalan Cuisine'-which was $12,500-and that I feel pretty good.