Atlas of Skills / New culinary techniques & technologies

Learn New culinary techniques & technologies in Barcelona

Catalonia is where the Adrià revolution began, and Barcelona the rare city where you can still book a master himself rather than apply for a stage — by private course at Martin Lippo's Vakuum lab.

About this placeI’m interested
★ Best place to go
Strong living community

Barcelona, Spain

Learn the toolkit from the master himself, by private course or his online modules, at Martin Lippo's Vakuum lab, where the Adrià revolution began.

Season: Year-round · Enthusiast -> Professional

One lab, and you book the master himself, by private course, rather than applying for a stage — which on this craft is still the rare open door. ⚠ Two things the record cannot give you: the group size, which is not published, and neutrality — we hold a commercial interest here, disclosed on this page.

Living sceneNamed mastersVerified schoolsMeccaTakes students directly
Where we stand with them

EducatedTraveler ran a paid week with Martin Lippo in October 2026, so we are not a neutral party about him. Nobody pays to be on this map and no money reaches us from him. The way in without us is his own site, martinlippo.com, and here is the whole range so you can judge it: single online modules EUR 80-95, the full foams pack EUR 386, and a 44-hour streaming master at EUR 1,880 — more than our week cost, and sold out when we read it on 1 September 2026. His classroom courses for 2026 are sold out and no later date is shown; in person, the way in is a private course, quoted by email. Read on martinlippo.com, 4 November 2026. If a direct route suits you better, take it.

Where it is taught — hand-verified

Schools in Barcelona

Researched by hand against each school's own course pages · Arnaud Callier. No school paid to be listed.

  • Martin Lippo, in a white chef's jacket with his name embroidered on it, leaning over a steel bench and pouring from a blue-gloved hand into a small container while thick white vapour from liquid nitrogen rolls off the surface and spills toward the camera.
    ★ Best course for this craftWe work together

    Vakuum by Martin Lippo

    Private courses in person & online modules — sous-vide and low-temperature cooking, foams/sodas/siphon, spherification, textures and hydrocolloids, liquid nitrogen
    How long
    2 days, 14 hours (sous-vide course)
    Taught in
    Spanish; English or French only as a private course
    Price
    €580
    Visit Vakuum by Martin Lippo ↗I’m interested in this school →
    More about this school
    Where
    Passatge Centelles, Barcelona
    Format
    10am-2pm and 3pm-6pm; the 2026 classroom dates are sold out, no later date shown
    You leave with
    Certificate of attendance signed by Martin Lippo

    Martin Lippo's Barcelona laboratory and training school, where the master teaches the avant-garde toolkit hands-on. His group courses for 2026 are sold out and no later date is shown (read 4 November 2026); in person, the way in is a private course, quoted by email. Listed because the founder met Martin Lippo in person.

    What the course covers

    Martin Lippo, an Argentine chef in Barcelona since 2000 and known for his work with liquid nitrogen, runs Vakuum, a dedicated laboratory and training school. It teaches the full modernist toolkit hands-on — sous-vide, foams/sodas/siphon, spherification, textures and hydrocolloids, liquid nitrogen — through private in-person courses and a deep online curriculum.

    Photographs from the school

    Sent by the school

    Vakuum by Martin Lippo sent these when I wrote to ask whether this page described the school correctly. They are the school's own photographs, published with its permission and credited to it — and they do not move it up the page: where it sits was decided from its own course pages, before I wrote. Any school on this page can have the same space, on the same terms.

    Martin Lippo, in a white chef's jacket with his name embroidered on it, leaning over a steel bench and pouring from a blue-gloved hand into a small container while thick white vapour from liquid nitrogen rolls off the surface and spills toward the camera.
    Liquid nitrogen, off the bench and over the edge. This is the toolkit the craft is named for — the technique first, the dish afterwards.
    A studio portrait of Martin Lippo against a plain pale background, in a white chef's jacket embroidered “Martin Lippo” with the Vakuum badge on the sleeve, one hand raised to his chin, looking straight at the camera.
    Martin Lippo, who runs Vakuum and teaches it himself. The Atlas names a teacher wherever one can be named; on this craft almost nothing else can.
    The Vakuum kitchen seen through a glass wall with the word Vakuum lettered across it in gold, the room behind full of stainless benches, mixers and rack shelving, with people working at the far side.
    The lab behind its own glass. It is a working kitchen with a teaching room inside it, not a demonstration set.
    A man in a white chef's jacket stands beside a paper flipchart marked with a diagram, a pen in his raised hand, talking to people seated at a bench in front of him who are writing in notebooks; shelves of labelled storage boxes fill the wall behind.
    It starts on paper. The why comes before the nitrogen.
    Cooks in white jackets and black kitchen dress sit in two rows at long steel benches with notebooks and water bottles in front of them, facing a man in a white jacket standing at the head of the room beneath a sign reading Vakuum.
    Between the benches: the part that gets explained before it gets done.
    A man in a white chef's jacket stands alone in a laboratory kitchen in front of a tall combi oven, one hand open mid-sentence; two people watch from the foreground with their backs to the camera.
    Martin Lippo teaches in the lab himself. It is his own room.
    Four cooks in white jackets stand shoulder to shoulder along a steel bench, leaning over trays, small bowls and a chopping board, each working with a hand tool; a man in glasses at the left watches the work.
    Everybody works. Nobody is sitting down watching.
    Several cooks in white jackets lean in close together over a steel bench; one in glasses works a small spoon into a metal cup beside a large glass jug of white liquid, a dark-haired woman watching from beside him and another man looking down at the work.
    Four pairs of hands over one cup. This is what it looks like when something is being shown.
    Four cooks in white jackets at a steel bench: one holds a red-capped squeeze bottle over a shallow glass tray, another lifts a small glass of dark liquid to taste, and a syringe and white bowl sit on the bench between them.
    Spherification at the bench, with somebody tasting it the moment it is made.
    A hand holds a clear plastic tub of bright yellow liquid in which five large translucent spheres sit, each skinned and holding its shape.
    Five spheres in the bath, skinned on contact, thin enough to break on the tongue.

    Photographs: Vakuum by Martin Lippo, sent by Martin Lippo, 30 Jul 2026. Used with permission; all rights remain theirs.

    Facts read on the school's own pages, 8 Oct 2026.

  • Culinary Institute of Barcelona (CIB)

    Curso de Especialización en Técnicas Culinarias Avanzadas: Cocina Molecular, Fuego y Baja Temperatura — 330 hours over three months
    How long
    330 hours over 3 months
    Taught in
    Spanish, with support in English
    Price
    €11,000
    Visit Culinary Institute of Barcelona (CIB) ↗I’m interested in this school →
    More about this school
    Where
    Santander 49-51, Barcelona
    Format
    Mon-Fri, 8am-2pm or 3pm-9pm, in person
    Class size
    16 students at most

    A three-month, 330-hour in-person postgrado in advanced culinary technique, Monday to Friday, taught in Spanish with support in English. Intakes January, May and September 2027, at 11,000, 9,900 and 10,285 EUR respectively. ⚠ Honest note: it is a school programme taught by a faculty. Its own page says '+20 profesionales referentes en cada materia' and names nobody, so you cannot look up your teacher before you pay — ask who will be in the room. Checked on cib.education, 14 September 2026.

    Facts read on the school's own pages, 17 Sep 2026.

What you walk away with

The credential that counts here

A completed hands-on course at a master-led avant-garde technique lab · Certifying body: No single formal body — master-led technique labs / certificates of attendance

That is the one an outside body sets and marks, which is what separates it from a certificate a school prints itself — that proves you attended. We name which of the two a course actually gives you; ask the school the same question before you pay, and judge the answer yourself.

Write me a note about this one — how you'd love to learn it, and where.

If this box never loads, the same note reaches me at arnaudcallier@pm.me.

Same discipline, other sources

Also for New culinary techniques & technologies

San Sebastián (Donostia), Spain
Madrid, Spain
Paris, France
Puebla & Mexico City, Mexico
Melbourne (Lilydale), Australia
Why you can trust this map

How a place gets on here, and what we do when it stops being true

There is a real difference between a school that teaches you and a good-looking website, and too much of the internet is the second kind. Four instruments do the work, and every one of them is visible on the page you are already on.

  • We grade it in public, and publish what is missing. The Measure is five plain questions, not a score: is there a teacher we can name, can a stranger get in, will you be learning beside other people, is the craft alive in the place, and is there enough there to keep you going for years. An empty dot tells you which one we could not answer and why. A craft nobody has graded shows no meter at all, because an absence is not a zero.
  • We print what we checked and did NOT list. Every swept craft carries the places we looked at and turned down, each with its reason. That list is the part no marketplace prints, because a rejection is where the money is.
  • The claims are read back to their sources every night. A robot re-reads every link we publish against the school's own page each night, and every price and course name we have written a test for. page. When one stops matching three nights running, it is flagged for a human — and an entry that cannot be confirmed comes off. It is never softened.
  • Where we are not neutral, we say so above the recommendation. We run one paid week a year, with one teacher. His entry says that before it says anything good about him, and prints the way to reach him without us, at his prices.
  • Nothing here has been stood in yet. An open sheet means desk research, carefully done. No place on this map has been visited and dated by us. When one is, the check will carry a name and a date — and until then, the grade says so in the dots it leaves empty.
  • Nobody pays to be here, and nobody can pay to be left off. No commission, no listing fee, no tourist board. The order is the strength of the community, never the size of the wallet.
Before you trust any school — mine or anyone else's — ask these five things
  1. Who actually teaches it? Can you find them by name, with a track record you can check yourself?
  2. Is the craft alive in that place, or is the school the only thing there? A real scene has more than one good option.
  3. What exactly do you walk away with — a recognised qualification, or a certificate they printed themselves? Ask which.
  4. Can you speak to someone who did the course? A real person, not a testimonial on their own page.
  5. What happens on a bad day — weather, an injury, a teacher who doesn't show? A serious place has an honest answer.

If a place dodges these, that's your answer. It costs you nothing to ask, and it tells you everything.

This is the short version. The full method is here — the six questions, in order, for any craft anywhere.