I had turned down other head chef jobs. I didn't want to take over someone else's cuisine. I wanted to start from scratch.
The traditional roots of Scandinavian cuisine are not that spectacular, to say the least. When we write about the traditions that we are inspired by, it's more techniques like smoking, preserving. Many of them are not made to make food delicious; they're just around so that you can make food last through the winter. There isn't a great deal of tradition to tap into.
When people are grownups they're grown ups. They make their own decisions you know.
I know every movement of my kitchen.
You wake up, your life is discipline: there's kids, breakfast, lunch box, go to work, discipline, organization, guests. Imagine the semi-final of Super Bowl. We have that every day: lunch and dinner. We play that game. Then you come home and you really just want to drink a beer. But then you discipline yourself and you have to do this thing, this journal. It was painful but I'm so happy I did it. I have newfound respect for people that write.
The first book was out and for the first time we were on a book tour. Being the son of an immigrant, I'd never dreamt of being on book tours. Suddenly the attention was huge.
I just love this idea of using, especially in terms of food, using that common sense. If you follow that - it's hard to talk about it without sounding like some New Age idiot, which I think is a bit unfair - but, if you do follow that natural cycle, you will inevitably eat better, cheaper, and much, much, much, much healthier.
But when spring and summer happens, it's intuition. Everything is based on intuition. There's not too much time to overthink, over-complicate. Those wild strawberries, they might be there for two days.
Summer's the same, autumn is even more extreme. Then winter is when you sort of condense all of your ideas. You process all these things and you try to look for new concepts. In that sense, your intuition is in hibernation. What you fill up is your imagination; you fill up your memories there.
I would love to eat a really great burger, but it doesn't exist in our part of the world.
I think that in our part of the world, Scandinavia, we are one of the pioneers of showing that gastronomy can be something - high gastronomy can be something very, very present and doesnt have to involve, you know, what is perceived as the normal luxury items that belong in a high gastronomy restaurant.
When you start at catering college, nobody prepares you for a book tour or public speaking.
Scandinavian-Danish cuisine was something quite rustic, mostly known for pastries and smorgasbord cuisine, which in itself has become a joke.
The restaurant industry is brutal.
