Scandinavian-Danish cuisine was something quite rustic, mostly known for pastries and smorgasbord cuisine, which in itself has become a joke.
Rene RedzepiI would love to eat a really great burger, but it doesn't exist in our part of the world.
Rene RedzepiBut 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.
Rene RedzepiIf you see how a plant grows and you taste it in situ you have a perfect example of how it should taste on the plate.
Rene RedzepiI 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.
Rene RedzepiI started to change. It was sort of a restaurant mid-life crisis, you could say. I lost a lot of confidence, not so much as a father or as a friend, but as a boss, as a chef that's to make decisions throughout the day all the time. I just slowly started burning out. Once you lose your confidence like that, you start being angry in the kitchen. I couldn't recognize myself anymore. I started writing the journal. It was never meant to be a book, but the editor at Phaidon read parts of it. As editors do, I guess.
Rene Redzepi