I would love to eat a really great burger, but it doesn't exist in our part of the world.

I 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.

Scandinavian-Danish cuisine was something quite rustic, mostly known for pastries and smorgasbord cuisine, which in itself has become a joke.

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.

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.

Close interaction with farmers and scientists can expose the chef to new flavours that can be used to delight diners.

A gastronomical supermeal didn't necessarily have to involve the things I had brought from other top kitchens.