Changing of the Guard

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changingoftheguard

Noma’s Rene Redzepi shares his passion for unearthing the best food in its truest form.

Rene Redzepi, the inventive chef behind the toprated  Noma restaurant in Denmark, was in Toronto recently as part of the Cookbook Store-organized book tour for his collection of recipes called Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine.

Speaking to a crowd of foodies at the Isabel Bader Theatre at the University of Toronto, as part of a Q&A with the store’s Alison Fryer, Redezpi provided an overview of his philosophical views about food and what he is trying to accomplish at Noma, recently voted the number 1 restaurant at San Pellegrino’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards, 2010.

Born in 1977, the 32-year-old Redzepi opened the 40-seat restaurant in Copenhagen in 2003. By 2006, it had received its first Michelin star, followed by a two-star rating in 2007. The young chef, who began cooking at the age of 15, found critical acclaim by promoting indigenous food from Denmark in a simplified and unstructured manner. “I started this journey of self discovery in the Faroe Islands,” recounted Redzepi, pointing to products he found there such as seal, whale and sea urchins. “I didn’t even know they existed,” he remembers. “I was used to cooking with a few ingredients but suddenly you step into nature and find out we have 59 edible berries, 150 types of horseradish and 1,000 types of mushrooms.

”His love affair with nature continues daily. He explained to the crowd how he infuses tree bark into stocks and uses items like birch sap in the restaurant’s original craft beers. “We consider ourselves to be a restaurant team who have a pact with nature,” he said. “This is where we source our ingredients, and it’s become our inspiration. In order for us to shape cuisine, we need to explore the diversity,” he told the crowd of food enthusiasts.

Redzepi is a big believer in stripping the food experience of all pretension. “I was getting very tired of the act of dining,” he told the crowd. “You enter a restaurant and it becomes theatre — the waiters act in a certain way, and the diners are expected to be formal and very correct. The food is highlighted on a table with gold and silverware. It [feels] like that’s what you [are] supposed to be impressed by. By stripping it [down] you get to the raw [essence] and you focus on the food. You fill the customer with the knowledge of the ingredients.”

Ultimately, says Redzepi, “We’re trying to shape a cuisine. There’s more meaning to that than making a profit.” Redzepi’s international book tour included stops in Sydney, San Francisco, Seattle and New York.

It’s Rene Redzepi’s time and place, and fans of the culinary pioneer will have the chance to unravel the secret to his award-winning Copenhagen restaurant, Noma, in his new tome. Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine details the chef ’s philosophy and his journey to reinvent Nordic cuisine by foraging for ingredients as unique as horse-mussels. More than 200 specially commissioned photos showcase more than 90 recipes created by Redzepi and served at the restaurant, which offers such intriguing dishes as Newly Ploughed Potato Field and The Snowman from Jukkasjärvi.

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