Not long ago, “Danish cuisine” could have been considered an oxymoron. Grey burgers, boiled potatoes and bland gravies were tragedies as classic as Denmark`s nobler spawn, Hamlet. That all changed in 2003, when a young Copenhagen chef named René Redzepi opened Noma, billed as the first restaurant with a modern North Atlantic menu. This year, the 12-table establishment took first place at the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards, unseating Spanish superstar Ferran Adria’s El Bulli after a four-year reign. Mr. Redzepi’s bizarre creations – based solely on ingredients indigenous to Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, such as einkorn wheat and sea lettuce – are collected in a visually arresting new cookbook, Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine. Among the dishes: steamed egg white and birch wine with wild mushrooms; snails and moss; and sweetbreads and seaweed with bleak roe and seashore herbs. Mr. Redzepi, 32, spoke this week with The Globe’s Beppi Crosariol.
Danish cuisine has long been the butt of jokes. Is that a fair comment?
For sure. Scandinavian-Danish cuisine was something quite rustic, mostly known for pastries and smorgasbord cuisine, which in itself has become a joke. Today a smorgasbord is a term that you use for some highway cafeteria that serves you all-you-can-eat for a cheap price. We’re not known for restaurants of high calibre that cook anything Danish or Nordic.
What inspired Noma? Was there an epiphany?
First of all, travelling and visiting the world to see cuisines of high calibre and seeing what made them unique. Another important factor is the house we’re in. [The owners] wanted a restaurant that reflected the history of that building, which was a trade house for goods around the north. That’s when it started to come together.
Is it true you employ Danish food historians and professional foragers?
Yes. There are four foragers that attached to our restaurant. They now have their own businesses, where they actually supply many restaurants, whereas when we first opened, two of them, they only delivered to us. And it’s been important that I talk to people for historical references on food and how people ate. So, I have a very strong connection with two historians.
Ever been poisoned by a new ingredient while foraging?
Countless times. When it comes to mushrooms, I would never chance it. But when it comes to green leaves and plants, in our part of the world at least, you can’t get anything that you can die of. You can have allergic reactions, as in a minor choke, or vomiting, perhaps diarrhea, and, if you’re really unlucky, the three things at the same time. But more recently, if we see something that we haven’t seen before, which is rare these days, then we’ll always put it through one of our food historians or a botanist to make 100-per-cent sure.
Do you have a favourite discovery?
I can tell you one of the most surprising ingredients I’ve ever found. Perhaps five years ago on a beach I saw this herb that looked exactly like chives. I put it in my mouth and started chewing and, surprise, it tasted exactly like coriander. There I was on a beach in the north of the world having indigenous coriander greens, something that I always expected to only belong to Asia. It was one of the moments where I told myself that probably everything that I need to cook with is around me, that we just haven’t found it yet.
Given the harsh Scandinavian climate, is it hard to confine yourself to local ingredients?
