you’re not going to make. If you taste yuzu you’ll understand that you’re never going to get there using local ingredients here in Denmark! But there are other products here that you never would have thought of and that you can’t get anywhere else in the world. There are some herbs here that are more potent and in-your-face than anything you can get anywhere else.
In his last book, A Work in Progress, René rages at the winter in Denmark quite a lot; do you find winter a difficult season too?
It’s pretty depressing but it’s become – now that we’ve adjusted to it so many times – something that we almost look forward to because it’s a time when we can be a little more creative in our applications, whereas in the spring you’ve got a lot of ingredients and you don’t have to do a lot to it but in the winter that’s when you really have to work with the ingredients – all these root vegetables – and try and do something that hasn’t been done already.
In the end it has pushed us to do great things like for instance one of the dishes I’m really happy with is this almost fake ganache – I say that for a lack of a better term because that’s what most people can associate it with. It’s roasted barley that’s been fermented and we add cream to it so in the end it tastes like a very intense sophisticated ganache; it’s dark and creamy and luxurious and just a super chocolate replacement; but that would never have happened if we weren’t pushed to work with what we have; it didn’t come over night of course; a lot of things in the spring and summer come quicker but in the winter as there are less things to work with there’s more time.
How on Earth did you come up with that?
I was trying to roast some of our fermented barley. Since it is fermented, most of the starches have already been converted to sugar, so I wanted to do a sweet application using this sweet roasted barley. Someone pulled it out and it was hard roasted, dark! Whomever pulled it out, put it on my cutting board like when you mess up something. But for me it kind of reminded me of coffee beans or roasted cacao beans so I just dumped it into some cream and let it sit overnight and the next day I looked at it and it tasted amazing.
How did it feel to be back at the top of the World’s 50 best Restaurants list?
That was unbelievable; we were dumbfounded; we had no idea. We had such a great day and we were expecting to be like number 20 or something because that’s the way it goes, so we were prepared for that and we just thought, let’s go and have fun, who cares? And we were having fun - having a lot of fun! – and then finally it was getting closer and closer to number one and we were just looking at each other and we were so confused about what was happening; it was awesome!
You’ve got the move to Japan coming up next year; are you already starting to prepare for that?
Yes, we already have a Japanese-inspired dessert in mind that I want to do with sake and sake lees which should be nice. Also we received a few products a few weeks ago just to get a look. We’ll probably make it out there at some point, maybe a few weeks before the actual restaurant opens. I’m really looking forward to it; it should be just like when I first came here – you have no idea what you’re getting into!
