Claus Meyer

I had found a calling.

I wanted to go back to Denmark and develop a recipe for changing the Danish food culture.

Guy, this father figure of mine from back in France, he dies in late 2002.

And we have, I think, our last conversation in 2001.

And he, I mean, it's a very emotional conversation, obviously, because we both know where things are going.

So he tells me that he believes that I've been an incredible ambassador for French food in Denmark, but also that enough is enough.

And he deeply felt the time now for me had come to take a more professional and deep interest in the potential of forming a brand new cuisine, a brand new food culture.

I started wondering about what does it mean to create a new cuisine?

What does a new cuisine mean?

And then in order to explore that question, I called up my kind of mentor that I had, Jan Kau Jacobsen, who back in the days was president for the Danish Astronomic Academy.

And we started in between us just having coffee and cognac and a bit of food and just contemplating on what is a great cuisine and which were the great cuisines of the past.

Which are the values that we should then lean on?

So we asked that kind of question.

And that thought process helped us get the first words on paper.

So the Nordic chefs were totally fired up and they were each given the opportunity to read one of the ten points from the manifesto loud in front of this incredible audience.

And now they kind of said that we are going to change our foodways in accordance with this concept.

My ambition was not to build a world-class restaurant.

My ambition was to truly impact the everyday cooking culture in Denmark and why not in the Nordics.

So for me, Noma was meant to be an enzyme that would catalyze a radical change.

I basically wanted to