Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World
Few chefs are more influential than René Redzepi of the restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, often ranked the best on the planet. At Noma, Redzepi has shaken the haute-cuisine dominated world.
A culinary visionary, Redzepi is the progenitor of the Nordic Movement, and as author Jeff Gordinier puts it, “changed the way people think about food.” In 2004, Redzepi spelled out his goals: “Express purity, simplicity and ethics…promote animal welfare in our seas, on farmland and in the wild.”
Despite Redzepi’s reputation, Gordinier, then a New York Times food writer, was hesitant to join the chef on a journey to Mexico. He had expressed skepticism about the Nordic Movement, but about five years ago reluctantly he took a meeting that soon reordered several years of his life and created this compelling book.
In it, Gordinier travels around Mexico, Australia, the frigid waters off the coast of Norway and to Copenhagen, where he witnesses Redzepi at work reinventing his restaurant. The reader learns about the chef’s successes and failures (a kitchen health issue caused Noma to briefly drop off the list of world’s greatest).
A talented journalist, Gordinier insightfully sketches René Redzepi’s rise. While a celebrity chef, Redzepi does not fit the stereotype of the kitchen dictator or hard-drinking, drug-taking partier. He dotes on his daughters, is devoted to his wife and is fiercely dedicated. Gordinier reports that watching the animated Redzepi in a Mexican marketplace “is like getting a contact high.”
Creating food from humble, ignored but remarkable ingredients defines him. To be sure he has trained with the best: He did stints at El Bulli in Spain, Jardin de Sens in France and the French Laundry in California. Undoubtedly, his dedication to local ingredients, regional dishes, foraging and fermenting have carved his statue in the international dining world.
Hungry is part personal exploration, part travelogue, part insightful narrative of how Noma 2.0—restaurant, food and fermentation labs and urban farm—comes to be. Gordinier shares his experiences behind the scenes at the restaurant’s Saturday Night Projects, where the younger chefs explore new dishes in a kind of cookoff, and details his initial dining experience at the original Noma in mouthwatering detail.
Much of this excellent book relates Gordinier’s travels and travails accompanying the great chef. With help from locals, the Redzepi posse finds mangrove snails and konkleberries in Australia, searches for the most authentic mole in Mexico (nothing’s better than “a true Oaxacan mole”) and Gordinier goes on a ride-along in Norwegian waters above the Arctic Circle to locate the perfect sea urchins. The pop-up in Tulum, Mexico, is a saga in itself. Here the energized chef is tested as never before. Ultimately, Redzepi emerges as a seeker, whose ambition to challenge the norm results in an internationally recognized movement— celebrated alike by fine diners and passionate locavores.
René Redzepi | @reneredzepinoma
Noma | @nomacph
Jeff Gordinier | @thegordinier
El Bulli
Jardin de Sens
French Laundry | @_tfl_
