00:03
Mads Refslund
I've chosen Poul Anker Bech, and the piece is called Asphalt Serenade. You can see on the left side of the picture, it's people working on construction with asphalt. And on the other side, it's a field with a sky in the back and a tower.

00:19
Mads Refslund
His way of seeing the scenery, it's like something of contrast. Almost fantasy, it's just beautiful colors and it's very emotional, almost unknown what is happening in the background. You could be anywhere in the world. And it's inspiration, in a way, of looking for something that's bigger than yourself, I think.

00:39
Mads Refslund
The same as my kitchen, you have a big contrast between a field and asphalt. You're sitting on the edge of something and something can happen.

00:48
Mads Refslund
I had a girlfriend, one of my mentors in life. We were together for nine years, she's a beautiful soul. And Poul Anker Bech was one of her favorite artists. And we went and saw his show at some point. So I think that maybe it has something to do with where I was in that time of life. I was in my twenties at that time. And maybe it reminded me a little bit of her.

01:09
Mads Refslund
I like that. And this piece is really beautiful.

01:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Mads Refslund, a Danish chef and restaurant owner. Welcome, Mads.

01:40
Mads Refslund
Thank you for having me.

01:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are in New York and I'm in Los Angeles while we speak. You have been there since 2011. What brought you to New York in the first place?

01:51
Mads Refslund
Normally I don't tell the story so much because it's kind of embarrassing. I came there completely at random. I had a restaurant in Denmark called MR on Kultorvet, Copenhagen. I closed it down in 2010. It's no secret I basically went bankrupt with this restaurant and it was not a fun period of my life. And after that, I wanted to open a new restaurant very fast.

02:16
Mads Refslund
My dear friend Claus Meyer helped me with a lot of things. We talked about doing a restaurant together in Copenhagen. We did some farming together, and I was in my head thinking, I wanted to do this vegetarian restaurant in Copenhagen.

02:29
Mads Refslund
At the same time I was doing presentations and lectures everywhere in the world and talking about Nordic cuisine. And at some point I was invited to New York to do this food festival called Omnivore Food Festival. It's a French festival. It was the first time ever in this Big Apple and it was mind blowing.

02:48
Mads Refslund
I had to go on stage and talk about my cuisine and my beliefs in food and doing some dishes and orders. And I also had to do a dinner in what was called Dovetail, Upper West Side. Everything went well. And I had two days for myself before I had to go to Washington DC and do another event.

03:08
Mads Refslund
And these two days I kind of explored the scenery of restaurants in New York. One of my friends from Copenhagen was joining me on this adventure. We went to a place called Bond Street Sushi. And we had dinner and everything was great. We had to go to an event in Brooklyn, Roberta's Pizza. We were running late.

03:27
Mads Refslund
Since I was invited and always everyone had taken care of me, I didn't know anything about this tipping system at all in New York or in the United States. Everyone had said, you know, you have to pay a tip, but sometimes it's included, they would normally tell you, or it would be written on the bill.

03:43
Mads Refslund
So I got this bill. I was not too used to seeing tax and all this. You know, from Denmark, we get a bill, what is written in the bottom is what you pay. The tip must be included, I thought. So I just paid for it and walked out of the restaurant.

03:57
Mads Refslund
It was a sushi restaurant, but the manager was French. He followed me all the way out on the street and said, "Excuse me, sir. Is everything okay?" I said, yeah, everything was brilliant. Really good food. And I started talking about, oh, this was so beautiful and all this.

04:09
Mads Refslund
And he said, oh, so why did you not tip? A little bit offended in a way. I said, oh, I'm so sorry. And I said, I'm in the industry and all this. Of course I will tip. And I said, how much percentage are you paying? He said, normally it's between 20% and 25%. So I gave him 30% on top.

04:26
Mads Refslund
And he said, where am I from? because of my accent. I sounded much worse than today. It really sounded like I had a potato in my mouth really badly. My accent was really bad at that time. But anyway, he asked me where I'm from. I said, I'm from Denmark. He said, oh, my wife is from Sweden and you also have the best restaurant in the world.

04:45
Mads Refslund
And I never normally talk about this, but the person I was with said, yeah, he's actually one of the co-founders of Noma. That got completely electric. Oh my God, you should not pay that, all these things. It was a weird situation, but he asked me, had I ever thought about being a consultant in New York or doing some work in New York. I said, not really because I was thinking about doing something in Copenhagen with Claus Meyer and all this at that point.

05:11
Mads Refslund
And he said, one of the owners of this restaurant is actually building a restaurant next door. And we are looking for someone to consult or be the chef. And I said, I don't think I can help. But anyway, they got my number. And a couple of hours after, the owner of Bond Street Sushi texted me and asked if we could meet for breakfast the day after. We met and he convinced me to spend the next two days with him and he showed me New York completely on a different level.

05:39
Mads Refslund
He took me to the Boom Boom Room and everywhere was fancy. They also own a place called Indochine. And that night I went there, David Bowie was there and he introduced me to David Bowie and I was like, Oh my God, one of my heroes.

05:51
Mads Refslund
Anyway, I went to Washington, D.C. and they convinced me to come back to New York and do a tasting for them. And they took care of everything. So I came back to New York and did a tasting for them. And completely like a movie, I was sitting in front of these owners, there were four people, five people. And they asked me if I was interested in doing a consultancy for a year.

06:16
Mads Refslund
And I said, yeah, we could figure something out. And they put a piece of blank paper in front of me and said, write your number. And at that time I thought, okay, $100,000, that would be a lot of money. So I just wrote $100,000, put it in front of the guy who was in charge, he seemed like he was in charge.

06:34
Mads Refslund
And he looked at the number and he looked at the other guys. He just did a nod, like this, and said, we have a deal. So completely mafioso style. You have a deal, $100,000. I could have been maybe $200,000. Doesn't matter. The basic line is I came to New York because I didn't tip. That's the reason.

06:53
Mads Refslund
So it's a funny story and kind of embarrassing. And of course, after the year, I was in love with a girl and she became one of my very, very good friends today. But we were together for a long time. But the city, I fell in love with the city. And then now it's 12 years later and I'm still here. So yeah, because I didn't tip.

07:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What a fantastic story. It also tells you how random meetings can completely change your future from one day to the other.

07:20
Mads Refslund
Yeah, I had a lot of these meetings in this city, you meet so many fantastic people here. It's really a city that can make your dreams come true if you are just open to it, for sure.

07:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
One thing is dreaming. Another thing is reality. What was it like initially when you came to New York? Talk about landing at John F. Kennedy Airport with your suitcases and driving to the city. What was the first phase of your transfer through the city and this new country, the US, like?

07:51
Mads Refslund
It was problematic, you know. We come from a small country where we don't know really how spoiled we are or how good a country Denmark really is. It's really a beautiful, beautiful country. I'm very, very thankful. And I'm very happy that I was born and raised in Denmark.

08:10
Mads Refslund
The United States is really tough if you don't have a lot of money. Just the health system. Health insurance — just so difficult going to a doctor or the dentist or whatever it is, everything costing money and you really fast find out that $100,000 is not a lot of money.

08:26
Mads Refslund
It is a lot of money, but if you want to have the same standard as in Denmark, it's not a lot of money. And the rent was really sky high and the food is extremely expensive. And so it was a shock for me. But there's a lot of opportunities here. It's very open. They accept you for who you are. There's no Jante Law in that way. You can definitely say if you're good, you can really be like a flower and bloom here completely.

08:49
Mads Refslund
There were so many new things. Every street corner was different. It was almost like starting in first grade. It was like kindergarten. And every year I went up a grade, and now maybe I'm in high school now. It was really mind blowing. And this is really something you see in the movies.

09:07
Mads Refslund
And also the language in the beginning was very difficult for me. I was not really good with language, so it was a big barrier. And now, you know, I'm dreaming and thinking in English and it's kind of difficult sometimes to speak Danish. There's a reason with this Gitte Stalone. There's a reason why we speak like this. You probably also know it, there is some kind of accent and we're becoming more of where we are now here.

09:36
Mads Refslund
I came on August 11 and I moved 100% in January 2012. I was doing some television in Denmark at that time, so I was back and forth back and forth between New York and Copenhagen. Every time, flying into New York, you see the skyscrapers and all this, it's beautiful. And the first year, I was living in Williamsburg, so I was crossing the bridge every day. And it was like, wow, beautiful, beautiful, the skylight. Now I take it for granted in a way.

10:04
Mads Refslund
When I visit Denmark, I appreciate Denmark so much more now. It's just that I'm a tourist in my own country in a way. I feel still I'm Danish and every time something doesn't work here, I compare and I should just be grateful for where I am and what I've achieved here.

10:20
Mads Refslund
I go to Denmark back and forth all the time now, more than before. I still have my family. I still have childhood friends and all this. A big piece of my heart is still in Europe for sure.

10:32 
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And when you arrived, you were not green in the restaurant business. You were a successful chef and you knew how to run a restaurant when you arrived. And as you mentioned, you were one of the co-founders of Noma, which was at one point world famous as one of the best restaurants in the world, if not the best restaurant in the world.

10:51
Mads Refslund
In my world, still the best, you know.

10:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes.

10:54
Mads Refslund
What René has created there and the team of Noma is unbelievable. It's so beautiful to see that growing over the years.

11:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it like being part of this adventure? And now that it closed down, and you can look at it from a different perspective, what did you take away from it? I know you were there not for a long time, but you were part of starting it.

11:14
Mads Refslund
I was so young, you know, I was 25 years old. René and I have kept the friendship over the years. And he's truly one of my very, very best friends today. And I see him as a beautiful human being and see him evolving over the years and I really truly love him.

11:29
Mads Refslund
But back in the day, we met in culinary school and we became very fast, very good friends, if not best friends. We were living together and we had this dream about opening this restaurant. We wanted to be the best, whatever it was. And it just didn't work out working together because we were just very young.

11:46
Mads Refslund
We knew somehow there was something more than just a restaurant. It was the beginning of something beautiful. We could feel it without talking about it, but also we had this dream about it, a lot more than just a restaurant. But what Noma became, it was not in our imagination of how big it was.

11:02
Mads Refslund
Maybe in René's mind, because he really took it there and no one could take that away from him because he is really Noma. I was just happy I was a part of some of the foundation in the beginning. It has changed so much over the years.

12:14
Mads Refslund
What we created back in the days is not the Noma that is today, for sure. But there was a DNA that I was a part of. And that was for sure René, but also Claus Meyer was also involved with that DNA in the beginning. So that whole foundation, I learned a lot by sticking to that DNA and being true to your roots. Instead of the world is your root cellar, it's more like your country or your region, your terroir, your surroundings is your root cellar.

12:42
Mads Refslund
I always said after that, that my backyard is my fridge. And basically what I took with me from that time is really creating a menu that is around the seasons where you are. And also the type of food that was created in Noma was also, after I left, I could just see it was so pure and was so yummy.

13:04
Mads Refslund
I don't know what you call it in English, but læskende, it's yummy food. Every bite you took of that kind of cuisine you wanted one more bite. So that's something that has come into my DNA and then created what I am today with food.

13:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There was a point I was interviewing a lot of well known actors and directors in Hollywood, and when I said I was Danish, they immediately asked me if I'd been to Noma. It was the first question. It was the first thing they associated with Denmark and wanted to know, oh, did you try that? Looking back, what do you think Noma did in terms of putting Danish cuisine on the map and for the new Nordic cuisine that you were part of founding?

13:46
Mads Refslund
I can tell you one thing. There were a lot of good restaurants at a time when Noma was open, a lot of good restaurants for sure. But I think Noma was the first one that just broke out of that whole French culinary scene that was going on in Denmark. There were a lot of good chefs there.

14:01
Mads Refslund
And there were a lot of people that were doing Danish food in a modern way. Erwin Lauterbach and there's a handful of people there doing a big movement, but Noma was really the first one who really broke out and said, okay, this is food from the Nordic countries, North Atlantic.

14:18
Mads Refslund
Tourists were coming there for that restaurant. And it's a huge loss that Noma is closing down next year. It brought Michelin to see a lot more restaurants in the Nordic countries, tourists and foodies to these countries because they became number one in the world.

14:35
Mads Refslund
Top 50 was like, okay, the best restaurant in the world is in little Denmark. Of course we have to come and stop by Denmark. And it is a big loss. But now there's so many other restaurants and the food scene in Copenhagen is booming. It's one of these meccas that's becoming like Tokyo or Paris, back in the days where you'd go to Paris to eat. Now you go to Copenhagen to eat.

14:59
Mads Refslund
I really truly believe that Noma was one of these restaurants that opened the doors to a bigger culinary scene. And there's so many good restaurants in Copenhagen right now and the Nordic countries. And it's very difficult to say right now, what is the best restaurant in the world because there's not such a thing. Everyone is good at something.

15:17
Mads Refslund
And it depends on what mood you're in. If you want only fish, go to a sushi restaurant. If you want to have Thai, go to a Thai restaurant. But if you want something that was telling a story from a country at that point, Noma was the place to go.

15:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Good news for me and the listeners, because we still can go there to Noma just before it closes down and get that experience.

15:38
Mads Refslund
Yeah, please do, if you get a table, haha.

15:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We'll try. So what did you want to achieve with the new Nordic cuisine back in the days when you founded it? Was it a kind of revolution or how would you describe it?

15:53
Mads Refslund
We just had a dream about exploring that type of cuisine. We didn't even know what it was. It was more like we had this rule — you had to use only things growing in our backyards and in the Nordic countries. So it was like, we were trying to do our own DNA, that René succeeded at for sure.

16:12
Mads Refslund
And it became a movement. Everyone was doing it and you can see now. The world is inspired by that. There's not a place in the world right now where it's not someone had been at Noma or did something at Noma. There's some kind of relationship to Noma everywhere in the world right now. Twenty years ago, of course, we had no idea what we were starting. We had a dream and for sure, René took it completely much further than anyone could have dreamed up.

16:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
In October you opened the restaurant Ilis. I'm pronouncing it in Danish because I have learned that it's "ild" and "is" that the name came from. You opened it in Greenpoint, a hip Brooklyn neighborhood, in New York. It took three years to bring it to life from 2020 till 2023. Why was the process so long? What did it entail to build this restaurant?

17:06
Mads Refslund
So the process is actually longer.

17:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh!

17:10
Mads Refslund
It is a dream I had for many years. I had this dream for eight years about creating this restaurant, that is not really a restaurant. It's more like a kitchen where we have integrated a restaurant and a bar inside of the kitchen. Because of COVID, everything was just on standby.

17:27
Mads Refslund
Building a restaurant from scratch, everything custom made, takes a long time, but especially in New York, it's been a struggle with getting the right permits and because of COVID, everything was just taking a longer time. That was the reason.

17:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You say it's mainly a kitchen. What kind of experience can guests at your restaurant expect to have? What makes Ilis special?

17:49
Mads Refslund
When I came to New York, I was very much into the fine dining world of a tasting menu. It was what I'd always done. And then I came to New York and I opened up this place called Acme. That was the place that I was consulting at in the beginning. It was 250 covers a night and it was only a la carte and very sharing family style food.

18:11
Mads Refslund
And it was very different from what I was used to, but I managed to do it. And I kind of saw another way of dining and I saw people also having fun. At the same time, it was also very chaotic and very stressful in a way because there were so many covers all the time.

18:31
Mads Refslund
So I wanted to create this concept of cooking over a big bonfire, and then the role of the ice was more untouched. I wanted to create a high-end restaurant with a pulse of energy. When you go out and eat, it's about who you are with, and the chemistry between the guest and the restaurant. If you could create a room where it's lively and you have this energy, that's where you're sitting and dining inside of the kitchen.

19:01
Mads Refslund
It's almost like you're coming into my personal kitchen and you feel you're part of a dining experience, of course, but also part of a show in a way. Really, we are on the stage every night because it's an open kitchen.

19:15
Mads Refslund
So the fun part of what we do is, imagine you're going to the market, in France or here in Union Square or in California, where you have all these markets. Imagine you go with a basket and you see all these beautiful things and you have to fill it up in your basket and you go home and cook it. That's the same way we do it here.

19:33
Mads Refslund
We have 12 ingredients that come into a basket. We roll it down to a table and you pick your ingredients and we cook that ingredient you pick. And we create a tasting menu out of these 12 ingredients we have. When we say 12 ingredients, in our mind, we create 20 to 22 courses every day.

19:52
Mads Refslund
So these 12 can go either raw or cooked, and it's all about dialogue with the table, what you're in the mood for, how many courses you want. Do you want a little bit less or a little bit more, try different things or what is the mood? But each table is very personalized and very different from each other.

20:12
Mads Refslund
It's leaving the experience up to the guests in a way of what are you in the mood for today? Do you want to be blown away or do you want your own personal world and you're on a date, or in a business meeting and you want five very good dishes and then get out in two hours?

20:28
Mads Refslund
We don't have any waiters. There's actually no waiters in the restaurant. It's only cooks. And the way that came up in my mind was I saw the tipping system in the United States was very different from where I come from. Also the way I came to New York was the tipping system, we talked about it earlier. It's very divided between the front of house and back of house.

20:48
Mads Refslund
And that's driven the culinary scene or the restaurant scene in the States for many years. It's a rule that you have to pay this gratuity of 18% up to 25%. And it's very rude if you don't do it. It's not really you have to, it's not a law, but if you don't do it, it's very bad. But it's also dividing the front of house and back of house extremely, meaning the kitchen and the restaurant are divided completely.

21:17
Mads Refslund
So I thought, okay, why not cut it completely away? Just cut the bridges and say, it's one house. So there's no waiters, it's only cooks. So cooks are going into the dining room every second week. And then you go into the kitchen the next two weeks. So in a month you are two weeks in the dining room, two weeks in the kitchen. And that's the rotation. So every second week you can get tips. That's also what makes it special. Because I thought in a way, who can talk best about the food? That would be the cook.

21:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You called the restaurant Ilis — "ild" and "is," which means fire and ice. Why this name?

21:57
Mads Refslund
That's the way we cook. That's our concept. Our kitchen is very much split in two and always been driven by contrast. I played with the name a lot. We couldn't call it "fire and ice." It sounds like something from the 80s. And I couldn't call it "Ildis." When we took the "d" away, "Ilis" is almost like a female name. I really liked it and it basically just means "fire and ice." And that's the way we cook. We don't have a gas stove. We don't have induction. Everything is cooked over a fire or it's not touched and we serve it on ice.

22:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you took us through, I saw the kitchen, it's like a stage in the middle. I know this is not quite fair to you, but it reminded me of the kitchen in the movie The Menu. I don't know if you've seen that film. It's a horror thriller where the guests in an exclusive restaurant have a lavish dinner, but it turns out that the chef has rather sinister intentions with all of them. The film is a critique of high end foodie culture and points a finger at it as being a little too avant garde and conceptual. Did you see the film?

23:06
Mads Refslund
I've seen it. Yeah.

23:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How do you feel about the message of the film?

23:10
Mads Refslund
The first time I saw it in the cinema, I thought it was kind of stupid. I also know a lot of the chefs involved in guiding the actors, and I can see a lot of the things in the movie in real life. For example, the clapping [sound effect] — it's taken from a restaurant from Sweden. It was better the second time.

23:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's funny too, even though it's a horror film.

23:32
Mads Refslund
Yeah, exactly. It's actually funny. But, it is a little bit too much sometimes. It's kind of outdated in a way because this is already told somehow. If this movie had been made 15 years ago… For me, I think it's better for people that's not in the industry.

23:47
Mads Refslund
I don't know if something can be too avant garde. I don't think it can. Can it be too much art? If you're tired of that, yeah, it can be too avant garde. Sometimes if you're trying too much to impress, you just lose the flavor. By the end of the day, if I couldn't see, it's all about flavor and smell. If I close my eyes and I eat something, it should be something that's really yummy.

24:10
Mads Refslund
Of course it helps when it looks good because you really also eat with your eyes. When you come to the market, you choose things that look good. It's all about senses and you have to limit your senses and see what is good for everyone somehow. It's not always people who are reacting just with their eyes. They are, but also with feeling and with smell.

24:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is a chef an artist in your mind?

24:33
Mads Refslund
It can be art. Yeah. And it can be art. First of all, it's really using your hands and your taste buds as a craftsman, but it can be art for sure. It can be art.

24:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is the perfect menu?

24:46
Mads Refslund
The perfect menu for me is that you have room, when you leave, you just got enough food so you could have a little something else. You should not fall dead when you come home. So a perfect meal for me is all about contrast. You have a little bit of everything in the menu where, depending on the day and the mood you're in, the perfect meal is when you get hit the right way around the right amount of food, and balance everything in sweetness to bitterness, in contrast and flavors.

25:20
Mads Refslund
And it's not too long. It's not too short. It's not easy because everyone is different and my mood is always different. If it's a winter day, I would like to sit for maybe a longer time. If it's a summer day, maybe I would not sit so long. My perfect meal, it's like the seasons, it will definitely change all the time.

25:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What's on the menu at your house? If I would peek in on an everyday in your house, what would I see you cooking?

25:47
Mads Refslund
I cook much more now than I actually used to. I also believe, a cook or a chef, we become what we eat. And the older I'm getting, I'm also just taking care of myself and my body, and also exercise, because I want to live longer, of course, but also live healthy and not end up sick and all this.

26:05
Mads Refslund
My fridge is actually full of good stuff. It's a company called Farm to People and they deliver every week. So getting all these organic and beautiful things. I always have fresh fruits, I always have organic yogurt, I always have good milk, I always have good chocolate milk and organic blood orange juice. I always have bread, I always have good coffee. Yeah, I actually have always something good in my fridge.

26:32
Mads Refslund
Also when I come home in the night, even if I eat here in the late night, if I come home at like 12, one, or two o'clock in the morning, I want some of the snacks. I always have some sourdough with some cheese, I always have good cheese.

26:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It sounds like I wouldn't run into you at the local burger joint in New York.

26:50
Mads Refslund
No, no. I'm pretty much pescatarian. On the weekdays, I don't eat meat, and almost not even any proteins. It's more vegetables, and dairy and eggs are okay. On the weekends, I eat fish and sometimes, a little bit of chicken or pheasant or a duck we have on the menu. But I rarely eat any red meat. And if it's red meat, it's more game. We have on the menu right now, antelope.

27:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Have you ever been tempted to start a restaurant in California? It's been called the breadbasket of the world. There's so much fresh produce here.

27:30
Mads Refslund
Yeah, for sure, I would love to do something in California at some point. I would love to do something on the West Coast — Portland or Washington state, it's just absolutely beautiful with the forest and nature. LA, yeah, it could also be interesting. You have beautiful produce there for sure. Near Santa Barbara.

27:50
Mads Refslund
I'm just not a big fan of sitting in the car. I like New York where you can walk everywhere or take the subway. Or if you need, you can rent a car and go out of the city and go upstate or whatever.

28:01
Mads Refslund
But I do love the West Coast. So definitely I would be open to do something there at some point. Right now my focus is here in New York and the DNA of the restaurant is here. I'm not saying I'm only using things that's here in the Northeast. I'm using North America, so I'm also getting things from California and also Canada.

28:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Let's go back in time for a little bit. How did you discover your love and fascination for food? What are your childhood memories in the kitchen like?

28:34
Mads Refslund
I was raised with my dad. My mom and dad split up when I was ten years old and somehow I was living with my dad because he was working at nighttime and my sister was five years younger than me and she would go and live with my mom. So we got split up at that time. They thought it was the best way. But of course I saw my mom every weekend.

28:57
Mads Refslund
Since my dad was working at night time, when he woke up around three or four o'clock, we started cooking together and I think there was something about that, that I started cooking with my dad, and we started bonding at that time in life. But also a lot of times it was frozen pizzas and lørdagskylling, you know, Saturday chicken, it was just easy to put in the oven because he was tired. Sometimes we also made pizza together, or spaghetti bolognese, whatever it was not taking too long.

29:23
Mads Refslund
I think really what made me start thinking, okay, you actually used more time, was when I was with my grandmom that did pates, whole roast, potatoes, pies and mashed potatoes, but really from scratch, and soups and all those. And jams, how do you make a jam, like a perfect jam? How do you preserve? How do you actually pickle and all this? That was my grandmom.

29:45
Mads Refslund
They had a summer house on Samsø, a small island in Copenhagen, that my dad bought later on and my sister has now. We went there on vacation and I remember they had a garden and they took all these things up from the soil, like roots, vegetables, and there was salt in them and they started preserving them. And that was the first time I saw, okay, you can actually create a root cellar and store food for colder weather.

30:13
Mads Refslund
I remember at age of 12 or something, my mom was living in Bornholm, another island in Denmark. I remember I did a pizza, a homemade pizza and she was so proud of me, she took a pizza slice, and she put it in a frame and put it on the wall. And I remember it turned completely molded and green and all of a sudden it fell down at some point.

30:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh my goodness.

30:36
Mads Refslund
She was so proud of me. She just framed it and said, this is what my son made. I didn't understand her at that point. I thought it was very weird. And my mom has always been the person who's never followed a recipe. She was just very creative. And I thought it was weird food. And now it's actually the way I cook. I create recipes. My dad was always using a recipe book or something he had from his mom. My mom is just putting things together and it's cool.

31:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That slice of pizza on the wall — she was proud of you.

31:04
Mads Refslund
Yeah, for sure. She's very proud of me. My parents have always been supportive. My mom and dad were old school hippies. They met in the '60s. I was born in '77. It was a time of joy. I'm brought up with a lot of love. So definitely good people. My dad passed away not so long ago. He was dealing with cancer for a long time. And it was shocking and very fast. It went very fast in the end.

31:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Sorry to hear that.

31:30
Mads Refslund
He was very proud of me for sure. A lot of support and a lot of love was given from his side. Your parents, even if you'd sometimes take them for granted, it means a lot that they actually support you no matter what.

31:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah, that's a good background to have, a good foundation for creating a life, in the US too, which is tough.

31:50
Mads Refslund
Yeah, for sure. My grandma died when I was here. I flew back to my dad. I saw him just before it happened and we could talk. I remember when my granddad was alive, it was just before I got educated as a chef. He was so proud of me. I was taking education and he died around that time. I won a silver medal at being a chef. When he got cremated, I put that in so he was buried with that. So it was my present to him.

32:21
Mads Refslund
It was like, okay, I need to make my family proud. In a way,. I felt there was something I had to show my granddad, because I looked up to my granddad a lot. So there was something in me that was following the path. I felt becoming a chef was something that was so my call. Now it started raining here. You can hear it on the roof.

32:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's your grandfather telling us that he's listening.

32:44
Mads Refslund
Yeah, exactly. It started raining right now. My granddad and my grandmom and my father. Yeah.

32:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
All of them, they're together somewhere talking about you this minute.

32:55
Mads Refslund
Yeah, for sure. It's beautiful. Yeah.

32:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Can you tell stories through food and how does one express oneself?

33:03
Mads Refslund
When I was in school, I always loved to talk. I always loved to tell stories. I was not so good at grammar and spelling. One of my mom's friends was a writer. He typed while I was telling stories and I have a book with all my stories from that time he wrote up. He also passed away. I have all these stories from my childhood, the age of six up to the 12 years old. I still have them. It's funny to see. So I wanted to be a writer, but I couldn't sit still.

33:32
Mads Refslund
In Denmark, you do internships when you're in eighth grade, up to 10th grade, you can go on and see what you want to become. And one of my teachers, Søren Bager, he was an amazing teacher — I don't know if he's still around — he got me an internship at a place on Pistolstræde in Copenhagen — just blew my mind completely, the smell in the kitchen and the energy in the kitchen.

33:56
Mads Refslund
I just knew immediately I had to become a chef. But for sure, I love telling stories and I don't write so much anymore. But at some point I was writing stories. I am a storyteller with my food. Sometimes the dishes I come up with are dishes of inspiration of something I've seen or something I felt, but it is also childhood memories or something that I've experienced in my life that I wanna express in my food.

34:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My last question to you. How would you like the rest of your life story to go? Do you have it all planned out? Or are you flexible, spontaneous? How would you like to tell the rest of your own story?

34:39
Mads Refslund
I'm very flexible. I'm very spontaneous. I know I wanna be here right now. This restaurant, it's really like a child for me. I was a little bit afraid. I've been without a physical restaurant for 12 years. I've done a lot of consultancy. I've been involved with some restaurants around the world and I'm still doing something in the Hamptons where my name is on the menu. I created a menu and I have someone working there for me.

35:03
Mads Refslund
I know that was hard for me to come into the kitchen. I was afraid. It's not a prison, but you build yourself a prison in a way you have to be there somehow. Can I put myself into this place and keep momentum? Can I really be creative and be focused? Or, is the world still something that I want to travel around and do all the things?

35:22
Mads Refslund
What we did was we made a choice to say, okay, we are only open four days a week. So we will not get tired. But it ended up anyway of me being here five to six days a week, because I just love to be here. And after five months, I still love to be here. I love creating.

35:40
Mads Refslund
Really, I just love being in the kitchen and create. And I still have a rule in my head right now. Sometimes I'm here in the morning. But after I do my meetings, I take a break. If I don't go to the gym in the morning, I go in the afternoon before service, or go take a swim or just go for a walk, maybe for 40 minutes, or I see a friend or something like that.

36:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I just watched a documentary about Frida Kahlo and she says, I create art because I need to. Is it similar for you, that you cook because you need to?

36:14
Mads Refslund
Yeah, I think it's the same. I feel alive when I create. When I cook, I feel alive. For sure.

36:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
On that note, which is a beautiful way to end our podcast with you, thank you so much for being with us, Mads Refslund. It was a pleasure being with you here on Danish Originals.

36:34
Mads Refslund
Thank you so much for having me.

36:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Mads Refslund chose Poul Anker Bech's Asfaltserenade, or Asphalt Serenade from 2002 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.