Walk down Jægersborggade, a seemingly unremarkable street in Copenhagen's trendy Nørrebro neighborhood and you might stumble uponRelæ. The dining room, a few steps down from street level, is small and handsome with a tidy open kitchen. Saying that the kitchen is on display might suggest certain showiness or ego, neither of which have a place at Relæ—there's simply no other place for the kitchen to be.
Relæ isn't Noma, Rene Redzepi's famed Copenhagen restaurant where Relæ's chef-owner Christian Puglisi worked as sous chef. Diners reset their own silverware from nifty trays built into the table; the kitchen rarely uses exotic, foraged ingredients; and you can probably afford to eat dinner at Relæ without taking out a second mortgage on your house.
Relæ is the sort of fine dining restaurant where food tastes like food and you're comfortable eating it. A meal might start with Puglisi's "kornly cracker," a dish that's inspired by an elBulli dish but that tastes like delicious cheese and mushroom pizza. The majority of the menu is light and fresh, but it's not all vegetables—dishes like pork neck with sprouted rye hit the low notes you want them to.
Somehow, Puglisi forged his own path after working at one of the world's most famous restaurants, and he did so without copying it. Fast-forward four years and dozens of accolades later and Puglisi got the opportunity to write a book. But how do you translate the experience of Relæ—one that takes countless hours and a small army of cooks—to the two-dimensional world ofRelæ, a cookbook that will land in the kitchens of home cooks, food-world admirers, and other chefs around the world?
Well, Puglisi might have found a solution: Write a book of ideas, not recipes.
Most of the time, already inaccessible fine-dining restaurants produce books with even less accessible recipes that few but the most adventurous and, you know,crazycooks will attempt.
