20 November 2013

For the magazine Time, René Redzepi is the best chef in the world. His dishes are fragrant with the scent of freshly cut grass, green moss, country roads. But how are these gastronomic masterpieces born? What are his feelings when he goes on long walks in search of secret ingredients, like resins and lichens? For a year, Redzepi kept a journal in which he noted down the changes that have taken place in his life after so much international recognition. The result is René Redzepi: A Work in Progress, a book made up of three separate objects: the journal itself, but also a recipe book and a volume of snapshots that recounts life at his restaurant Noma with a sense of delicate wonder. Creativity is the guiding thread that runs through the three books and allows the chef to reveal his inner universe, made up of fears, wonder, days of rage and an obsessive search for perfection. Just like the one that Redzepi sees in a cloud: an object of absolute purity that he puts on a plate, turning it into a device for the telling of stories. On tasting it, the guest-spectator takes a journey back in time. And returns to his or her childhood, when clouds were objects, animals or fish, ready to turn into something else with a breath of wind. Published by Phaidon.