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In Conversation: Claus Meyer, Founder of ‘New Nordic’
In 2004, Claus Meyer revolutionised Nordic cooking by drawing up, alongside four fellow chefs, the ‘New Nordic Manifesto’. The project returned Danes to their foraging roots, encouraging them to get outside and embrace seasonality. There’s perhaps no better encapsulation of its ideals than Noma in Copenhagen, a restaurant Claus founded with René Redzepi in 2003. Noma went on to earn two Michelin stars and the title of ‘Best Restaurant in the World’ for four (almost) consecutive years, while Claus took his inspiration to New York and Latin America…
You wrote the ‘New Nordic Manifesto’ in 2004… what is it and why do we need it?
I wanted to organise all the key stakeholders in the Danish food cultural landscape around a common idea. I believed it was possible to orchestrate a seamless collaboration between all kinds of actives that would have a mutual interest in the type of spiritual and practical growth scenario that the ‘New Nordic Manifesto’ represented. So, just like with any movement, we needed to have a common ideology to ensure everyone felt part of the common initiative, and we also need to guide the behaviour so they could sustain and build the transformation we all envisaged.
Scandinavia was already a region of foragers and hunters. Why was there a need to re-invigorate that?
Even in Britain people were hunter-gatherers back in the day. In recent times, it’s mostly been people in Finland, Norway and Sweden who’ve been hunters. But the reality is forty-three types of berries are left to rot and we barely harvest 1/1,000 mushrooms that grow in our forests. Denmark didn’t have the culinary heritage of countries such as France, Spain or Italy… those countries have been producing world-class food products for two hundred years or more. Denmark never made any attempt to produce delicious food products. We were focused on the production of bulk products. We never had ingredients such as truffles from Liguria, almonds from Cordoba or foie gras from the Gers. But what we did have is an abundance of wild nature and a climate with much light and a long growing period. So, this combination of a mass influx of light, a noticeable temperature variation between day and night, and a strong growing period, are precursors for extremely delicious food.
Meyer in Grand Central with Crown Princess Mary of Denmark and Lars Løkke Rasmussen, former Prime Minister of Denmark
Noma in Copenhagen
OK, so Denmark wasn’t necessarily part of that foraging culture, and it wasn’t a gastronomic culture either… a bit of a culinary desert. You’ve clearly changed that. How important is the ‘New Nordic’ movement in terms of tourism and Denmark’s image abroad?
I came across a survey last year that said before 2012 only 1/10 tourists came to Denmark for the food (the other nine came despite it). These days it’s totally reversed: 85 per cent are coming for the food. We’ve seen a doubling in the number of tourists coming to Copenhagen during the past seven years. The rise of restaurants basing their cooking on ‘New Nordic’ cuisine has played a particularly important role in achieving this.
You said Denmark wasn’t particularly a foraging culture…Norway, Sweden and Finland were. Perhaps the other Nordic countries weren’t particularly in need of the ‘New Nordic’ revolution, but has the movement spread to other corners of the Nordic region nevertheless?
We were a bunch of Danes who launched it, but we invited the top Francophile chefs from each of the eight Nordic geographical regions to co-author the Manifesto. They all went home, so now you have places like Koks in the Faroe Islands, considered one of the best restaurants in Scandinavia. No chef today believes they have to rely on imported food. But we were not trying to build a brand like McDonalds, Starbucks or Burger King. We were building a vehicle that would catalyse the transformation of our food techniques and connect professionals and consumers. So now our process has successfully occurred, it’s the new normal and the notion of ‘New Nordic’ will more or less disappear.
You lived and worked for three years in New York. What was it like taking such a healthy way of eating to a country that’s not exactly known for its healthy eating! They have a huge obesity rate in the United States…
Well, they have. But if you go to New York or San Francisco, they’re melting pots. Some are healthy, some unhealthy. We were very well received. Despite coronavirus, Agern (the restaurant I founded in Grand Central) still stands with two Michelin stars. Modern American food is a good example of the way in which countries abroad have been inspired by the concept of connecting to nature, celebrating the produce on the plate rather than overpowering it with the ideas of chef-magicians. I believe America – and particularly San Francisco and New York City – are very prone to this kind of food concept, developed in the early 2000s in Scandinavia.
This is probably a terribly cheesy segway, but you mentioned there how America is a ‘melting pot’. Your foundation, started in 2013, is called Melting Pot. It’s taken ‘New Nordic’ food to Latin America…
Not exactly food, but the idea that deliciousness can change the world. I felt that after Noma was positioning itself among the five best restaurants in the world, even though Denmark was a food desert prior to 2003, it was obvious to connect various stakeholders between agriculture, manufacturing, research and hospitality to create a new culinary language. We wondered if we could use this approach in a poor country, using deliciousness to fight inequality. We wanted to know whether the ‘New Nordic Manifesto’ could be universal. We set out to test this romantic idea and went to the Highlands of Bolivia – 4,400 metres above sea level – and managed, in the poorest capital of Latin America, to pull it off. We now run fourteen cooking schools graduating thousands of students a year. We also started Gustu, a fine dining restaurant run by indigenous Bolivian youth. So, it confirmed that food is an enormously powerful instrument that can be used to fight injustice and give hope to many areas of the world.
Finally, to return to Noma, a hugely successful project you started with René Redzepi two Michelin stars and counting, best restaurant in the world for four years. How involved are you with it these days?
I was involved in the first six or seven years. Now René Redzepi runs the restaurant and pop-up bistros around it and has done so for the past five or six years, and he does very well. This year’s been a nightmare for all of us, but it’s also been a year for contemplation. I don’t think my company and I have ever been more innovative and bolder. So, I go into 2021 quite optimistic!
