I believe this picture really shows how special Jægersborggade is. To run an ambitious restaurant of a high standard in an environment with such a phenomenal energy really does something special for us. Long live the summer and long live our street!
Relæ is now back on track after a well deserved break lasting a few weeks. As a chef your vacation is about grabbing the possibility to try something new, eat at a restaurant far away and get recharged with new impulses you will bring back into the kitchen and turn into new ideas, new thoughts. All the staff from the front and back of the house all had tickets bought and reservations booked for the summer.
I was lucky to be invited by Chad Robertson to do a guest dinner at his restaurant Bar Tartine in San Francisco and I was therefore given the opportunity to try out some of the finest gastronomic venues of the Bay Area. Something I have been wanting to do for many years.
The dinner was a great succes among the guests and even though its always tricky to play on foreign grounds it was exciting and inspiring to work with the Californian produce and obviously the fantastic bread and baked goods from Tartine. I didn’t turn out any less exciting that a huge following of local chefs, journalists and foodies showed interest in my small culinary input and showed up on a regular monday night.
‘Welcome Chef’ was the first of what will be a returning event held every monday at Bar Tartine and it will be exciting to follow as Chad rolls out his incredible network of chefs and friends.
We had a week in San Francisco before we, my family and I, would drive around California hunting for more culinary treasures. Departing from The Parsonage, a beautiful B&B where we were staying, Chad showed us around some of the gastronomic musclepower this city has to show.
Organic supermarkets, coffee shops and farmers markets seems to be spread all over this city that apparently cannot get enough of fantastic bread, forgotten tomato-varieties and organic pasture chickens. There is mobs of people wherever something might look like a market. Its with great pleasure that anyone visiting with a passion for good, organic and healthy produce to experience the market at the Ferry Building on saturdays or Bi-Rite, stuffed with several types of cherries, peaches or beets in all the colors of the rainbow. A lot of it grown on their own farms outside the city, not to mention…
The envy is great when you as a danish cook have tired your eyes looking at beautifully colored foodstands and even though july probably is the best time to visit SF I really believe that Copenhageners could really learn a lot from the San Franciscans….”the good food” movement shows everywhere. From the breakfast waffles based on generation old sourdough at The Parsonage, to the variation in produce and the incredible amount of fantastic restaurants. But what impressed me the most was to see bright, hip and smart young people produce and sell organic vegetables with proud smiles. That is something we need in Denmark. A lot.
We are so incredibly happy to announce that one of the biggest talents that have ever passed through our kitchens is returning to do a once in a lifetime dinner at Manfred’s. Lisa Lov, or Tigermom as we used to call her for her way of taking care of the wellbeing, schooling and discipline of our apprentices, cooked us the most legendary staff meals of our short history. Since she left us she has worked at Toronto’s Chantecler and Vancouver’s best Thai restaurant, Maenam, where she honed her Asian cooking skills.
On Monday the 20th of august you will be able to experience Lisa’s brilliant, clever and incredibly tasty food as she interrupts her inspirational travels around France just for this occasion!
The menu will be served family-style in the usual Manfred’s way with 5-6 courses to share amongst the diners at the table for only 275,- pr person. Hurry up and book your table online or at Manfreds on + 45 3696 6593!
For the 5th time Daniel Burns, former pastry chef of noma, will be arranging Foodball, the legendary 5-a-side football tournament for restaurants on the 24th of june 2012. This year the teams count 18 restaurants including Noma, Geranium and of course us, Restaurant Relæ/Manfreds F.C! Furthermore you have several international teams participating, as Bloom in the Park from Sweden and Chez Dominique from Finland. All the teams have agreed to donate a dinner for two for a lottery held by Action agains Hunger, so if you buy a raffleticket worth 10$ you will be in the game of winning a dinner at Relæ or even Noma! And please remember that you are not obliged to be at the tournament to buy a raffle ticket or support the cause!
The tournament is held in Valby at FREM’s fields: Julius Andersensvej 7 2450 København SV on the 24th of june at 13.00. Come and cheer for us! And more importantly donate to Action against Hunger by buying a raffle ticket
It was with great disappointment that our dinner with californian super-chef David Kinch was cancelled along with the rest of the Omnivore Festival here in may. But as the saying is, if you cant bring a bit of California to Relæ bring a bit of Relæ to California! I, Christian F. Puglisi am heading for California to do a dinner at Bar Tartine, our friend Chad Robertson’s restaurant in San Francisco. The setup will be somewhere in between Relæ, Manfreds and Bar Tartine. I am planning to prepare around 10-12 rustic dishes to be shared across the table. They will be rustic, clean flavoured, very produce-orientated and very green! I have been in correspondance with Chad and his team regarding the great produce they have to offer and I am really looking forward to this.
As it was with our trip to Australia its going to be a challenge to cook a different continent but it sounds like that just the thought of a californian market in mid july will trigger wet dreams with every chef that has experienced it. I am immensely looking forward to see California for the first time and cooking their local produce, visiting friends, farms and restaurants I have dreamt of eating at for ages. I am also hoping to snoop around in Chads bakery a bit and learn more about Tartine’s fantastic bread.
The dinner will be held at Bar Tartine on the 16th of july, a monday. Please contact Bar Tartine for booking a table.
Asparagus is one of the most beautiful things you can put on a plate. Thats how simple it is. As a veggie-fixated chef with a great focus on greens and an urge to have them all on the menu the mere idea of having asparagus between your hands makes winter a little bit easier to cope with. The pointy, crisp and green roll into our kitchen accompanied with the juicy and fat white asparagus trumpeteering that spring is finally here! Last year we served Wiuffs legendary asparagus as a snack and on the first course as soon as they entered the kitchen back door. This year they have hit the menu’s 2nd and 3rd, course.
It’s actually bringing an interesting topic to my mind when I think about that 50% of our Omnivorous menu brings you asparagus in one way or the other. Between chefs there has been a bit of debate regarding wether you can allow yourself to serve the same ingredient several times on a tasting menu and considering that we only serve 4 courses to most of our guests we might add to that debate by saying yes, of course you can. See, I see things in the very opposite way when it comes to asparagus. Its a treat that is extremely seasonal and it is one of those produce that we can be incredibly proud of here in Denmark. So why not serve it as much as you possibly can in that short moment the seasons last? I believe that a menu shouldnt give you too many repetitive sensations and flavours but I guess its all about how and how much (or how little) you manipulate that produce and what you want to achieve. As a guest visiting a restaurant it must be great to experience that the kitchen having a blast digging into those juicy and flavourfull stems
Outside Copenhagen we have a dried out fjord with a sandy, sandy soil and most importantly we have the best asparagus producer that I have ever known. Søren Wiuff’s is mastering the art of turning a used-to-be-marine-soil into an asparagus field of incredible quality and we sure appreciate him doing it. Check out his blog as well!
In the short life of our restaurant, we have already had several opportunities to travel, meet colleagues and experience different cities through festivals and other events. The biggest experience so far was going to Melbourne to participate in Melbourne Food and Wine Festival where we also got to create a meal at the renowned Attica. Continue reading
We are incredibly proud to announce that the one and only David Kinch from Manresa Restaurant in California will be joining us for a dinner on the 27th of may!
David Kinch has with his natural-bound and modern cuisine at Manresa become one of the most important names of american gastronomy.
We open up Relæ exclusively on that sunday to be able to cook with one of the greatest cooks of our generation.
The menu will be consisting of snacks and aperitifs og 7 courses of joint venture between Relæ and Manresa with wine pairings all included for 2000,- DKK. For the occasion we will only serve one seating so we will have time to enjoy having Kinch in our kitchen.
The single seating reduces the available slots a lot so hurry up and book your table at booking@restaurant-relae.dk