Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Before I say a few words, I want to introduce to you
the team that has actually made all this happen. I know there was a wonderful introduction.
Thank you for that. But in fact, none of this would have happened without these people.
So this is the team that has worked in their spare time on Sundays in the early hours of
the day at night time, whenever we had a few minutes to make this happen. So could you
please just make this roof lift off for these people up here?
Now get the fuck out of stage. It has been a very special morning for us, and I've not
had this type of feeling in my stomach for years. It's as if something big is going to
happen. I had it when we opened NOMA eight years ago. That was new to me, completely
new. I was young, 25 years old, had never, ever run a restaurant, nor a kitchen. I had
been a sous chef. But I remember I had this feeling of something big was about to happen,
that I was on the right track. The same thing happened last week here. It started to come
that feeling again. Second time in my life, I've had that feeling. I can tell you it's
a wonderful, wonderful feeling. It's also a little disturbing feeling because your whole
body changes from within. It goes out to your arms, to your fingers, to your nails. It's
in your hair. It's everywhere. It's undescribable. I've actually made a point of writing down
what I exactly feel during this process because it's a special feeling. I hope all of you
will feel it. I hope they've already felt it. This is how I feel about this event here.
When I started many years ago, I came from an education where one of my exam questions
was to name soft boiled eggs in several languages. I did, one of them was in Macedonia, so the
sensor had no idea of that, so I passed. I was trained in classic techniques, do the
hollandaise, whip the egg with the butter. Then came a period where I learned new technique,
which was modern technique. I learned to deal with a pack of jet. Can people hear me?
Yeah. Well, I've written somewhere that our inspiration is the Glastonbury and Roskelo
Festival, and by God, we are having Glastonbury and Roskelo Festival right now. I didn't mean
it that literally, actually, I must say. No, then came a period where I learned new technique,
technique that wasn't written in the chef books that we were taught in. It was the pack
of jet, all these new modern techniques that aroused, especially from Spain. Then I opened
my restaurant, Noma. At that process, I was thinking, well, what is an authentic cuisine?
How do you make a cuisine feel like it belongs at a specific point? Then I realized that
all the techniques I've learned and the residing of soft boiled eggs in three languages was
not enough. There's simply something missing, because in order for us to somehow grasp our
region, our food, we needed to understand our culture, the people we are, the ancient
food history, and how we have become the people we are today. A whole new range of questions
started occurring to me, and I started reading books that I've never read before about ancient
food, about hunter-gatherers, about the agrarian period. I read about agriculture. I found out
people that in the past decade, an astonishing 90% of our crop variety has disappeared. This
is an attack on our industry, people. That's how I see it. Don't we want many ingredients
to cook with? Don't we want that we have different ingredients throughout the world,
or do we want that we all cook the same things? Because it's going in the wrong direction.
We're cooking the same food that have been made with the same seed. This is a problem.
We need to take actions. We, the chefs, and the farmers. I had never before, as a professional
chef, had any relationship with farmers. Never. Not until no more. There, I started searching
out for these people. It was difficult in the beginning, but we managed. There were several
we found. One of them has been a huge inspiration. We inspired each other tremendously. He's
a close friend today. Our children know each other. It's just beyond work. When we started
with him, he had a large part of his field as a monoculture. Carrots for the supermarkets.
He saved only a small part of it for himself. To keep himself in touch with the soil and
his trade. I was at that point starting to read about varieties, all ancient varieties
we were in contact with Nordic gene banks and new seeds. We started a discussion, a debate
about how to do this. With time, he now has 100% polyculture. He has an astonishing range
of ingredients. With him, our cuisine became better. With him, you, the guests, had better
food. We had more ingredients to put onto the plate. We could make more dishes. Eight years
ago, I had two types of cabbages to choose from. Now, sometimes he has 12. Just to name
a few. I'm saying this because I believe that these small interactions, even though they're
quite small and they may be private in a way, is very, very important. Very important. Not
only for the inspiration, but in a small way, they can actually create real change. This
leads me to my point. I think that if we are together, if we create a community of people
that are mindful about what we do together, I'm not saying that we should cook the same
thing or have the same philosophy around the food. All of us use wild herbs and put wild
pea flowers onto raw fish. I'm just saying we need to know more about the food that we
eat, the planet we live on, and we need to create better relationship with all the people
that's out there. This is very, very, very important. Here today, 300 of you, I actually
wrote a list of all the people that's here. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, America, England,
Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Romania, Turkey, Australia, Canada, Japan, China, Switzerland,
South Africa, Peru. Have I forgotten anybody? Brazil, Mexico, Scotland, New Zealand. You
see, we're here from all over the world, and imagining this in our part of the world just
five years ago would be impossible. Just impossible. I've seen a lot of your tweets. I follow
them as people are coming here. People are saying, I can't believe I'm putting myself
on a plane to go to Denmark for food. I can't believe it either. I can't believe that you
all came here. Remember that we grew up believing that our food is not good enough. Everything
south of the border is better. We grew up believing that the variety we have of ingredients
is not big enough to base a cuisine around. What we discovered is that we have a huge,
amazing variety of products. And we have a culture. We have brains. We have people. If
there's a message from this place, Copenhagen and all the brilliant chef that's out there
right now, is that food can happen anywhere. Great food can happen anywhere. Five years
ago, nobody believed it. Ten years ago, we didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. I
never thought it would come to this place here. It has been a journey that is unbelievable.
We set this up in our spare time, as I told you. We've been working on this for two years,
finding money here and there, scraping a bit here, a bit there. So please excuse us if
the toilets get overcrowded or if they even stop breaking. It's nature. You are very welcome
to use it. But excuse us for these things. We know we're not going to be perfect year
one. But we feel that we must try. We have to try. And this is the spirit of this place.
It's new thoughts and believing that everything is possible because it is. And at least if
it isn't, we should try. And that's why we're here. Thank you. Thank you very much.
