anthony: no. that is incredible. alessandro: wow. anthony: there s no way that this is going to look convincingly delicious on tv, but it is really delicious. alessandro porcelli is italian, living in denmark. he worked at noma before starting cook it raw, the roaming boy scout camp for the world s best chefs. alessandro: i met rene in 2004. basically, the restaurant was just opened. rene: four on six. kitchen staff: yes. anthony: ten years after noma s inception, rene is arguably the most famous dane since hamlet. and so it s happily ever after, right? t quite. alessandro: it s funny that all this happened actually in copenhen. you have all these rules about where you have these guidelines where you never brag about yourself. it s all understated. anthony: the law of which discourages attention seeking is part and parcel to living in denmark. danes who think too big are often cut down by their peers.
have? and how do we combine them in a way that tells something of where you are in the world? anthony: between me and nature, there s not so much love. nature is where bugs live. but i m learning reluctantly, over time, how much i ve been missing. rene s proclivity to scrounge around for flavorful stuff that grows wild rene: welcome to the beach. what do you think of the good old danish beach? anthony: pretty much kick started the restaurants world s now widely emulated practice of foraging. rene: you see all this grass? actually these are succulents. rene: we reoing bch cabbage for them, no? noma staff: yes! alessandro: ren since the beginning, has been thinking about how to put into a plate what s around you basically. anthony: well you need to be like a 19th-century naturalist if you re going to do this. if you re going to play this alessandro: yeah, you need to be a botanist, a naturalist. rene: chew on this. do you taste cilantro? anthony: yes, it s cil
10 minutes, but we have four courses. this is like three michelin stars, chef. anthony: oh yeah. rene: ooh. oh man. anthony: perfect. look at that. rene: wow. wow, wow, wow. anthony: that egg. what an egg. you eat like this all the time? rene: i bring my kids up here. all the staff comes here, often. this becomes your reference stream for how fresh an asparagus shld be. just harvest, just cood, just eaten. anthony: i think a place like this, in addition to being the best restaurant in the world or whatever else, offers a real possibility. there is food around, that with a little effort, or a lot of effort, you could, you could make it into something really delicious. alessandro: there is the hard thing, yeah. to change the way people think about food. not just the 35 people that can afford to come eat here at noma. soren: thank you for joining. rene: thank you chef. anthony: it s magnificent.
i decided to go out on my bike and see what i could get so all the flowers that are here, the lady let me pick them in her garden. so i have strawberries that are pickled in rose vinegar and a crème fraiche at the base that s been infused with burnt roses and rose pollen. rene: can we just clap or? anthony: and then that might well end up on the menu? rene: no. this is not about putting things on the menu, no. i mean if somebody makes a masterpiece, it s their masterpiece. anthony: really? rene: yeah, yeah. of course. anthony: isn t it your historical imperative as the chef to take his good work and innovation and put it on the menu and take credit for it as your own? i mean that s the way it s been done for centuries. rene: this is not the point here. anthony: the pursuit of enlightenment and knowledge is its own reward?
noma cook: so, this is our bread serving. it s a sourdough bread that s made with a swedish grain. and this is a cow s milk butter that has not been churned all the way. it s called virgin butter. anthony: oh god. alessandro: this is amazing, huh? anthony: butter like this, where you can pretty much taste what the cow ate. you know anybody who s milked a cow, this is a flavor of childhood. the fact is there aren t lot of people left who, where i come from, who ve milked a cow. alessandro: and this is why it s becoming more important to what these guys are doing. it s the relationship also that they have with the farmers, the relationship they have with the soil. rene: so this is soren s farm but we always say our farm. we feel like it s our place. anthony: soren is rene s primary supplier of farm meat and vegetables. rene: look at the soil here. you see all the mussel shells? anthony: yeah. rene: these are shellfish, because this used to be marshland. anthony: lik