cultivar_22_Final_EN

29 Let’s eat what is around us – and that is just the beginning of change* Alexandra Prado Coelho Journalist, PÚBLICO newspaper When I started writing about food in 2011, I was lucky enough to receive an invitation from the Food Organisation of Denmark/The Food Project to visit Copenhagen. At the time, there was talk of a “revo- lution” in Scandinavian food and I had the chance to observe directly what was happening at (and centred around) Noma, which the British magazine Restaurant later ranked for several years the best restaurant in the world. I was part of a group of jour- nalists invited by this organ- isation responsible for pro- moting what was going on in Danish food to take part in a programme that included not just an – unforgettable – dinner at Noma but a series of other activities that helped us to understand how the world’s attention had been focused on the food of a country which, until then, could not have been said to have an important food tradition. The trip turned out to be eye opening in a number of ways. The first was undoubtedly how the Danes were working closely with each other. The article I wrote for PÚBLICO when I returned to Portugal reflected exactly that. Its title was “The men behind the world’s best restaurant”, and it obviously talked about the chef, René Redzepi, and the researcher Lars Williams who worked on a laboratory-boat docked in front of Noma, and conducted all kinds of mad experiments in search of new flavours. It also mentioned Soren Wiuff, a farmer who grew aspara- gus and other products used at Noma and whom we visited on his property. It was very interesting to dis- cover how the communica- tion strategy which allowed Denmark to position itself as a food destination gave just as much importance to the restaurant chef as it did to the farmer. At the time, that seemed decisive to me. What Redzepi talked about was something now common among all the world’s greatest chefs, but that was not very usual at the time: the need to value produce and the farmers who cre- ated it. Without them, stressed Redzepi, his restaurant would not have become what it was. It was very interesting to discover how the communication strategy which allowed Denmark to position itself as a food destination gave just as much importance to the restaurant chef as it did to the farmer. * Editor’s note: Originally published in CULTIVAR issue 9 – Gastronomy, September 2017, p. 23, as “Vamos comer o que nos rodeia – e isso é só o início da mudança”. https://www.gpp.pt/images/GPP/O_que_disponibilizamos/Publicacoes/CULTIVAR_9/E_book/CULTIVAR_9_Gastronomia/24/