Rene Redzepi

“I only have the restaurant. If I do other things, it's only to do with the restaurant.”

“Fifteen years ago, France was the promised land of cooking. So I looked at a map, found five restaurants and faxed them to ask for a job. Within five minutes, I got a reply from the then three- star Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier.”

“Appetite as it relates to the human being, the person. How do you find appetite for what you do? How do you relate to appetite? How do you get appetite, not only for a meal but also to do the work you do?”

“Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food.”

“In my home I tend to eat a very simple version of what we cook at the restaurant, which is vegetable-oriented, with a little bit of fish and very little meat. For instance, a dish in my home could be steamed spinach with spruce, where I take a spruce branch and put it in the pot and that infuses into the spinach.”

“I think that in our part of the world, Scandinavia, we are one of the pioneers of showing that gastronomy can be something - high gastronomy can be something very, very present and doesn't have to involve, you know, what is perceived as the normal luxury items that belong in a high gastronomy restaurant.”

“When you get close to the raw materials and taste them at the moment they let go of the soil, you learn to respect them.”

“Scandinavian-Danish cuisine was something quite rustic, mostly known for pastries and smorgasbord cuisine, which in itself has become a joke.”

“A gastronomical supermeal didn't necessarily have to involve the things I had brought from other top kitchens.”

“I still cook at home. A lot of chefs I think don't cook at home. But I still do, I love cooking at home, I love having friends.”

“There is no conflict between a better meal and a better world.”

“I would love to eat a really great burger, but it doesn't exist in our part of the world.”

“If you see someone in the kitchen that has good hands and a quick brain, then you need that person to be in the front of everything.”

“I started my cooking 'career' aged 15, almost 20 years ago. At the time it was quite a shock suddenly working 75 to 80 hours a week, without time to play football or other sports.”

“When you start at catering college, nobody prepares you for a book tour or public speaking.”

“When people are grownups they're grown ups. They make their own decisions you know.”

“Chefs have a new opportunity - and perhaps even an obligation - to inform the public about what is good to eat, and why.”

“Take a trip to the forest and experience the greatness of getting on your knees and picking your own food and going home... and eating it.”

“When I turned 15, I left school having failed to make the minimum grade. With little direction I enlisted at the local culinary school. Here the academic demands were less rigorous.”

“My last meal on Earth, I would love it to be a bowl of blueberries with cold cream.”