Cooking in Community

Thank you, MAD. It's... I'm still very young in this industry, so it's a very big honor, first of all, of course, to be here, but also to have such a presentation from a guy which I really admire a lot. So thank you for that. I'm Emily, and I want to start with a small introduction of you guys. So please help me raise your hand. I'll see if I can see anything. But raise your hand if you live outside the city, in a village, in a small town, at the countryside, maybe not even a city. Please raise your hand. Yeah. And then please raise your hand if you live in a big city. Okay. I hope you all see this. There is quite a big difference. And then again, the ones who raised your hand for living in a big city, who of you have ever thought or considered leaving the city? Luckily for me, there was quite a few hands as well. So, this is what we're going to talk about. This is Denmark, and the first part is going to be a bit of a geography lesson. Because in Denmark, even though we are a very small country, we do have a saying called the rotten banana. And the rotten banana is where all the people, mostly from the big cities, like Copenhagen and Aarhus and Aalborg, they have this idea about this part of Denmark not really being worth anything. Like this part of Denmark out here is where the houses are the cheapest, where there's more pigs than people. All the youngsters, they are moving away to the bigger cities to go study. And we also have a saying that out there, the birds are turning around. So, literally, this is just the worst of the worst places you can ever be in Denmark. But, it's changing. A lot of people, especially young people, are starting to move back. It's families, it's friends, it's couples, and me as well. So, I moved out there in Hanstholm. It's a very rural place. It's very far from Copenhagen. It's actually as far as you can come. And what I see out there is that there is a movement of someone who wants to do something else, and who wants to do something different. And, it all started, and the reason why I'm going to tell you this story about why I moved out there, I like, you don't care at all. But the reason why I did it, and why I want to tell this story, is that I think there might be a lesson in this idea of moving outside, that kind of reminds me about sustainability, but in another way. But also, how we can be built to last. So, it all started with COVID. I think it really shaked up a lot of people's lives. But in COVID, in December 2020, we had the second lockdown in Denmark. And as Matt just told you, I just started working at Amass as a student. They didn't took students normally, but I was really, like, I wanted to work there. So, I convinced the entire team of hiring me, and they did. And then, we were just started, and then the second lockdown hit. So, we were all sent back home. And instead of going back home to my apartment in Copenhagen, I moved back home to my parents. They live up there. It's a small island called "Life Island", at all names. There's only nine people living there. But my family is six of them. So, and I'm going to tell you way more about that in another presentation. But this is "Life Island". And I moved up there, and even though it's a beautiful place, then, after a couple of weeks, I really started to get bored. So, I called one of my friends, and he is the tourist manager of Thy, which is up here. So, this is a part of Denmark called Thy. And I texted her because I was super bored. Like, I really just had to do something, and I didn't know what to do. So, I was like, hey, can you maybe show me around this area? It's a part of Denmark I've never seen before, so maybe that would be fun. And she would. She said yes, but she had a bigger plan. So, what she ended up doing was to bring me all around the area, showing me all the empty restaurants. And there is a lot, I can tell. So, she showed me all of these different places, one after one. And the last place we went, at this very weird, rural, raw harbor in Hanstholm, which is almost like the Wild West, was where I fell in love. So, this is an old grill bar. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's a small town that lives 2,000 people. But it's at Denmark's biggest fish auction. So, all the fish we eat in Denmark, and in a lot of the southern countries in Europe, because we ship all the fish away from here, is being landed here in Hanstholm. But what they served at this grill bar was this famous dish called a shooting star, which is a deep-fried fish. And no one really knows where it comes from. Basically, it can be any kind of fish. And I wouldn't say that this fish was from Hanstholm. But it was super popular, and all the German tourists came happily to eat at this place. But now the couple who owned it, they decided to sell. And I was there at the right time, at the right moment. And I had never dreamt about being a restaurateur. I never dreamt about having my own restaurant in Hanstholm. I had never been there before. It was my first time I was there at all. But something in this place really talked to me. And I don't know if it's a saying in English, but I really felt a call from the universe. Like, I really felt that, okay, here's a place serving this shit. I'm sorry. But this. And you're in the middle of an industrial harbor. You're in the middle of where all the produces are. So why don't you start serving some of this fresh fish, which is landed and sold here at the Narrow? And this is where the cafe was. Like, why? It didn't make sense for me. So basically the reason why I was keen on this place was that I felt no one else have done this. Like, no one else is here. I was alone. No one else were there. There was no rush about this place in Denmark. So I kind of felt a need to do this. So I, it all went very fast. This was in January 21. And I started spending all my time in this city. I talked to the people. I talked to the locals. But I especially spent a lot of time being at the fish auction and talking to the mostly men, only men down there. And really, like, trying to ask them, okay, what is this place? Like, I'm from, I'm not from Copenhagen. I lived here. But I am from Jutland, that big part of Denmark, which makes a big difference when you just enter a room like that to a lot of old fishermen from the coast. So I was really, like, trying to move, move carefully, but also asking them, hey, you have all of this beautiful, fresh fish, which is just coming right in. Shouldn't we serve it as it deserves? Like, shouldn't we pay it all the respect that we need or that we can? And they were actually super curious about it. Like, they were kind of, it's difficult to get something positive out of them, but it's, they were, as much as I could tell, they were quite interested. But they gave me one advice, which were not only to serve fish. Like, I had to serve some kind of meat. But it all went very fast, as I said. So three months after, in May, we opened up Melvin, which means the tailwind, when the moves, when the wind moves you forward. And Melvin was a place where I served whole fish. I served fish. I served greens from the area, because two is a big production of farms and organic farms and agriculture, who's really taking care of the soil. And it's just out there. Like, we have a dude who's producing salt as well, and whiskey and beer, and it's all out there. So that's what I was serving, and suddenly people came from all over Denmark. They came to visit this place, because it was apparently a very good story to open up a fish restaurant at a harbor, which is very weird. But we did it, and I stood on. Like, I didn't serve any meat. I only served the local producers. And the locals, they really liked it. Like, they started coming there as a place to celebrate birthdays and date nights, and they really took it in as their place. And of course, there was a lot of tourists as well, because it is an attraction, apparently, to go, again, as I said, to go eat fish in a harbor. But it really turned out great. But then, after two years of running Melvin, I was 26 when I opened. So being a restaurateur as a 26-year-old is not always easy. It can be tough. And when you're a very passionate cook, and you just want to go there and be behind the pots and cook all day long with all of these beautiful producers, then it can be very tough to also manage the Excel documents, the economy, the shifts, all that stuff, the emails especially. Oh my God, I hate the emails. So after two years, I decided I had to shut down. I had an eager to see more. I wanted to explore more of the world. And luckily, I have a boyfriend who's also a chef, and we decided to travel around for almost two years. And we have been a lot of great places, mostly Europe, but really to eat and to drink and to explore what's out there. Because, of course, when you move as far away as I did, then you can easily be in a small bubble of not really that much happening. So we went out and had a great time outside of Denmark. But then in a time when you are cooks and chefs, and also when you tried working for yourself, then it kind of comes back to you that, oh, there is a dream about having your own place again. And then suddenly we had an opportunity to get back to exactly the same town, Hanstholm, to open up a new place here. This is the old lighthouse. It's exactly the same place, but now we're just in the city before we were at the harbor. This is an old place where they asked us if we could come and cook, because this place has just been empty for, I don't know, 20 years. And for us, it was the perfect match, because we needed something which was very flexible. This is a short lease. It's only six months. So we will be there cooking for the entire summer. But it fits perfectly with our ideas. And as us being young chefs, like we don't really want to commit to that much. We don't want to be in a death, which we should spend the next 30 years paying off. This is extremely low rent. And the landlords made us a contract, which is perfect, because they want us to be there, because there's no one else who wants to be there. So you're such wanted. They want you to be there. So you can almost make them do anything. And for us, and being built to last, and living a sustainable life, is for us to live in a very not binding way. Well, so with all of this, why is this important? Why do I tell you all of this? I often try to tell also the young students, which I really care about a lot, because that's the future, and they are the one who's going to go out there after you, and after us, and after me, to conquer this world, by sourcing the best producers as well. And what I tell them is that it is a tough industry. It is full of stress. It is full of a lot of pressure. And especially, it's tough to try to live up to some ideas about how to run a restaurant. Like, is food and restaurants only about the people who can fly in from the other side of the world to eat at your place? Is it about an old-school guide who might think you need a star or not? Or is it about making food for people who's also out there? There's also people in the outskirts and at the countryside living wanting nutrition, healthy food. And maybe their nearest restaurant is a McDonald's or a pizza place or a grill bar, as you saw before. If that's the nearest restaurant, and that's the only opportunity they have, I feel, as chef, a great responsibility to go out there and make them and supply them this nutrient-healthy food. And you can also, and that's just a smaller part of it, but you become someone in that city. You become a part of a social community. You become someone who knows your farmer, someone who knows their names, what their struggles are, their ecosystems, you know your neighbors, and then suddenly, you're someone, and that is for me, being built to last, and that is also for me, a meaningful life. Thank you.