Christian Pulgisi, Relae, and Sustainability

I recently bought a cookbook called Relae that is based on a restaurant in Copenhagen that recently won both the 2015 and 2016 sustainable restaurant award presented by World's 50 Best Restaurants. I thought the book was inspiring and wanted to share some of the thoughts and works expressed by the executive chef and owner Christian Pulgisi.

Pulgisi started cooking at a young age and worked around Europe traveling and staging with some of the best chefs and restaurants in the world. He worked at Le Taillevent in Paris, El Bulli in Girona, and finally ended up at Noma, Copenhagen, where he worked as the sous chef to Renè Redzepi, thought to be one of the greatest chefs in the world/of all time.

Pulgisi doesn't believe that the current or popular idea of sustainability within restaurants is what it should be. He states that the goal of a restaurant should not be total or complete sustainability, but rather how to fit the ecology of the surrounding environment best to the practices of the individual restaurant. Moreover, Pulgisi is reworking the idea of fine dining and haute cuisine and how a creative and high end kitchen doesn't necessarily have to be expensive: "The weakness of Italian quality and fine dining restaurants, is the fine dining concept. Why should progressive, modern and creative kitchen remain closed in the fine dining experience kind of restaurant, or the super expensive restaurant? You talk a lot about crisis in Italy… but where is the problem to open a restaurant that is not that expensive?! Does this mean that you cannot make a high quality and interesting kitchen?! No!"

I think this outlook on the restaurant industry is unique and will be something that expands in popularity in the coming years. However, the movement for this must be lead by chefs and celebrity chefs around the world. Using molecular gastronomy, fine dining, and other forms of high end cuisine will form the next generation of gastronomic advancement that helps to benefit more issues than just taste and the performance of the dining experience.