I go to a restaurant to get away from the awful news for a few hours. I care deeply about climate change, yet I don’t necessarily go to a restaurant to worry about it even more. But I’d be lying if I told you that I want to eat at Alchemist. Look, I like to think of myself as an ally of risk-takers and envelope-pushers, and it would be all too easy to mock an enterprise that appears to edge perilously close to the restaurant in Always Be My Maybe, the one at which Keanu Reeves, in headphones, sheds tears for the animal that has died so that he can be fed.
(The ancient alchemists were con men, but whatever.) He calls it “holistic cuisine.” “In the same way as the ancient alchemists sought to fuse philosophy, natural science, religion and the arts to create a new understanding of the world order, the aim of Holistic Cuisine is to redefine and broaden our understanding of the concept of dining,” the Alchemist site tells you. No need to slap a category on all of this. The red coloration comes from cherry juice. Munk told me that when the dome was completed, he instructed the designer to go back to the drawing board because he felt that his panorama of the aurora borealis and floating jellyfish was slightly askew. Diners at Alchemist sit in darkness, at places illuminated by tiny lamps, and gaze upon a domed vista of a sky filled with stars. Then we ambled into what resembled the interior of an observatory. Then we moved into a wine cellar that looked like something out of The Matrix-8,000 bottles stacked three stories high in glass towers with transparent glass floors. We stepped inside and beheld a Roy Lichtenstein–style tableau of New York City street scenes from graffiti artist Lady Aiko. I met 28-year-old chef Rasmus Munk outside what appeared to be a warehouse. But nothing could have prepared me for Alchemist. The Danish city has been a vortex of culinary innovation for about 15 years now, thanks to the ripple effect of chef René Redzepi’s Noma. I have visited thousands of restaurants in my lifetime, but over the summer I got an early peek at the strangest one I’ve ever seen. It’s made from the livers of geese that haven’t been force-fed. At Copenhagen’s Alchemist, dishes like “Food for Thought” (foie gras topped with aerated foie gras foam) are meant to make you, uh, think.
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