AlchemistA red room, fifty impressions

Why the name

Refshaleøen, Copenhagen, Denmark — One menu of up to fifty impressions.

The official site calls the approach holistic cuisine. Alchemists once tried to purify a material, to ripen it, to bring it to a perfect state; the kitchen here applies that same ambition to food, and to the act of eating it.

An evening runs to fifty impressions at most, edible and inedible among them, across four to six hours and from one room to the next, each with its own images and sound. The site says in advance that it may not suit a business dinner or a first date.

Rasmus Munk is the chef. He has also written a manifesto for the approach, downloadable from the site, which sets gastronomy beside theatre and art, and beside science, technology and design. Read before the evening, it explains what the rooms are doing.

One room after another

The entrance is a double-height space with thin metal tubes hanging from the ceiling. Beyond it stands a wine cabinet running the full height of the wall, and past that the long table, with a small lamp at every place. The meal moves between rooms from there, so the table is not the whole of the evening.

Ceiling and walls carry projections, and the images do not settle. The same table looks like a different room twenty minutes later, which is part of how the sequence is built rather than decoration on top of it. Each room brings its own images and its own sound.

A manifesto you can download

Munk has written a manifesto for holistic cuisine, and the official site offers it as a download. In it, gastronomy is placed alongside theatre and art, and alongside science, technology and design, and the result is described as a sensory experience that advances the way a play does. Reading it before the evening makes the name easier to follow once the rooms start to change.