After my lunch at Noma, feeling happy, full and slightly awestruck, I found the chef, Rene Redzepi, sitting on the deck of his houseboat-experimental kitchen overlooking Copenhagen harbour. The sea was pewter, the sky sifted thunderheads incipient with rain. Diminutive, young, a little weary, he pushed a flop of dark hair out of his eyes, shook my hand and politely asked how my lunch had been.

“It was amazing.” I told him, “It was like going for a walk along the Danish coast, coming across a dappled glade, a rock pool, a patch of pine forest, a stony cove—and eating it.”

Together with his business partner Claus Meyer, Redzepi has forged a new concept of Nordic cuisine. Their restaurant, Noma, has just been voted the best in the world at the San Pellegrino awards. Redzepi, who is only 32, told me he never wanted a “white tablecloth” kind of establishment.