An innovative chef from Denmark is literally taking dining to new heights.
Rasmus Munk of the two Michelin star-rated Alchemist restaurant in Copenhagen has announced he would serve six diners aboard a round capsule that will be flown up to the stratosphere by a hydrogen balloon next year. That’s 30,000 meters up in the sky.
The 32-year-old Munk’s menu will consist of no-cook dishes as there would be no open flame cooking for fire safety, according to the announcement by Alchemist, which ranks fifth in the World’s Best 50 Restaurants guide of 2023.
The stomach-churning altitude may be more bearable than the $495,000 price of each ticket for the high adventure aboard the Space Perspective Spaceship Neptune, the world’s first carbon-neutral spaceship.
Meanwhile, a cooking demonstration by another innovative chef from Austria went awry early this month.
The Lenten dish — fish fritters and a roux-based potato salad on the side — had fishermen and conservationists freaking out when they learned that the chef had fried a Frauennerfling (rutilus pigus).
The fish, native to the Danube river and nearby watercourses, was declared an endangered species in Austria in 2002 because it was on the brink of extinction. Lower Austria’s fishery association filed a complaint against the unnamed chef.
The chef issued a public apology, saying he did not know that the fish caught by a friend was endangered.
“It was a chain of unfortunate events because I trusted my friend who had a license to fish a related species and thought that it included this fish,” he told Agence France-Presse.
The chef and fisherman have been having sleepless nights, with the former worrying that his restaurant in a national park could suffer severe losses.