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Relæ: A Book of Ideas
Chef Christian F. Puglisi opened restaurant Relæ in 2010 on a rough, run-down stretch of one of Copenhagen’s most crime-ridden streets. His goal was simple: to serve impeccable, intelligent, sustainable, and plant-centric food of the highest quality—in a setting that was devoid of the pretention and frills of conventional high-end restaurant dining. Relæ was an immediate hit, and Puglisi’s “to the bone” ethos—which emphasized innovative, substantive cooking over crisp white tablecloths or legions of water-pouring, napkin-folding waiters—became a rallying cry for chefs around the world.
Today the Jægersborggade—where Relæ and its more casual sister restaurant, Manfreds, are located—is one of Copenhagen’s most vibrant and exciting streets. And Puglisi continues to excite and surprise diners with his genre-defying, wildly inventive cooking.
Relæ is Puglisi’s much-anticipated debut: like his restaurants, the book is honest, unconventional, and challenges our expectations of what a cookbook should be. Rather than focusing on recipes, the core of the book is a series of interconnected “idea essays,” which reveal the ingredients, practical techniques, and philosophies that inform Puglisi’s cooking. Each essay is connected to one (or many) of the dishes he serves, and readers are invited to flip through the book in whatever sequence inspires them—from idea to dish and back to idea again. The result is a deeply personal, utterly unique reading experience: a rare glimpse into the mind of a top chef, and the opportunity to learn the language of one of the world’s most pioneering and acclaimed restaurants.
Today the Jægersborggade—where Relæ and its more casual sister restaurant, Manfreds, are located—is one of Copenhagen’s most vibrant and exciting streets. And Puglisi continues to excite and surprise diners with his genre-defying, wildly inventive cooking.
Relæ is Puglisi’s much-anticipated debut: like his restaurants, the book is honest, unconventional, and challenges our expectations of what a cookbook should be. Rather than focusing on recipes, the core of the book is a series of interconnected “idea essays,” which reveal the ingredients, practical techniques, and philosophies that inform Puglisi’s cooking. Each essay is connected to one (or many) of the dishes he serves, and readers are invited to flip through the book in whatever sequence inspires them—from idea to dish and back to idea again. The result is a deeply personal, utterly unique reading experience: a rare glimpse into the mind of a top chef, and the opportunity to learn the language of one of the world’s most pioneering and acclaimed restaurants.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published October 28, 2014
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278 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 19, 2015
If you know any foodies, particularly foodies who take their own cooking seriously, Relae could make a striking gift book. The book shares the name of author Christian F. Puglisi’s Copenhagen restaurant. This is a substantial book, filled with gorgeous photos, and beautifully bound in a sort of eco-industrial style.
Relae isn’t really a cookbook, though is has a generous recipe collection. Instead, it is, as its cover states, a book of ideas. The idea sections begin the book and are marked by notches in the manner of an unabridged dictionary. Headings include “Liquids,” “Animal,” “Manipulations,” “Texture,” and “Theory.” Each section is composed of a series of short (usually two-page) essays. The “Liquids” section, for example, has essays titled “Water,” “Wine,” “Fruit Vinegars,” and “Extra-Virgin Olive Oil.”
One of the pleasures of this book is sifting through the essays, using them as starting places for one’s own culinary explorations. For example, I hadn’t thought of water quality as an issue in cooking—it comes out of the tap, and I use it. Puglisi, however, has a special water-processing system also used by one high-end Copenhagen coffee roaster. (I also learned from my wife that her employer, the U.S. coffee roasting company Peet’s, triple filters all the water used in the roasting process and in the drinks they serve at their retail shops.) While this might seem pretentious at first, Puglisi reminds us that “A cup of coffee is 99 percent water…. It doesn’t take a degree in chemistry to figure out that when reducing a stock… as the water evaporates [it becomes] even tougher for all the flavors and aromas to come through.” These are the kind of ruminations at the heart of Relae.
Many of recipes in Relae strike my non-Scandinavian palate as quixotic: Lumpfish Roe, Daikon, and Almonds; Pickled Skate, Mussels, and Celery Root; Potato, Seaweed, and Peccorino. Fankly, I really won’t be using the recipe half of the book except for a few of the “Herbivorous Starters.” Cooking them will require determined searching-out of ingredients and plenty of time for the multi-step preparations.
If you’re looking for a book of recipes you can serve for dinner on weeknights, Relae won’t do you any good. It may even be too ambitious for your more complex entertainment cooking. But if you like thinking about cooking and food in all its various forms, you’ll find Relae a title to pick up for interesting reading.
Relae isn’t really a cookbook, though is has a generous recipe collection. Instead, it is, as its cover states, a book of ideas. The idea sections begin the book and are marked by notches in the manner of an unabridged dictionary. Headings include “Liquids,” “Animal,” “Manipulations,” “Texture,” and “Theory.” Each section is composed of a series of short (usually two-page) essays. The “Liquids” section, for example, has essays titled “Water,” “Wine,” “Fruit Vinegars,” and “Extra-Virgin Olive Oil.”
One of the pleasures of this book is sifting through the essays, using them as starting places for one’s own culinary explorations. For example, I hadn’t thought of water quality as an issue in cooking—it comes out of the tap, and I use it. Puglisi, however, has a special water-processing system also used by one high-end Copenhagen coffee roaster. (I also learned from my wife that her employer, the U.S. coffee roasting company Peet’s, triple filters all the water used in the roasting process and in the drinks they serve at their retail shops.) While this might seem pretentious at first, Puglisi reminds us that “A cup of coffee is 99 percent water…. It doesn’t take a degree in chemistry to figure out that when reducing a stock… as the water evaporates [it becomes] even tougher for all the flavors and aromas to come through.” These are the kind of ruminations at the heart of Relae.
Many of recipes in Relae strike my non-Scandinavian palate as quixotic: Lumpfish Roe, Daikon, and Almonds; Pickled Skate, Mussels, and Celery Root; Potato, Seaweed, and Peccorino. Fankly, I really won’t be using the recipe half of the book except for a few of the “Herbivorous Starters.” Cooking them will require determined searching-out of ingredients and plenty of time for the multi-step preparations.
If you’re looking for a book of recipes you can serve for dinner on weeknights, Relae won’t do you any good. It may even be too ambitious for your more complex entertainment cooking. But if you like thinking about cooking and food in all its various forms, you’ll find Relae a title to pick up for interesting reading.
June 1, 2019
A thought-provoking and thoughtfully-constructed book. The perspective here is somewhat different than other New Nordics, due to the chef’s Italian heritage, among other things. I particularly liked the thorough discussion of ideas up front, and how each recipe was cross-referenced with the specific ideas deployed.
May 26, 2015
Interesting ideas, a nice story about how he and his restaurant got where they are. A little stiff in the writing and a little too much "I thought of this first" kind of feeling for thing that probably predated his birth. But enjoyable nonetheless. There are no "recipes" per se - there are descriptions of dishes with general outlines of how they're made, but no proportions or measurements or detailed methods. It's more of a chef's workbook.
Oops - I have to edit this. It was a vagary of the Kindle format - when it hit the end of these chef's workbook notes, it flipped to "rate this book" as if it was over. I was about to delete it when I realized that it showed I was only 60% of the way through the book - I went back into it, and all the recipes are there, detailed, as an appendix, which the Kindle format had coded as outside the text of the book. So, there are recipes!
Oops - I have to edit this. It was a vagary of the Kindle format - when it hit the end of these chef's workbook notes, it flipped to "rate this book" as if it was over. I was about to delete it when I realized that it showed I was only 60% of the way through the book - I went back into it, and all the recipes are there, detailed, as an appendix, which the Kindle format had coded as outside the text of the book. So, there are recipes!
January 5, 2019
An aptly named cookbook, “A Book of Ideas”, or at least for most home cooks. Puglisi takes an innovative approach to food that mixes his Danish and Italian heritage into the Nordic/Modernist cooking movement: think elbulli meets noma. If you are interested in following how a very curious, creative and innovative chef thinks through the creation of his very complex dishes (thermomix, dehydrator, fermenting, vacuum sealing are common techniques), this book of ideas is for you. I poured over the text but I will never make even one recipe. However, the book has made me think about food, meals and even restaurants differently.
August 19, 2022
Amazing book about food - part cookbook, part biography of a restaurant, part textbook, and part collection of essays about food and culinary ideas.
It was pretty hard to track down and while it looks like a cookbook, the recipes are actually an appendix to the rest of the book, which details some of the creative thought process used by chef Christian Puglisi and his team at Relæ in Copenhagen.
Haven't ever seen a book quite like it, and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in creative cooking and restaurants.
It was pretty hard to track down and while it looks like a cookbook, the recipes are actually an appendix to the rest of the book, which details some of the creative thought process used by chef Christian Puglisi and his team at Relæ in Copenhagen.
Haven't ever seen a book quite like it, and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in creative cooking and restaurants.
November 6, 2024
Um livro interessante em que se descortina outra vertente da cozinha nórdica. Ficamos a conhecer a história inicial e os princípios orientadores de um restaurante que marcou a cozinha contemporânea de Copenhaga, porventura o primeiro a utilizar exclusivamente produtos orgânicos certificados. O chefe apresenta as suas ideias sobre o que deve ser a gastronomia, a sua aproximação aos produtos, técnicas e métodos, para além de fornecer as receitas dos principais pratos que foram produzidos enquanto o restaurante Relæ esteve aberto, entre 2010 e 2020.
March 22, 2022
Very inspirational cookbook. Though I won’t be using any of its recipes directly, it gave me a bunch of new ideas for textures and flavor pairings.
The author also had an amusing obsession with Jerusalem artichoke, so if you want to get some ideas about how to work with it, that’s another good reason to get this book. It also persuaded me to hunt down pear vinegar.
The author also had an amusing obsession with Jerusalem artichoke, so if you want to get some ideas about how to work with it, that’s another good reason to get this book. It also persuaded me to hunt down pear vinegar.
March 28, 2024
One of the the best book about restauranteurs life and THE BEST BOOK to anyone who want to start their journey. Also, Chris really explains how nordic regions of the world can enrich their own ingredients
Really a true book for the professional kitchens and dedicated home cooks enthusiastic, regular home cook not at all.
Really a true book for the professional kitchens and dedicated home cooks enthusiastic, regular home cook not at all.
May 23, 2024
umm sorry why did the author brag about how he helped to gentrify the neighborhood his restaurant is in? why did he talk about how he went to visit the place he gets his olive oil from and when he saw the “stressed workers” performing tedious work, said “yes this is the olive oil for me”…? most of the “ideas” weren’t especially original anyway calm down little guy
July 6, 2025
One of my biggest regrets in my life is that I've missed a visit to other nordic countries while I was studying in Finland. Now it's too late to visit Relae - since the restaurant has closed few years from now.
I can only imagine the experience & ideas of it through this amazing book.
I can only imagine the experience & ideas of it through this amazing book.
June 16, 2017
An eye opener
I like the idea this book urges the readers slash culinary maverics to think beyond the norm, but still respecting the classics.
I like the idea this book urges the readers slash culinary maverics to think beyond the norm, but still respecting the classics.
October 30, 2017
This book is my bible..
July 24, 2022
Such a great book. Thought process behind the dishes is revealed, which is way more important then exact recipes.
February 26, 2015
This is not a recipe book. But that's not entirely a bad thing. It really is a book of culinary ideas, many of them truly original. I can understand the motivation behind not revealing all of your secrets but to release a cookbook (like, with listed dishes and pictures for each one) without ingredient lists, temperatures, and specific methodologies belies a certain lack of confidence.
There are many ideas in here, however, that never would have occurred to me though they do not have to be implemented in a "molecular gastronomy" context. Infusing the milk for a mashed potato dish with the skins from baked potatoes is awesome, and entirely within reach for every cook.
In the end, I am glad I read it but it felt like more of an effective advertisement for the restaurant than an educational text. And so: it should be less expensive.
There are many ideas in here, however, that never would have occurred to me though they do not have to be implemented in a "molecular gastronomy" context. Infusing the milk for a mashed potato dish with the skins from baked potatoes is awesome, and entirely within reach for every cook.
In the end, I am glad I read it but it felt like more of an effective advertisement for the restaurant than an educational text. And so: it should be less expensive.
April 14, 2015
As a series of essays reflecting on cooking and an attention of detail that really goes into gourmet food, this is an excellent book. Puglisi clearly has thought out many of smallest details and writes eloquently but concisely about about the deployment of much of the food science/devotion to quality. He focuses upon various items like "butter" or "mussels", tells a little story, and links to various recipes. At the end, it is clear why the recipes work but to be honest, for me to attempt any of the recipes would be a direct violation of his localist credo.
October 23, 2015
favorite "cookbook" of the year
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews