ERIC VILDGAARD
young people. On his return he went to work at Copenhagen restaurant Almanac, a time that was both fun and educational for him. “It was a restaurant with many covers; it was very stressful and a good education,” he says. A relatively happy time ended when
both his parents died within a short time of each other and he “jumped into the darkness”. Everything else around him lost significance as he descended into a time of abuse – until a friend made him go and work a shift at a restaurant. Walking into the kitchen that day filled him with peace, he says. It was a return to a comfort zone. “I remember the only thing that mattered was I could hear this frying pan – I didn’t know the chef handling it, but I said to him: ‘Hey your frying pan is too hot.’ It was instinct, it was so reassuring to experience that,” he says. On that day he met his future wife, Tina, who ran the front of house. He credits her with turning around his life. When they met, he was at his lowest, but they fell in love. “Until I met my wife, my life choices were wrong; I followed a dark path,” he says. “She gave me permission to be who I am, but she also gave me a choice – she said: ‘If we are going to be together you need to choose, do you want us or your other world? You can’t have both.’ I love her so much that it was the easiest choice I have made in my life.” A year after meeting they decided to
open a restaurant together and started to prepare for their own place. The owner of the restaurant where they met declared bankruptcy, closed the restaurants and left all staff with no wages weeks before Christmas. It was a bruising experience. Put off by high rents on the sites in central Copenhagen, where Vildgaard really wanted to open, they settled on the restaurant of a three-star hotel in Gentofte outside the city center. Jordnær was a new start for Vildgaard and a chance to build something significant alongside his wife.
After the experience with the previous owner, they were determined For more go to
fcsi.org
to stand on their own two feet with no external investors; they didn’t want to answer to anyone. “If we have a third- party investor in the restaurant, we would have to give away part of the ownership and we didn’t want that. We had no money, so we sold everything in order to buy plates, cutlery and glasses. We knew we had to make money to survive so we accepted conferences and receptions.”
What’s important
Five years in and with two Michelin stars, a full dining room and plaudits from diners and critics, this is a sweet time for Vildgaard. Not that it has been easy. Between them, the couple has six children and a determination to make it all work in balance. It works because they know they work with compromise, as he says: “Ideally, we’d be home every day at 4pm and see the kids, but we work four days. We say that when we are here, we are committed to be at work. I say to the team let’s not waste time, when we’re here we do our very best because if it is a waste of time then what’s it worth?” At the core, this is about working out what is important at this time. “For us it is to be fulfilled as human beings by doing what we love, and we really do, and we don’t feel we have to compromise what we do because of the kids,” he says. “I think many of my friends might end up grumpy and say they didn’t make it because of the kids, but I say let’s make it because of the kids.” They live near the restaurant; staff dinners are a family affair and the children can be involved in the day-to- day life at Jordnær. Is the quest now to achieve a third star? “Of course I would like to have a third star hanging on the door from a perspective of personal ambition, and to be acknowledged among the best in the world,” he says, but adds it won’t happen at any cost. “I don’t want to compromise what we
have now, to go for the ambition, because it’s not Michelin that pays the rent, it is the guest,” he states. In time, he says, he
“It is OK not to go the straight way… in your own way you’ll arrive where you need to be and you’ll feel peace with yourself”
would like to put his own experience to use and help young people coming from similar backgrounds to his own. “My end goal in life is to have a project with young people, that is where I see myself in 20 years, that would be the dream,” he says. “I want people to understand it is OK not to go the straight way, it is OK to be a misfit; in your own way you will arrive where you need to be and if you get the guidance, you will feel peace with yourself.” And while he was once “the worst leader you can imagine”, he has grown into his role as a mentor in the restaurant and feels a big responsibility for his staff. “I am an alumnus of Noma, and I would like there to be alumni of Jordnær,” he says. “I hope to spread my love for the trade and when people leave here they will take that with them so they can pass it on to the next generation.” Striking and rapid though it may be, the shift inside him happened quite naturally – all it took, he says, was to be acknowledged as a human being. “I was always searching for a place to belong, that is why I was in and out of gangs and hanging out with the wrong crowd. I needed them, but now I can choose to be a nice person and it is not hard, it’s much harder to pretend to be something that you’re not and for the first time in many years I felt accepted,” he says. “This has been a long journey, but I found peace.”
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DAVID EGUI / JJESPER RAIS
WORLDWIDE
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