Nordic Chef Explores Backyard

Erik Refner for The New York Times

LAMMEFJORDEN, Denmark

Erik Refner for The New York Times

A dish of pickled vegetables, smoked bone marrow, flowers and herbs. More Photos »

WHEN a cook is said to be in the weeds, it usually means he is tangled up in too many orders coming at him too fast.

But on a recent afternoon on the seashore here about an hour’s drive from Copenhagen, the Danish chef René Redzepi was, quite literally, in the weeds. Up to his knees. And what he was doing was snacking. Browsing. Like a rabbit, albeit a rabbit in charge of a restaurant that has set the culinary world abuzz.

Treating the windswept brush as an unkempt salad bar, he plucked a thin green blade.

“This is how the Vikings got their vitamin C,” he said. “It’s called scurvy grass. It has a horseradish tone.”

So it did, and the wild garden sorrel that he found seconds later tasted every bit as sharp and lemony as he had promised. For 15 minutes he and a companion nibbled on various petals, leaves and shoots, attracting stares from onlookers in a campground nearby, who no doubt wondered at their sanity and zest for roughage.

“So much of what you see here, it’s edible,” said Mr. Redzepi, who regularly dispatches his staff to collect the scurvy grass and sorrel, as well as what he called sea coriander, beach mustard and bellflowers. All of these make their way into his dishes, along with puffin eggs from Iceland and musk-ox meat from Greenland.

A Danish Chef Draws Worldwide Acclaim - NYTimes.com