Open Kitchen

Launching a new restaurant isn’t for the faint of heart, says the Australian chef Beau Clugston.

“You stand on a cliff and you're scared,” he recently told us. “Will the parachute open if I jump?”

As metaphors go, it’s a pretty good one.

After all, as a former Guardian restaurant critic once put it, “the economics of setting up a new restaurant are scary in good times and terrifying in bad ones”.

And that was before the pandemic.

So who on earth would open a restaurant right now — and why?

Well, in episode 2, we meet four people who have done just that — or at least are trying to.

First, we meet the Canadian chef Jonathan Tam, who spent a decade at the Copenhagen restaurant Relæ, before deciding to launch his own eatery in the Danish capital — JATAK.

Smooth sailing? Anything but.

Jonathan explains why he’s been on a roller coaster of a journey so far.

Then we pay a flying visit to cocktail bar Bird to meet Peter Altenburg, a bartender who called time on his old joint right before the pandemic and says the time is right for his new concept.

We also speak to Ann Lee, who toured the world in a Japanese punk band before winding up in Oslo by way of Silicon Valley and has just launched La Mayor — her 14th eatery in six years.

Finally, we meet the Danish chef Claus Henriksen, who left the Michelin-starred restaurant Dragsholm Slot last year after 13 years and has just launched his first restaurant, MOTA — but only after a cruel twist of fate threatened to dash his dream.

Indeed, each guest has an incredible story to tell about the long and winding road to opening day.

Each guest explains why they had to close one chapter of their life in order to open another.

And each reveals how they summoned the courage to stand on that cliff and leap into the void.