What a relief: “Fine dining is dying,” says Christian Puglisi, head chef at Copenhagen Restaurant Relæ and the the wine bar Manfreds. It is soon over with reserving the best stuff for the snobs at the overly pretentious fine ding restaurants where you have to dress and behave properly. “Good food of high quality is going to become more accessible,” Puglisi predicts.

Puglisi is no average chef. After a job as deputy top chef at restaurant noma he now runs one-Michelin star Relæ which is a true innovation in restaurants, with lots of atmosphere and very good food. But his Manfreds og Vin, at the other side of the not so posh Jægersborggade in the not so posh Nørrebro neighbourhood in Copenhagen, is even more of a sensation: A small, unassuming wine bar packed with people and extraordinarily good food that you consume in a simple and homely setting. It is everything you want when you need food before going out in the city. The quality is gourmet but the style is friendly and the place human sized.

Puglisi has shown the way for good dining that is not fine. He made his prediction about fine dining dying in a round table discussion hosted by the global lifestyle magazine Monocle. The first result from the round table is an article in the print magazine Monocle 59, 239-24, and will soon also appear on the radio version of Monocle’s content, monocle.com/24.

Monocle round table group: Christian Puglisi, Søren Ejlersen, me, Rosio Sanchez. (Photo: Jan Søndergaard)

I was fortunate enough to be part of the round table event conducted by Michael Booth for Monocle. Søren Ejlersen from organic food retailer Aarstiderne was there also, as well as Rosio Sanchez, dessert chef at noma. Her prediction for the future is anywhere as mind-blowing as Puglisis: “What would be great would be if farmers moved into being chefs more.”

So there you are with the future of good meals: Gifted chefs offering their gifts in livable places — true restaurants that will restore your mind and body. And gifted farmers cooking for us all, teaching the chefs how to deal with their produce. And chefs becoming farmers, as many leading restaurants already have shown the way to.

Dining is about to become fun. At the moment for the few, in the future for the many.

PS: My own prediction? Wild food will be the coming mega trend.

From Monocle