With great anticipation, culinary enthusiasts all around have eagerly awaited the opening of Rasmus Munk’s Restaurant Alchemist.

Within only minutes after officially opening reservation lines, the restaurant was booked for months and the dedicated crew got to work. To create the most stunning and undiluted experience for every single guest, details about the restaurant, such as the interior or the menu were kept a strict secret…

…and then

the doors of Alchemist opened –  and the lucky ones who were quick enough to secure the first reservation spots were invited to step into Rasmus’ culinary world full of art and sensual explorations.

In this series, we want to give you some impressions of the artful creations you can find at Alchemist.

Kaki Gori

Kaki Gori is a traditional Japanese dessert, made from freshly shaved ice. Other than the less sophisticated, Americanised derivation – hard ice crystals, loaded in sugars and artificial color, a Kaki Gori has an intriguingly fluffy consistency, almost like fresh snow paired with fine concoctions of fruit juices.

Fun Fact: It was the Kaki Gori, that brought the Hoshizaki Ice Maker range into the attention span of Rasmus, who was working with Gram Refrigeration for a while. Visiting Japan on one of his culinary
travels, Rasmus passed a shop selling traditional Kaki Gori and was instantly drawn by this artful, but unpretentiously simple Japanese dessert creation. The impression was lasting, so he decided to put his version of Kaki Gori on the menu of the newly opened and ground-breaking restaurant.

FROM JAPAN TO DENMARK

For Alchemist’s Kaki Gori, the dessert is made from slowly shaving ice into extremely thin slices. Flavored with a concoction of condensed milk and bergamot syrup and topped with a cloud of bergamot-flavored milk foam.

BERGAMOT

Bergamot is a citrus plant, cultivated mainly for its fragrant purposes in teas and essential oils. It was created as a hybrid from sweet lime (citrus limetta) crossed with bitter orange (citrus x aurantium). The syrup he uses to flavor the shaved ice, as well as the milk foam, is made from the peel of these fragrant bergamot fruits. Usually, Bergamot is processed to oil, the green gold, a staple in perfume industry, but also the man flavoring agent in Earl Grey Tea.

CLEAR & COMPACT ICE

The secret behind a good Kaki Gori is the quality of the ice. To withstand the shaving process, and to maintain its fluffy snow-like consistency, the base ice needs to be extremely hard, clear, and dry. At its most sophisticated form, the ice is traditionally taken from blocks of carefully frozen, pure spring water. At Alchemist, located in the heart of Copenhagen, and far away from Japanese spring water dwells, Rasmus trusts the smart technology of Gram Freezing Cabinets, to create a flawless base for his Kaki Gori.

While Rasmus trusts Hoshizaki Cubers for his cocktail creations, for Kaki Gori, he needs very big blocks of ice.  These he makes himself by carefully slow freezing pure water in one of his GRAM Freezer Cabinets.

In order to produce the perfect base for ice-shaving, he creates optimal freezing conditions by being able to control the temperature precisely. It is crucial to decrease the freezing speed to a point where no air bubbles are trapped inside, resulting in perfectly clear and compact ice.

Best-in-class insulation is the key when looking for Freezers that are able to slow-freeze water into crystal clear ice blocks. But it also plays a role when trying to keep energy costs down, as the cold air is safely trapped inside the cabinet.

SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is a topic of particular importance to the 28-year old restaurant owner, who was awarded two Michelin-Stars at once, and only months after opening. “The quality of my kitchen’s products is paramount at all times”, he explains. “But next to this I am aware of my responsibility as a business owner. I make sure that I make smart choices, always on the search for regional produce and suppliers. At Alchemist, we put a lot of thought into waste management solutions. After doing all that, it is a given that we actively partner only with suppliers who support me as a restaurant owner to reduce my energy and water consumption significantly.”

…it is a given that we actively partner only with suppliers who support me as a restaurant owner to reduce my energy and water consumption significantly.