New Nordic men: cooking, masculinity and nordicness in René Redzepi’s Noma and Claus Meyer’s Almanak

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the constructions and negotiations of masculine identity in New Nordic Cuisine. It focuses on cookbooks by the leading figures, namely Claus Meyer and René Redzepi. The article argues that Meyer and Redzepi represent different negotiations of Nordic culinary masculinity played out in distinct culinary spaces: respectively the domestic and the professional kitchen. At the same time, both men make great effort to distance their culinary practices not only from a traditional understanding of women’s everyday cooking, but also from the food and gender practices of hypermasculine chefs. Meyer and Redzepi both strike a precarious balance: not becoming too close to “the feminine,” but simultaneously remaining distinct from traditional, culinary masculinity.