🇩🇰 Denmark · Italian cuisine · b. 1982
The Sicilian-Norwegian chef who built Copenhagen's most influential post-Noma restaurant.
Christian F. Puglisi is a Sicilian-born, Norwegian-raised chef who built one of the most influential restaurant groups of the post-Noma generation in Copenhagen. Born in Catania, Sicily, in 1982 to a Sicilian father and a Norwegian mother, Puglisi moved to Norway as a child and trained at the Hotel and Restaurant School in Oslo before staging at Taillevent in Paris and El Bulli in Roses. In 2006 he joined the opening team of Noma under René Redzepi, rising to head chef within four years.
In 2010, at the age of twenty-eight, Puglisi opened Relæ on Jægersborggade in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen — a then-unfashionable street the restaurant immediately changed. Relæ was the first restaurant in the world to receive a Michelin star while operating without tablecloths, without traditional table service (cutlery, menus and bread were stored in drawers under each table for guests to set themselves) and on a fully certified-organic supply chain. It held its star continuously from 2012 until its closure in 2020 and was at one point ranked No. 39 on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. In 2016 it became the first restaurant in the world to receive the Michelin Sustainable Restaurant Award (the precursor of the Green Star).
Around Relæ, Puglisi built a small group of more casual restaurants that became equally influential: Manfreds, an organic wine bar and small-plates restaurant directly across the street; Mirabelle, an organic bakery and pasta-and-pizza restaurant; Bæst, an organic pizzeria with its own in-house mozzarella-making operation using milk from a single biodynamic farm in Jutland; and the cheese-and-yoghurt dairy Mirabelle Spiseri. He closed Relæ in 2020 during the pandemic, citing a desire to focus on the more casual restaurants and his family, and has since reduced his public profile while continuing to operate the group.
Organic sourcing as the non-negotiable starting point. Puglisi argues that a chef who is not also a fully engaged buyer — visiting the farms, paying the prices that allow organic and biodynamic agriculture to survive, and rewriting the menu around what those farms can actually produce — is not really cooking but only assembling. Relæ's no-tablecloth, no-bread-basket, drawer-of-cutlery format was designed as a corollary: the savings on linen, on serving brigade and on imported foie gras went directly into paying farmers more.
One Michelin star (2012–2020); World's 50 Best Restaurants ranking; first holder of the Michelin Sustainable Restaurant Award (2016).
Organic wine bar and small-plates restaurant across Jægersborggade from Relæ; opened 2010, still operating.
Organic bakery, pasta and pizza restaurant; opened 2014.
Organic pizzeria with its own in-house mozzarella production using milk from a single biodynamic farm in Jutland; opened 2014.
These recipes from our database reflect the italian cooking tradition that Christian works in. They are not direct reproductions of Christian's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“If you cannot afford to pay the farmer what the vegetable costs to grow well, then you cannot afford to put that vegetable on the menu. It is that simple.”
— Relæ: A Book of Ideas (2014)
“We took the tablecloths off because every tablecloth is a kilo of cotton that someone, somewhere, had to grow.”
— Eater interview (2015)
Graduates from the Hotel and Restaurant School in Oslo.
Stages at Taillevent in Paris and at El Bulli in Roses, Catalonia.
Joins the opening team of Noma in Copenhagen under René Redzepi.
Promoted to head chef of Noma.
Leaves Noma; opens Relæ and Manfreds on Jægersborggade, Nørrebro, Copenhagen.
Relæ awarded its first Michelin star — the first ever for a restaurant without tablecloths.
Opens Mirabelle bakery and Bæst pizzeria; publishes Relæ: A Book of Ideas with Ten Speed Press.
Relæ wins the inaugural Michelin Sustainable Restaurant Award.
Closes Relæ during the pandemic; continues to operate Manfreds, Mirabelle and Bæst.
No. Christian Puglisi closed Relæ in August 2020, after ten years and eight consecutive years of Michelin recognition. He cited the impact of the pandemic, a desire to focus on his more casual restaurants (Manfreds, Mirabelle and Bæst) and his family. The other restaurants in the group remain open.
Yes. Puglisi joined the opening team of Noma in 2006 and was promoted to head chef by 2009, a position he held until leaving in 2010 to open Relæ. He is part of a generation of chefs — including Matt Orlando, Esben Holmboe Bang and Rosio Sánchez — who passed through Noma in its early years and then opened independently in Copenhagen and beyond.
When Relæ opened in 2010 it was the first European fine-dining restaurant of its standard to operate without tablecloths, without bread service and without a full front-of-house brigade — guests retrieved their own cutlery and menus from a drawer under the table. The format was a deliberate ethical and economic statement: the savings on linen, china and labour funded a fully certified-organic supply chain. In 2012 the restaurant became the first in the world to receive a Michelin star while operating this way.
Both restaurants source milk exclusively from Naturmælk, a cooperative of biodynamic and organic dairy farmers in southern Jutland. The Bæst pizzeria produces its own mozzarella, ricotta and fior di latte daily on the premises using only this milk — a system Puglisi developed after several years of work with Italian cheesemaking consultants.
Both. He was born in Catania, Sicily, to a Sicilian father and a Norwegian mother, and moved to Norway as a small child. He trained in Oslo, lived and cooked in Denmark from 2006, and holds both Italian and Norwegian citizenship.
Read more on Wikipedia