00:04
David Posey
I chose Trees at l'Estaque by Georges Braque. It's a painting made in 1908.

00:09
David Posey
I saw it and I was like, oh, that's our endive salad on our menu now. The endives are organized yet haphazardly, which reminds me of the limbs and the leaves of the trees.

00:19
David Posey
I chose this painting because of the movement, the colors, the feeling of walking through the woods, but having it be very modern and very abstract, harsh lines, as opposed to the very organic, soft lines of nature. This painting makes me feel very open, like wandering through a forest, but very closed with no horizon and the jagged edges of what I'm guessing are the path through these trees.

00:44
David Posey
I get inspiration for our food here from many different things. So, this painting really resonated with me.

00:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today our guest is David Posey, a Danish chef. Welcome, David.

01:19
David Posey
Thanks for having me.

01:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We are very happy to have you here. You have a restaurant in Chicago called Elske. What made you decide to call your restaurant Elske, which means love in Danish? You opened it with your wife Anna, so maybe this has something to do with the love declaration.

01:39
David Posey
Absolutely. There's a lot of different kinds of stories behind it. My mom is Danish. She lived in Grindsted until she was 32. So we would always go back to Denmark and visit relatives, and I just fell in love with the country.

01:53
David Posey
And then I proposed to my wife in Copenhagen in front of a Hans Christian Andersen statue. And then we had a beautiful lunch at Noma afterwards. And just the whole meaning of love: it's our love for each other, for the restaurant industry, for food and for serving people and hospitality. It's a word that means a lot to us.

02:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you have been in an episode of The Bear, the tv series about running a restaurant in, I think, Chicago, where it takes place. How did that come about? How did the team approach you to be a location on the show and have Sydney the character come and try out pasta at your restaurant?

02:38
David Posey
I'm friends with Matty Matheson, who plays the maintenance janitor. So, they were filming the pilot in Chicago and he has too many tattoos on his hands to do hand work. So they asked me to step in and I did some knife cuts that were in the little teaser ad clip. And then the relationship just blossomed from there.

02:58
David Posey
So, I consulted on the first and second season of The Bear, cooking most of the food that was on the show for the first two seasons. So I would be in a kitchen and they would act with the food that I would cook. And then they would ask a few small questions like, after service, what would people be doing? — they'd be hanging out in the alley, drinking water, drinking a beer out of a quart container.

03:19
David Posey
And then they wanted Sydney to get, or Ayo, who plays Sydney, to get a little restaurant experience for her method acting. So she came and spent the day with us, and one of the other actors, the actor that plays the pastry chef, spent a day with us as well. And just built a relationship from there. And then they asked if they could film at the restaurant, a couple scenes. So, it's after work, off hours, Sydney's doing some trials on some recipes. So they filmed that here.

03:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What kind of pasta dish was it that she was doing?

03:49
David Posey
I think they just had me, if I remember right, they just had me bring some mise en place from a couple of our dishes on the menu. And they decided that she was gonna work with a sheet of pasta. I think she was trying out a shape, agnolotti, which is a little stuffed pasta. So she's working on that.

04:05
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And the show is about the restaurant world. It's your world. It's fiction, obviously. How well do they do it? How real does The Bear come across in your professional eyes as a chef?

04:19
David Posey
Well, I can't watch the show because it gives me a little PTSD, so it's like —

04:24
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
They are very busy.

04:26
David Posey
They're very busy. And the last thing I want to do is watch something that I just did for 12 hours of my life. So I'll watch it here and there, if I have a couple days off. And they did a very, very good job. It's very accurate.

04:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Returning to the name of your restaurant, is "elske" your favorite Danish word or do you have another one?

04:47
David Posey
My Danish is very limited. "Elske" is up there. "Hygge" is another one, that sense of warmth that we try to bring to the restaurant and try to exude onto our guests. So those are probably my top two.

05:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You proposed to your wife in Copenhagen, and I don't know if it's too personal to talk about, but why did you pick Copenhagen to propose to the love of your life?

05:13
David Posey
I think just because Copenhagen has a special meaning for us with the amazing restaurant scene that they have there. I just love that city. It's my favorite city in the world. Just riding bikes around, and hopping around at little wine bars, or going sightseeing, going to the art museum, is phenomenal, and going and eating tons of amazing food. And it's just a place we really fell in love with, our first couple of travels there.

05:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And was the experience at Noma everything you wanted it to be?

05:41
David Posey
I've been lucky enough to eat there a couple times, and there's nothing like being on cloud nine after proposing to the love of your life. They could have served us the worst food in the world and it still would've been the best food.

05:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Hopefully they didn't.

05:56
David Posey
It was phenomenal.

05:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You opened the restaurant around ten years ago. Talk about how you got the idea to open it. How and where did this idea materialize?

06:09
David Posey
I've always known since I was 15 that I wanted to own my own restaurant. I was just finishing up doing a chef de cuisine job at a famous restaurant here that's now closed since COVID, called Blackbird. And I thought, there's nowhere else in the city I wanna work. I might as well try my own hand at it. So we opened.

06:31
David Posey
We didn't really open with the full intent of being a Danish restaurant. I still don't really consider us a fully Danish restaurant, but flavors of my childhood have always popped into my cooking, even when I was at Blackbird. So, a lot of dill and buttermilk and rye bread and pork and potatoes, the typical Danish or Scandinavian profile. So that crept its way into the cooking here.

06:54
David Posey
And in interviews and all the media stuff that ended up coming up when we first opened, it just put us in the lane for a Danish restaurant. So now I'm taking more and more inspiration from classic Danish dishes. We have a frikadeller on the menu now. It changes all the time, trying to elevate what my understanding and my knowledge of Danish food is.

07:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I have unfortunately not been to your restaurant. Last time I was in Chicago, it wasn't open, so I just had deep pan pizza. So would you mind describing for me and for the listeners, what kind of concept or philosophy is behind it, and the environment in the restaurant?

07:39
David Posey
It's a small restaurant by Chicago standards. I think we have about 60 seats. It's a very open profile with an open kitchen that centers around a wood fire hearth. So there's always a nice glow to the restaurant. We have candles on every table, the very hygge-type thing. I'm so sorry if I'm mispronouncing that word. I think I'm saying it right.

08:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yes.

08:02
David Posey
We have a small a la carte menu, so individual items, and then we have a small tasting menu as well. So it's meant to be a casual restaurant where you could come once a week, if you wanted, and just have a bite at the bar or a glass of wine, or a great cocktail, or you could come and celebrate and have a tasting menu. So we are trying to encompass — everybody is welcome at the restaurant.

08:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is the neighborhood of Chicago like and how does the restaurant fit in?

08:34
David Posey
So we're in the West Loop of Chicago, which is now the restaurant area. We're a little far removed, maybe about a half a mile away from the hustle and bustle of where everything's located. So we have a nice little oasis. We're also a beautiful open patio with a wood-burning fire in the middle of it that we'll seat people around during the warmer summer months, which hopefully, we're close to being there in Chicago.

08:58
David Posey
And there's not many people walking around. There's a lot of construction, so a lot of apartment buildings and condos going up around the area. So it's definitely starting to feel a little more lively where the restaurant is, which we're very appreciative of.

09:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned before that you had frikadeller on the menu, and I wanted to ask you if I will find any of your grandmother or your mother's recipes or cooking on the menu.

09:27
David Posey
Absolutely. I always try to — my mom, she does a Danish cucumber salad that she has won three or four times in the LA County Fair. So I always have a little nod to my mom and it says "Gunde's Pickles" on them. And actually, right now, the pickles are on our play on a Danish hotdog. So it's lamb tartare with some smoked beets and a little curry remoulade and some fried shallots. And my mom's cucumber pickles on a nice little fried rosette.

09:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We talked about Noma before, which was named the best restaurant in the world. Did you feel all the way in Chicago that Danish cuisine has been placed on the world map, celebrated as, all of a sudden, good cuisine? That wasn't always the case.

10:15
David Posey
Sure. I don't necessarily think of Noma as a Danish restaurant. I think what they're doing with fermentation and bringing back these amazing techniques has really given a lot of attention to Danish cuisine. Although I don't inherently think of Danish cuisine as — I am sure a lot of the world now associates all that stuff with Scandinavia — but it's nice to see we get a lot of inspiration from what they're doing and all their research and everything. It's phenomenal.

10:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was on the menu the night that you and your fiancée had dinner?

10:50
David Posey
It was 15 years ago. I unfortunately can't remember much. I think this is when they were first starting to put ants in the food and going down that route. I'm sure I have pictures of it somewhere and a menu, but I unfortunately can't remember much of it.

11:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is your favorite Danish dish? What do you remember from childhood that your mom used to make for you, apart from the cucumber salad?

11:15
David Posey
My favorite growing up was hakkebøf, with onion gravy on top and boiled potatoes and a parsley cream sauce. And another one — I'm going to visit my parents in a couple days and hopefully she makes her — she called it a Sunday chicken. Her story was when she was a kid, she would go around and get money from plucking feathers from all the chickens from around the neighborhood.

11:37
David Posey
And then they would slowly roast it in a lot of browned butter, or butter that would brown, as the chicken was cooking with a pot on it. So it's half roasted, half steamed, and the cavity was stuffed with a ton of parsley. That's one of my favorites.

11:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you ever travel to Denmark to get inspired?

11:55
David Posey
Oh yeah. It's been a while. We have two young kids now, so it's been about five years since we've been there. But we would go eat around all the time. We'd always spend a couple days or a week in Copenhagen and eat around there. And our favorite restaurant is in Bornholm, Kadeau. They have the Michelin Star out there and it's a beautiful little summer house on the beach and serving just amazing food.

12:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Bornholm is a little island that's actually closer to Sweden than Denmark, just for those who don't know. Has the menu on your restaurant Elske changed, and how do you plan a menu?

12:39
David Posey
We try to be as seasonal as possible, which is very limited here in Chicago. We have about seven months of great produce that's always coming in. And we're just starting to see that now with white asparagus and ramps, which is a wild onion. So we base everything off the produce that we're getting.

12:57
David Posey
In the summer, the menu changes a lot. Not as much as it used to. I used to be a madman with changing all the dishes, but now, they'll find their cycle and we might get asparagus in a little early and then use great local asparagus for a while, and then while I'm working on a new dish to replace asparagus, we'll outsource some asparagus from California or something. But I would say that the menu fully changes maybe five or six times a year.

13:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have a Michelin Star. You mentioned that the one restaurant you love in Bornholm has one, but you also have one. I've heard that this prestigious stamp of approval is very hard to get. How was the process for you?

13:38
David Posey
It's something we're very grateful to have, and it's an honor and we're super proud of having it, but it's nothing that we really sought out. We just have our own standards and execute to those standards. And luckily Michelin feels we have the same standards for them. I had one at Blackbird for four years, so I've had a Michelin Star for maybe 16 years now, and hopefully, I'll keep it for a long time.

14:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is it like we see it in the movies, that some snobbish and highly critical person or inspector comes to eat alone and everyone starts getting nervous and they're jumping around to make sure that he or she is satisfied? Is it like that?

14:19
David Posey
We try to treat every guest at the restaurant the same. So, we do our best for every table. And Michelin is the one that always comes in unnoticed and we hopefully hear later in the year that we kept our star. But they're the one we can't really pin down.

14:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So you have no idea who was in your restaurant to eat?

14:36
David Posey
Nope.

14:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So nothing like in the movies?

14:40
David Posey
It's like that with restaurant critics for magazines or newspapers. We have a big wall in the basement of all their photos that we try to keep up to date. But Michelin is the one we can't ever get a picture of.

14:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I see something behind you, "Michelin 2021," it says.

15:00
David Posey
Yep.

15:01
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay. That's all the plaques. So where are you located now? Maybe you would tell the listeners where you are and the wall behind you where you have all the Michelin plaques.

15:12
David Posey
I'm on our third floor in the restaurant. So, we have a basement where we store all the food and prep. And then the first floor is the restaurant. Our second floor is a private dining room where we'll seat up to 24 guests for a seated dinner. And then I'm on the third floor, which used to be our apartment. We used to live right above the restaurant. And we've now moved to the suburbs since having two kids.

15:35
David Posey
I'm up on the third floor now, which is my little office. All these shelves were full of cookbooks, which I've moved to the new home. But these are some that I've been looking at.

15:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So what are the books that are behind you? I can see pasta, it says on one of them, so I assume they are cookbooks.

15:50
David Posey
These are ones I either use at the restaurant a lot or ones I don't have room for at home. My pride and joy is the first Noma cookbook, which I think came out in the late '90s. I guess the chef at Noma is not very happy with it, so it never got reprinted. So it's a very, very hard book to find. So that's my favorite one.

16:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I assume when you reach that level, where you have a Michelin Star, you can compare the food that you serve to an art form. Do you see it that way? Is food an art form?

16:28
David Posey
I believe it is. I believe it's an amazing mix of craft and art — the craft of cooking and utilizing different techniques and product, and then artfully plating it, or putting it together on a plate, so it's unique and shares my voice and vision.

16:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You started cooking at a very young age, I believe around ten, in your mother's kitchen. Would you describe this kitchen in California for us? And tell us how the experience was cooking for the first time and what you liked about it?

17:05
David Posey
I was a chubby kid, so I ate a lot, and I didn't like relying on my mom to make snacks. So she would teach me how to cook things. And I think one of the first things she taught me how to cook was a béchamel, so like a classic Danish, parsley cream sauce.

17:25
David Posey
I loved putting ingredients together and seeing them transform into something delicious. Like flour on its own is not delicious, obviously, butter and milk are delicious, but together, it turns the product into something more whole that you could treat how you want to. And I really thrived on that feeling of transforming things. And I just got really into it.

17:47
David Posey
I was also admittedly a terrible student in school. It just never really caught my attention. So seeing something that I excelled at, with my mother, her praise, and pushing me to keep doing it, it was something that just felt good.

18:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Maybe explain to the listeners where you grew up, how your childhood home was, how the kitchen was.

18:11
David Posey
So I grew up in Arcadia, just outside of Los Angeles. We had a beautiful yard with a ton of produce growing always, citrus trees and a lot of fruit and vegetables. And our kitchen at home was very active. My mom cooked almost all the time.

18:26
David Posey
We almost never went out, because that's how she was raised where, at the time, you wouldn't really go out unless it was a super, super special occasion. So maybe once or twice a year. So she was always cooking at home, always something on the stove or in the fridge, ready to be cooked. So it was a very busy place in our kitchen or our house.

18:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You grew up in California, but your heritage is Danish, your mom is from Grindsted. To what extent was your household Danish and which traditions did your family bring to your California home?

18:58
David Posey
My mom had a lot of Danish trinkets around the house, and it looked very Danish with the things that she would decorate the house with. And we didn't really do many Danish traditions at home. Danish Christmas on the 24th is our big Christmas, so we'd have roasted duck, sing around the Christmas tree, and do the packages and the package game my mom grew up with. And every day in December, the nisse would come and visit our stockings. So it was pretty much the main Danish culture that she brought into the home.

19:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What brought your mom to California?

19:37
David Posey
To marry my dad. He was a salesman in Europe, so he would always travel. And the company my mom was working for sold my father's product. So they met that way and then fell in love and my dad would always go back to Denmark. And then they decided to have a life together. So she moved to the States.

19:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Was Danish spoken in your home and do you speak Danish?

20:03
David Posey
Unfortunately, I don't speak Danish. I wish I could, but it's not the most useful here in Chicago. Not many people speak Danish. And my mom, when she was moving to the US, she had a grasp on English, but she couldn't really speak it. So they were focused on my mom adapting to the new American lifestyle for her and learning English. So, me learning Danish took a backseat.

20:28
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There is a big community of Danes in Chicago. I remember there were a lot of immigrants from Denmark. Do you feel that Chicago has a big Scandinavian immigrant history?

20:41
David Posey
It's very small but it's a very proud immigrant area. It's northern Chicago. There is a little — it's not Danish, it's Swedish — Scandinavian areas, there's a lot of Scandinavians in the Midwest and a lot in Minnesota and the states that border Canada. I guess the climate is very similar to where they came from back home. So they settled here.

21:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Who apart from your mom inspired you to cook when you were little?

21:13
David Posey
My mom was the driving force behind it. And then as I learned more about the craft and the art, I took inspiration from famous chefs. Thomas Keller is probably my big one, who owns The French Laundry in California and now has several restaurants.

21:30
David Posey
And then, there wasn't the internet back then, so it was hard to learn about chefs, which is funny to think about, but he was the main one. And then just exploring different cookbooks at the library or going to the bookstore and buying books opened that world up and inspired me that way.

21:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And do you remember when you realized, oh, this could become my job, I could become a professional chef, I could make a living from this? And when did you decide, this is what I'm gonna do?

22:03
David Posey
I was in high school. My mom got me an internship at a fancy-for-the-area restaurant. And so I would go to high school and I'd work at this restaurant at nighttime. And slowly I would replace people that went to culinary school, so I would move up on different stations.

22:20
David Posey
And I just realized it was something that I really excelled at. And I loved the culture and the people I worked with. And the fast, busy environment really kept my attention. And learning new things was very inspiring for me. So I think maybe when I was 16 I realized that this is it for me.

22:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And then you went to study at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. What were your years as a student there like and what was New York like?

22:49
David Posey
It was great. I've never been super keen on academics, so the culture there was different than what I was expecting. I was expecting to go into culinary school and everybody would be very excited about food and wanting to learn. And what it ended up being was a great mix of people, where some were going to culinary school to be a food scientist or a personal chef or a nutritionist.

23:12
David Posey
So there was a nice mix. But the excitement about cooking, and fine dining especially, because that's what I was really into, was lacking. So I got through it, graduated, and focused on my own little bubble of restaurants and fine dining. And I would travel the city quite often to go eat and explore. Definitely pivotal years for me. Absolutely.

23:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was New York like? Arcadia is quite a different scene. What was coming to the bustling New York City like?

23:49
David Posey
Very busy, always lots of action going on. Every corner you turn, there's something new going on. So it was pretty eye-opening and jarring. And I really can only stand it for a couple days before I get overwhelmed and need to go back to my quiet place. But it's amazing. With everything going on there, there's never a moment of silence.

24:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did you explore the restaurant scene there? Did you get inspiration?

24:18
David Posey
Absolutely.

24:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Talk about your experiences there in that regard.

24:23
David Posey
It's really easy to find a great meal there. I remember going and eating at wd~50, a restaurant that's now closed, but they were very forward-thinking on modern fine dining, exploring tons of amazing techniques like deep fried mayonnaise, which you wouldn't think is possible, but they made it possible, and all these things. So I would go to wd~50 quite a bit and I would explore the classical French places like Jean-Georges and Daniel. Just the breadth of restaurants there is pretty amazing.

24:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have worked for several restaurants before you opened Elske. You mentioned Blackbird is one of them and you've won many awards. What would you say has made you a great chef? Which kind of master classes made you the chef that you are today?

25:14
David Posey
If I knew that, I could make millions of dollars teaching people how to do it. But I think it's just always trying to progress the restaurant and progress myself, and pushing forward for excellence and never really settling. So I think those are the things that really have helped Elske stand out and win these awards and accolades, which we never thought we would get. I'm happy with half of them that I got and the other half are the cherry on top. So, super grateful for it and I hope we can continue it.

25:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How important are the awards? Do they matter not only for you personally, but also in a commercial way? The Michelin Star, I assume, is something that you can utilize to advertise with. And as I said before, it's a stamp of approval. How important are the awards, and the Michelin Star, for instance?

26:10
David Posey
They're great. They bring tons of attention to the restaurant. And I think more importantly for myself and for the staff, it's validation of hard work that you're putting into everything. So the hard days feel a little easier and the easy days are just wonderful, because you have a busy restaurant and a lot of attention on you, which also brings quite a bit of added pressure. And the hype around all these awards doesn't fully translate to some people, but as long as a lot of people get it, that's the most important thing.

26:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I mentioned deep pan pizza, which is one of Chicago's specialties. One restaurant that I went to, it's something Uno —

26:54
David Posey
Pizzeria Uno.

26:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Pizzeria Uno. That's a famous restaurant in Chicago. What else is Chicago famous for? You do have a very big lake that's almost like an ocean, with big waves on it. What's Chicago's specialty? Is it fish? I know in Boston it's lobster, for instance. What is it in Chicago?

27:16
David Posey
So we used to be a meat-packing town, so all the cattle from throughout the country would come to Chicago and then be distributed there. So that's why we have such an amazing steakhouse scene. Lots of steakhouses here, lots of pork. Our other foods that are famous, or we're known for, are Chicago-style hot dogs, which have a ton of toppings on them.

27:36
David Posey
Tavern pizza is another one, which is the more working-class pizza. It's very cracker thin crust with all the pizza toppings on it that you would eat at bars while drinking beer. They used to give it away for free. And then so many people started coming in just for the pizza and not really as much as the beer, they started charging it.

27:53
David Posey
Italian beefs, which is a shaved roast beef sandwich that's warmed in its gravy and served with hot pickled vegetables. So the two pizzas, the hot dogs and Italian beef are our famous foods. And then on top of that, we have a ton of culture, a lot of amazing architecture — a wonderful art scene. It's just such a great cultured city.

28:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is art important to you in your life?

28:17
David Posey
It is. I am not well-knowledged on art. I get a lot of inspiration from art. Anna got her BA in fine arts. She paints a lot and she does a lot of drawings and is always looking at art and has phenomenal taste in art.

28:36
David Posey
One of our favorite things to do, which we do only, unfortunately, a couple times a year, is go to the museums around here which are really great, and just look at paintings. And it's funny how you could see a painting and it gets stuck in your head and you get inspired from it months later, but you realize that that's where the inspiration comes from.

28:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It sounds very romantic to own your own restaurant and to share your work and your passion with your wife. But I assume that it's also long hours and stressful to own a restaurant. What is it really like? You mentioned The Bear that it's very realistic. And for those who haven't seen it, they work a lot and it's very fast and it looks very stressful. What would our listeners be surprised to know about your world, your professional world?

29:25
David Posey
It is very stressful. It's long hours. It's everything you hear about. It is romantic. It's wonderful. The best feeling in the world is a busy dining room, where people come to your business and they want to spend their money that they earned on what you're serving. So it's great, but there is a lot of stress. There's a lot of thought that goes into everything. It's not the most easy or relaxing profession, but it's very rewarding.

29:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Why is it rewarding? What is it that feels rewarding to you?

29:55
David Posey
I think there are several things. There's building a team together, there's mentoring staff and building relationships with them and watching them grow, is very rewarding. And then, having people choose to come to your restaurant is also a very rewarding feeling — celebrating their special occasions with them, whether it's a promotion of work or a birthday or anniversary. The fact that they come to choose to celebrate with you is a phenomenal feeling.

30:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned that Blackbird closed down after COVID. How did you and your restaurant Elske get through COVID, which I assume was difficult for you. Did you have any ideas, special ideas, how to make it through COVID?

30:39
David Posey
We did. Pivot was our big word for 2020 through 2023. The city got shut down. All of Chicago got shut down for about three months, where no guest could come in the restaurant. So takeout was a big thing for us, which we never did. It's very tough serving food and putting it in a box and then expecting people to eat it right away.

31:00
David Posey
So we would do meals where you would come, pick up a meal, and then take it to your house and eat it. And that menu changed every week. So the first week was actually Danish meatballs and mashed potatoes and my mom's cucumber salad and lingonberry jam. And then Anna would do a pastry and a pint of ice cream that you could add on.

31:19
David Posey
Then the following week would be a fish-focused meal. And then the third week would be vegetable-focused. And then we'd go back to meat and then fish and vegetables. So every week was something different. So that was the first year, and then we had to shut down because the business started to slow down a little bit. And it's a lot of work — I mean, it was 16-hour days for just breaking even and minimal staff and everybody's very tired.

31:43
David Posey
So we closed for a little bit and then reopened with takeout and then tasting menu on our patio, which is outdoors. At the time, you had to be either outdoors or within eight feet of an open window or door, which, we only had a few tables, so it didn't make sense for us to do that. But seating people outside, we could do, so we did that. So half of my food would go in to-go containers and then the other half would be plated on these nice, beautiful plates that one of our friends makes.

32:10
David Posey
We did that, and then regulation still didn't let us see people inside. I think it was 50% occupancy at the time, so we would've done 20 people a night, which just didn't make sense. So we shut down again. And then, finally in '23, we reopened almost like normal. Now, I would say things are back in full swing and business as usual.

32:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What happens in your own kitchen at home? Do you cook a lot for yourself, for your two kids? And what does the content of your fridge look like? What would I see if I opened it right now?

32:44
David Posey
You'd be extremely disappointed. Last night I made macaroni and cheese with some chopped up hot dogs in it for the kids. Because it's more about getting them to eat things than what creatively we're putting in the dishes. It pretty much is just focused on them eating when I'm at home.

33:01
David Posey
And Anna's a great cook, so she makes them quite a bit of different stuff. But I only, unfortunately, get a couple dinners with them every week. So we'll try to go out for dinner one night, and then the next night I cook dinner at home. But it's very basic, simple stuff that the kids are interested in.

33:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How old are they? And are they old enough that you start to teach them how to cook themselves?

33:22
David Posey
Our oldest is three and a half and our youngest is two.

33:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Okay, they're young.

33:27
David Posey
And they're young, they're very young. But they love baking with Anna. So the other day they actually made cardamom buns. They love chopping up the butter and mixing it together with the flour and rolling the dough out and all that stuff. So we're trying to get them interested in food.

33:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But no knives yet.

33:44
David Posey
No knives, just the little plastic ones that don't cut through.

33:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you ever get tired of cooking?

33:54
David Posey
I don't, because it's such a wide skill where if I get tired of something, I could just explore a new avenue. Maybe pasta will pique my interest or Thai food or something. You could stay in one spot, but travel all over the world through food. So that always keeps things really interesting for me.

34:12
David Posey
And then learning new techniques and mastering something. For a while I was trying to master a roasted chicken. So every weekend I would do a different recipe of roasted chicken from a cookbook. And after I think I went through all my cookbooks, I would try to figure out how I'd cherry pick, I like this from this one and I like this from this one. So I would develop my own recipe. So there's always something to work on with cooking.

34:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned that you went to Grindsted and Copenhagen to get inspired. Where else did you travel in the world to get inspired? And maybe explain to the listeners where Grindsted is.

34:50
David Posey
Grinsted, from what I know, is right in the very center of Denmark, mainland Jutland. So it's pretty much as landlocked as you could be for Denmark, even though it's a peninsula surrounded by water. So we would visit my grandmother in Grinsted and we'd drive over to the west coast on Vejers and spend a summer, about a month, in Vejers, a beachtown, which as a 13-year-old kid, was not the most exciting because you can't really go into the water because this current is so strong it will sweep you out to sea.

35:20
David Posey
So it was a lot of days of digging holes in the sand and walking down to a little pizza shop in town. And then my wife and I used to travel a lot before kids. We would go to France and drive around France and spend a couple weeks doing that. Always end up in Copenhagen. We'd do the same thing with Spain. And we've been to Italy and every single time, we are most excited about our time in Copenhagen towards the end of all of those trips.

35:45
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And going on those trips, is it then you go visit all the restaurants that you seek out before you go that are special? What's it like? Is it mainly restaurant visits or is it also other tourist attractions that attract you when you travel?

36:02
David Posey
When we were younger, it would be several tasting menus every day. So we'd do a big menu for lunch and then a big menu for dinner. And as we get older, our stomachs can't really handle that as much. But the trips would always start with me making reservations at these amazing famous restaurants. And then I'd figure out travel and where to stay. So it always started with the restaurants, and that would dictate where we would go.

36:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's what I figured.

36:25
David Posey
Yeah.

36:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That sounds exciting. What were your biggest experiences culinary-wise, traveling around Europe?

36:36
David Posey
I think our favorite places — we go to this little place in France, just outside of Normandy, called Le Grenouille, which is a Michelin 2-Star restaurant. And they have these beautiful little cottages that you stay on, and grenouille means frog in French, so it's based on frogs. There's little lily pads of stepping stones going to your cottage, and that is one that really resonated with us. And it was just the creativity behind everything that they do and the meaning and intent that they bring to everything is just amazing.

37:04
David Posey
And going to restaurants like Michel Bras in the south of France, a book I've read a thousand times and had for 20 years, experiencing that food was phenomenal. And just seeing the different cultures in all these little towns and how they're all very similar but slightly different depending on where you go, region to region, is just eye-opening and inspiring and very engaging for us.

37:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How often do you open a cookbook?

37:31
David Posey
I try every day. It's a little more difficult these days with managing the restaurant, but I used to fall asleep every night reading a cookbook or I'd watch tv looking at cookbooks, half paying attention to each. As I've gotten older, it's slowed down a little bit, but I mean, I have so many cookbooks that I could just randomly pick one off the shelf and find something inspiring from it. So it's a practice I need to do more admittedly. But it is a regular practice of mine.

38:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So, it is really an encompassing passion of yours to be a chef. Am I right?

38:08
David Posey
Yes. I love it. I can't think of anything else I would be able to do at this point other than be in restaurants.

38:16
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But that's not what I'm asking. It's your love.

38:20
David Posey
It is.

38:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It sounds like it is. What's it like to have found such a place in life where your passion is your job?

38:28
David Posey
I feel very fortunate. I found it so early in life and have never really felt a drifting sensation of what I'm gonna do. I've always been very driven and goal-focused, so that's very comforting. And having that direction has really been great because I could just focus on what I want to focus on, instead of dabbling a little here, a little there, and then just progressing the restaurant and making sure everything is going smoothly. I think about it on my car ride home and my car ride to work. So it's pretty much all the time for me.

39:03
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And my final question to you is — You're still a young man. Do you have any dreams and hopes for the future, and things that you still want to achieve, or is Elske the main goal of your career?

39:22
David Posey
I want to shift from being a chef to a restaurateur, so, own several restaurants. We're actually working on one now, which is right next door to the restaurant, and will hopefully open in a few months. So that's getting close and maybe another couple restaurants in the future in Chicago. And then see where that takes me. But I haven't really fully thought about the future. It's just short little snippets ahead.

39:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
There's no dream, for instance, opening a restaurant in Denmark or in France?

39:51
David Posey
I guess the ultimate dream would be moving back to California when we're a little older and doing something small there. A little casual town or something, would be the ultimate dream that Anna and I talk about.

40:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
A small town, small town life, which is not Chicago.

40:07
David Posey
Which is not Chicago. No, no.

40:10
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No. Alright. David, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate that you were part of Danish Originals.

40:16
David Posey
Thanks for having me.

40:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You're very welcome.

40:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, David Posey chose Georges Braque's Træerne or Trees at l'Estaque from 1908 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.