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Paul Cunningham

Feature

Andy Lynes travels to Denmark to meet Essex-born chef and wanderer Paul Cunningham.

Paul Cunningham The only way is Denmark HENNE KIRKEBY KRO Strandvejen 234, 6854 Henne, Denmark Words Andy Lynes

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oogle the name ‘Paul Cunningham’ and the following biography will appear among the search results; ‘Paul found his passion for cooking after a short stay in art school and a failed dancing career. He was working as the tour bus driver for the legendary rock band Def Leppard when one of the roadies introduced him to meditation - and after an intense meditating weekend at a resort in Scunthorpe he found his true calling; to cook for people.’ It says a lot about the sort of person Cunningham is that I had to ask him if the biog was true or not. Although it’s difficult to think of anyone meditating in Scunthorpe, it doesn’t take much to imagine the larger-than-life 46-year-old Essexborn chef living the rock’n’roll lifestyle.

The first time we met, he was wandering around the lounge bar at the Michelin-starred Northcote restaurant and hotel in Lancashire sipping from a champagne glass with a whole truffle in it. A few years later, when I finally got to sit in the understatedly elegant dining room of Henne Kirkeby Kro, his remote restaurant with twelve rooms on the west coast of Denmark, my utterly beguiling 22 course meal based on local produce was punctuated by

blasts of Led Zeppelin each time the kitchen door opened.

Sadly, there is no truth to the Def Leppard story, he wasn’t at art school and he didn’t dance for a living.

Cunningham’s real CV includes stints working at places like Danesfield House and Lords of the Manor before relocating to Denmark in 1994 and making his name at Søllerød Kro, (where he won his first Michelin star) formel B and Coquus, all in Copenhagan. But when Henne is closed for the season from December to March, he lives the nomadic life of a rock’n’roller, cooking at culinary festivals in Provence, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Toronto, Goa, Mexico City, Scandinavia, South Africa and Sydney (the bogus biog appears on the website for the annual Food and Fun Festival in Reykjavik). He tells his travellers tales in Paul Food, one of six books he’s published with more on the way.

Cunningham appears ebullient, bursting with life - an indefatigable figure. But among the 21 years he’s spent in Denmark, there have been low points. Although he won a Michelin star and gained celebrity status between 2003 and 2011 when he ran The Paul in Copenhagen, there were downsides. “Unless you were using wood sorrel

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and wild herbs and foraging for every scrap along the roadside you weren’t in the club,” says Cunnigham. “I was frowned upon for using ginger and foie gras and Pakistani mangoes. I was outspoken. Chefs in Copenhagen were too up their own back passages and telling each other how clever they were.”

It was only when a stress-related blood clot in his shoulder led to a five week stay in hospital in the Easter of 2011 that Cunningham had the time to consider his future. “I was sitting there drinking chamomile and reading a book for the first time in thirty years. It was the first time I turned off my mobile and computer.”

Cunningham returned to the restaurant but things were not the same. “My relationship went from bad to worse.

I told them in the May that I would stop and closed in the September. Forty eight hours later Henne Kirkeby Kro called.”

The two hundred year old roadside-coaching inn would be any chef ’s dream. There’s the large kitchen, flooded with natural light, 400 square metres of kitchen garden, beehives in the fruit orchard and lamb in the field. Then there’s the small matter of Fænø, Denmark’s largest privately owned island, an hour away and under the same family ownership as Henne. “We can go over there whenever we want. Primarily we go for the berry bushes, the fruit trees and the game and mushrooms in season.”

In addition to the fine dining’s twelve tables arranged between three small dining rooms, Cunningham also runs

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a larger lunchtime-only restaurant in a converted stable block where Fridays are all about “the love of his life”; fish and chips. “That was a stroke of genius to put that on even if I do say so myself. It’s potatoes from the garden and fish from the nearby Hvide Sande fish auction that we get that morning, fillet and on the table by twelve o’clock, which is nuts when you think it was flapping around at the auction two hours before. It sounds rather idyllic, and I suppose it is really.”

Even after consuming nearly two-dozen dishes of Cunningham’s food, it’s still impossible to pigeon hole him as a chef. He unquestionably celebrates the natural Danish larder, but does so in an unbridled and joyously creative way. It’s tempting to say that a memorable bowl of simply cooked Danish lobster served with tomatoes from the garden and tomato consommé flavoured with basil and mint sums up his style. But then he goes and serves a visually dazzling plate of langoustine with a complex masala sauce that perfectly illustrates how his globetrotting ways (and childhood memories of Vesta curries) has influenced his cooking.

“It’s a real product driven kitchen. Instead of everything having to be so advanced that you have to work out what you are eating; we were doing that fifteen years ago. I’ve cut away all the BS and tried to put something simple on the plate.”

A selection of Paul’s recipes can be found on our website, including a smoked beef marrow dish, and a delicious Jegino lobster recipe.

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