CommisChef Beginnings: Where My Culinary Journey Truly Started in Denmark

It was September 2019 when I made the decision to move to Denmark to support and build a future with a young Colombian woman who, like me, had grown up in Spain. We shared big ambitions, but when it came to cooking, I was one of those millions of men whose culinary skills were limited to pasta with minced meat or rice with a few vegetables and some chicken. At that time, I began to realise that I truly had no idea how to cook. I could prepare meals well enough to survive, but my relationship with the kitchen was, once again, a complete disaster.

On 11 March 2020, after several months in Denmark, I felt happy and relieved because the following day I was finally going to receive the Yellow Card required for European citizens to work in Denmark. I will never forget that moment. I was sitting on the toilet when, at 11:59 p.m., I received a message from the Danish government announcing that all institutions would close the next morning at 10:00 a.m. and all appointments were cancelled due to the pandemic. I remember how sadness filled my soul that day. After waiting so many months abroad, just ten hours before my appointment, everything was cancelled. Many people around the world experienced the tragedy of COVID-19 in their own way; each story represents a new lesson.

I had to wait until 12 July 2020, four months later, to finally obtain the document that allowed me to work in Denmark. The strangest part of the process was that I could not obtain the document with a job offer; instead, I had to prove I had sufficient funds. Such are the ways of the developed world, although I will save my critique of that for another time.

Then, on 14 July, I saw an advert on Facebook that read “Kitchen assistant wanted.” My biggest fear was the language. After living with my partner for ten months, my English was poor, my Danish was non-existent, and all I had was Spanish and a few words of English. On top of that, I had no kitchen experience whatsoever. I applied for the job and said to myself, “Washing dishes, I think I can manage that.” It was my first time applying for a job in Denmark, and luckily, I got an interview.

The interview was with a young woman from Slovakia who was studying marketing at university and working as the human resources manager for the restaurant. The interview went well, they hired me the same day, and six days later I started working as a kitchen assistant for the first time in my life at a restaurant that is now permanently closed. At the time, it was called Kathastrophe Restaurant and was run by Hasam, an Israeli entrepreneur who had become a Danish citizen. I liked the name; I have always believed that life can be a catastrophe and that in that chaos one can often find art.

On my first day in the kitchen I met the chef, a Ukrainian cook, and a kitchen assistant from Pakistan. In the front of house team there was a girl from Hungary, a girl from Slovakia who also worked as a waitress, Camila, the first Dane I met, and Jonas, the owner’s son, a kind and energetic young man who helped with everything. I began that first day cleaning and washing dishes. It was my first day as a KP, a kitchen porter. That was how it all began, until something unexpected happened that would change my position in Denmark. That part of the story will come next.