Koan: a journey of self-discovery for Baumann

Kristian Baumann is the chef-owner of two-Michelin-starred Koan in Copenhagen, a restaurant that manages to stand out in a city of stand-out restaurants. The chef’s story is one of a journey inward, an exploration of his personal identity and heritage and the expression of it in a cuisine that represents it all. Baumann and Koan’s stories are ones of how food can transcend cultural barriers and be used to artistically express what language can’t.

Baumann’s story is an epic one so it’s difficult to know where to start when interviewing him. We start, therefore, at the beginning. A difficult yet fortuitous beginning for the young Korean, who was adopted as a baby by a Danish family. He found himself wrapped up in a loving and supportive family, with an adopted Korean sister and later, a Danish-born brother. While his childhood was a typical rural Danish childhood, Baumann excelled at sports and his parents decided that he should attend a boarding school with many sporting opportunities and a lot of discipline.

Part of school life for young students was cooking and cleaning for the older students. Baumann found himself drawn to the kitchen and the time spent with the cooks—peeling potatoes or cleaning was enjoyable for him.

“When I think back on my time at boarding school, my memories from the kitchen at that time are very happy and very clear,” says Baumann.

“From an early age I understood that if I want something, I have to work very hard for it. I understood that if I want to become good at something, I have to do it many times and practice again and again. Practice is one of the most important things in what you do.”

_{White kimchi with aromatic herbs and elderflower oil (photo: Neve Qaraday); chef Kristian Baumann}

After boarding school, Baumann followed his friend into culinary school and found an apprenticeship, travelling to Italy and the Netherlands on exchange programs. The young chef worked in many restaurant kitchens in Denmark, usually moving from one to another after the head chef quit. Back then there weren’t that many chef-owned restaurants.

However, in 2005, Baumann heard about a new restaurant opening that was going to do things differently, it was called Noma, and he happened to have some contacts there, little by little, getting his foot in the door.

“I loved it, I’ve always loved it,” says the chef now. “I think it has always been fascinating. For me they’ve done so much for chefs and the culinary scene in Denmark and around the world. They’ve made it a better place, with stronger foundations and better opportunities for people who have worked there.”

An opportunity came up for Baumann to work in France, in a small hotel between Nice and Cannes, and eager to learn, he took it and moved there, cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It proved a fateful decision, as after just a few months, Baumann travelled to Nice with some friends on a rare night off to have a few drinks, when he was attacked.

“I was mugged, by two guys,” recounts Baumann. “I got stabbed with a knife and hit over the head with a few different bottles. They were very aggressive. I was jumped, a robbery. Luckily, I diverted the knife, and it went through my hand and into my chest. Then they dragged me to an ATM and demanded that I withdraw money. When I couldn’t do that, he looked at me very seriously and said, ‘You better withdraw more money or I am going to kill you’.

“I managed to push him away and ran into a hotel. The receptionist was so kind to talk me down for a few moments. He took me to the bathroom where he helped me. I remember looking in the mirror at my face and I thought it wasn’t that bad. Then I looked down at the white marble sink and there was blood everywhere. The police arrived, but because they assumed I was a tourist and that I was still alive, they thought I was okay. I was wearing a black shirt and even I didn’t know that I was bleeding from a stab wound in my chest. They left me there and since I wasn’t a guest of the hotel, I had to leave. So, I was standing on the side of the road in the early hours and I had to pay a taxi driver a lot to take me home where my roommate helped bandage me up and took me to the hospital. The doctors stitched me up and gave me antibiotics. They said I was very lucky as I was 2mm from losing the feeling in my left arm.”

Told to go home and rest for a while, Baumann went back to his flat and spent a week in bed. The owners of the hotel he worked at told him they would understand if he wanted to go home to Denmark, but he declined. He decided to stay.

“I just didn’t really know what was waiting for me in Denmark,” he says. “After about a week and a half, I decided to get out of bed and go back to work. The rest of the season was very strange for me, psychologically, but at the same time I’m glad I worked through it. I think if I had gone home, I might have more regrets. It sort of made me stronger in many ways.

“It forced me to refocus my life. I realized that I won’t live forever and it might all end tomorrow. So, I sat down and I made a plan for how much of my time should be spent on work, how much on family, and what I wanted. So, I became very goal oriented.”

_{Norwegian lobster tail with lemon thyme; Norwegian scallop with sudachi, raw hazelnuts, kombu, honey truffles, salted pear (photos: Neve Qaraday)}

On returning to Denmark, Baumann worked with a friend doing a nine-to-five job, but quickly realized that it was not for him. The call of the kitchen brought him to Noma and other restaurants, where he met Christian Puglisi. Puglisi was opening his first restaurant Relæ with Baumann becoming his first hire and opening Manfreds across the street.

“Working for Christian was really interesting because he is a very charismatic chef. I will forever consider him as one of the great chefs of Copenhagen. I was lucky to know him as a mentor. He was trying to define something new, for him, he came from elBulli and ran Noma, so he was looking for something new. When we opened Relæ we did five courses for $50. Ridiculously cheap. It was all about cutting away everything that was unnecessary. He started everything himself and later had one investor with him, but it was all done with the absolute minimum.

The idea was to put all the energy and focus into the ingredients and cooking them. Paying the ceramic artists was also important and nothing else really mattered to them. It was an inspiring time for Baumann and for the first time, he found himself working for a chef, who he knew from day one wasn’t going to quit. It gave him a period of stability, learning and above all growth.

The growth Baumann was experiencing came to fruition when he went to San Sebastián for a vacation. Between the tapas and dinner at Mugaritz, something changed for the chef.

“When I came back from that vacation, I knew something had changed for me,” says Baumann. “I was noticing that how I was thinking about food when I was at home, and how I was thinking about food when I was at work were different. It didn’t matter if I was cooking French or Nordic or something innovative at Relæ, I was thinking about food differently. I needed to go and explore that.”

When Baumann was at home, cooking for his family or partner at that time, he was inspired by the flavors of his heritage. His kitchen cabinet was full of Korean condiments and ingredients, and while he didn’t have the means to articulate what it was that he wanted, he noticed that when he was at home he was thinking differently about flavors and combinations.

“I sat down with Christian and I said, ‘I’m really sorry, I don’t have a plan, I don’t have investors, I don’t know what I’m doing but, I know I need to go and try and do something.”

He handed in his notice.

Baumann began to work on his business plan and in the meantime worked at an apartment-themed concept restaurant in Copenhagen, where he felt free to explore and express himself. Returning to Noma, for their professional opinion on his business plan, they suggested that they open a restaurant together. Eventually, when the right location became available, 108 was born.

While 108 was never supposed to be a Michelin star restaurant, it received the accolade and became a fixed and thriving feature of Copenhagen’s culinary scene, until Covid hit, and the restaurant closed.

In the meantime, Baumann had been traveling to the country of his birth, South Korea, in order to reconnect with his heritage and learn about the cuisine.

“It made my passion even stronger. I started bringing back ideas and wondering how we could use them at 108. How could we recreate Koren flavors with Scandinavian ingredients?”

On one of his trips to South Korea, Baumann went to visit the orphanage where he was dropped off as a baby, but he had never wanted to meet his birth parents.

“I had a desire to let my birth mother know that I turned out okay. It was a very intense experience, I went there alone, and I had prepared a scrapbook of photos of me from when I was a child and a teenager. I left the book there, just in case one day she decided to come and find out about me. For me the biggest reason I felt this way is that I didn’t want to intrude on her life. I didn’t want to make her feel burdened by my presence. And I have a wonderful family here in Denmark, I’m very happy.”

Many adoptees feel the need to reconnect with their birth parents, and many don’t. It’s different for everyone. For Kristian, it was about connecting with himself, through Korean culture, “It’s not tied to my biological parents, it’s tied to the Korean culture, the history, the society, the art, and my understanding of it. That’s what I want to explore. One of my fondest memories of my first trip back to Seoul was standing on the metro alone. It sounds strange, but for the first time in my life I was looking around and I looked like everyone else.”

Baumann’s reconnection to his native Korea became a very special thing for him and he returned many times, making many friends. Visiting the temples he was able to experience the spiritual culture of Korea.

Eventually, Baumann began to formulate what his restaurant would look like, a Korean restaurant that utilized Nordic ingredients, a culinary representation of himself and his identity. This was how Koan was born. After several pop-up iterations and the turmoil of pandemic lockdowns, a permanent home was found for his restaurant in Copenhagen. 

“It is neither traditional Korean nor Nordic food, but the blending of these two cultures coming together. A koan is a question in Zen Buddhism, which opens your mind. I really like that you should have an open mind and that there are no answers. For me it’s something that resonated with me, so I am glad I kept the name.”

Baumann and his wife invested all they had in Koan, there were no billionaire investors. So, with everything on the line, the chef set about creating the very best restaurant he could. His care and attention to detail, his passion, and his culinary experience all came to bear on a restaurant that is new and exciting in a culinary scene that consistently holds the reputation as the world’s best.

The Michelin Guide took notice, and the restaurant was awarded two stars straight away. Baumann thought he had received a single star, until he was called to the stage.

“It felt like this stone I had been carrying on my back for years was gone, because I knew what the recognition would do for a small restaurant like us. Koan’s future was secured.”

The story of Koan is essentially the story of a chef who was on a culinary journey inward, to discover his true identity and sense of self. Worthy of every recognition it receives it is another stellar addition to the city of Copenhagen. But more than this, it is the representation of something very special, an artistic culinary expression of self-discovery that Baumann shares joyfully with his guests. Perhaps there isn’t an industry award important enough to really do that justice.