Ep. 5: Christian Puglisi

James Clasper: Hello, and welcome to Dad Mode Activated, the podcast celebrating fatherhood after 40. I'm your host, James Clasper, and here I talk to fellow late bloomers about the unique joys and challenges of becoming a dad later in life.

My guest today is the acclaimed chef Christian Puglisi. Born in Italy in 1982, Christian came to Denmark in 1990 and entered the restaurant world when he was 18. After stints at the likes of El Bulli and Noma, Christian opened his first two restaurants in Copenhagen in 2010. One of them, Relæ, won a Michelin star two years later and was consistently recognized as one of the world's 50 best restaurants.

Christian went on to open a pizzeria, a wine bar, and a Sicilian-influenced all-day dining restaurant, among others. And then in mid-February, he walked away from it all. In a letter posted on social media, which he addressed to the restaurant industry, Christian wrote, “I love you and I always will. But now we need a break because loving you, as I have loved you, fills up my entire spirit and takes up all my time, focus, and energy. Someone else deserves that today. And I myself deserve to dedicate myself wholeheartedly to the greatest gift I was ever granted.”

And that's what we're gonna talk about today. Christian Puglisi, welcome to Dad Mode Activated. 

Christian Puglisi: Thank you very much. I would say that the timing is perfect for this podcast. 

James: Well, indeed. Before we get to that, though, let's get things rolling with an easy one. How old are you and how old are your kids?

Christian: So I'm 43. Sorry, I'm turning 43.  Once you're past 35, you start getting a little, “Uh, I can't remember”. You have to look at the year you were born, the year you are in, to make a mathematical conclusion. But I have a 13-year-old from a previous relationship, and then I have a 3-year-old and a three-month-old, all boys. So the 13-year-old I have part-time, I have one week and then not the next. The others I have are very much full-time.

James: Okay, well, one of the things I want to talk about is the difference between having a kid in your late twenties and then again in your early forties. But first I want to paint a picture of who you are. So begin by telling me a bit about your childhood and how you came to Copenhagen.   

Christian: I was born in Sicily by an Italian father, Sicilian father, and a Norwegian mother. We moved to Denmark when I was turning eight. That was a choice my parents made based on the fact that my father's business was not going too well. And my mom kind of took the opportunity to get a little closer to her own origins. So we packed up, and me and my father came a few months after my mom had already done the groundwork, getting the apartment secured and some housing and had a job. And then we came by train on a two-day-long ride, like a classic immigrant, as you can, with my aunt and my cousins waving at us at the train station, leaving the country crying. And then we came here and arrived in this country that was very different to where I had been brought up until then.

James: How was it different? And I assume you mean the food, the weather, but what else?

Christian: Everything was the opposite. You know, it was like a positive, negative. It was like yin and yang. You had people hot-tempered in Sicily and super calm in Denmark. You had everybody talking to each other on the street and in the squares in Sicily and everybody being very introverted and not communicating in Denmark. You know, the grass is green in Denmark and everything's dried out and burned by the sun in Sicily, and in terms of gastronomy, obviously for me, that was a big deal from the beginning, and later on it became clear to me that this would define why I would go into cooking at an early age, because it became one of those things that belonged to our history and our roots. I was eight years old, you know, so I don't know how much of an understanding I had, but it would be that you could barely find Parmesan in the supermarket, right? This is 1990. It's a long time ago. So, it felt like, you know, good cooking was something that we came from and it became a big part of my identity.

James: But why the restaurant industry per se? I mean, it’s one thing to be interested in food and ingredients and to have a sense of your culinary heritage, but it's quite another to want to work in a professional kitchen. What was it about that world that appealed to you when you were 18? 

Christian: Well, what did my father do when he came here? Well, he did what many Italian immigrants do, and he started working in a restaurant. So he was a waiter in a restaurant, and I have memories of tagging along with him, when I was a kid. But for me, I think, what I experienced was that, you know, I come from a country where they speak Italian and they eat lasagna and pizza, and in this country, in the restaurant, they speak Italian and eat lasagna and pizza. So for me, restaurants was like the embassy of where we came from. And I think that it made it feel like home, early on. And as I, you know, was 16, 17, what am I gonna do? I was working as a bellboy in a hotel. I just remember being in the kitchen and seeing a young chef apprentice, a few years older than me, slicing mushrooms really fast. And I was just like, wow, that's just so cool. Then it clicked. It's like, oh, my roots, Italy, restaurants, craft. Which, that part of it I didn't understand, but I saw it with a guy. I was like, this is what I want to do. I need to be in restaurants. Of course. Started at 17. I did the first part of the hotel and restaurant school system that you have here. 18, went to Paris to work and then I just, I went on then on and then I never stopped, never looked back, 25 years ago now, if not a little more.

James: Okay, but then thinking again about this world of chasing Michelin stars, I mean, it's notorious for being stressful, exhausting. The pressure's intense, the hours are long. You don't need me to tell you that. And so to bring it back to the topic of the podcast, fatherhood, you were firmly entrenched in that world when you had your first kid at what, 29? I can't imagine it was easy for you, right?  

Christian:  I think an important part of that story is to say that I opened my first restaurant the year before he was born. So I was in charge of it, and I was in charge of what the working environment was like. And to me, from the get-go, I was like, okay, I'm opening a restaurant, this is going to be my livelihood for many years, so when I want to conceive this restaurant, I need to have a sustainable approach in mind, which is not sustainable as in terms of the climate but sustainable as in “I can do this”. So back in 2010, Relæ opened with a four-day week, so it became a huge thing years later. But from 2010, it was four days. It was Wednesday to Saturday. And that was because, you know, in the end, it's like you work four days, you work hard four days, but you have three days off. Three days off is not bad. Like, you can get a lot done. And you're like out of sync with the rest of the world, which when you have small kids, is not a problem at all. When you have bigger kids, it becomes difficult because, you know, you see them on the weekends. But at that age, it's not a problem. So I could define what the working environment was, which meant that the stress level, I think, was way better than you would have had in many, many other places. And I think I made a lot of very good choices, both for the restaurant but also for the work life and therefore for the family. That said, I would wake up on Sunday mornings devastated, so tired. Like. I was cooked. So my ex and my biggest son's mother, she did a lot of the work for the family to, you know, be running smoothly. Also in Denmark, you have a long parental leave. You have time. We try to integrate it, so she would come with him for staff food, we could see each other. And, you know, it didn't take long before I could start coming in a little later, da da da, and try and do things this way, you know. But for me it was always intended to be also a sustainable project, but not a project that you can get away with without having a lot of focus on. I think that that's a big deal.

James: And do you recall what kind of parent you were in your late twenties? 

Christian: I don't think it was much different than it is today, because I would probably answer the same way back then than I did now in terms of, it’s the most important thing, da da da da. But I saw my parents working all the time, working hard. When we came to Denmark, my father worked like eight months, a day off. You know, like the immigrant mentality. Like, we need to get by. Like the most important thing is to get work. Work, work, work, work. And I wasn't detached from that when I was a father the first time. I almost thought that that's how I contribute to this family, it's by working hard. That's what I saw. Every man, every father in my family would be, like, fairly grumpy, you know, working a lot, don't bother him. That kind of stuff. I felt that it's so much better by not being as grumpy and not, you know, minding that my kid would bother me. But still this work ethic was a big part of me. And I do also think that some of it has its place, but again in proportion. And when you're in your late twenties and in the beginning of your thirties, if you have the personality that I have and if you follow your ego to some extent, I think also that we need to leave some room for that so you can play it out. You know, I've built my skills, you know, I've worked fucking hard, now I have the opportunity. I need a handful of years to get this flying and see what I'm about. And that's, I think, the fruit that I harvest today. So the story I also have to say is that myself and my oldest kid’s mother separated, it must have been like 2016, so like when he was five, and the restaurant was five, six years old. And that helped me immensely because I went from having this Wednesday to Saturday, that's how I work, always, to, when we were separated, I just realized that, okay, now I have him every second weekend. What am I gonna do, have him babysitted? And then when do I see him? It makes no sense. So then it was like one week of work and play, one week of being a father, family.

James: So tell me then how your circumstances changed again in your late thirties. Not only that you met someone new and had two children together, but also how you ended up walking away from your restaurant business.

Christian: As I was saying, I was shifting back and forth, work and play and being a father, and I had settled with the idea of, that's it, you know, this is me. Like, this is my family situation, this is what I have. I brought in my parents often. I bought a summer house, so at the weekend we could go to the summer house together and have a space together with my parents, so he would be with his grandparents, that kind of stuff. We talk about this often because when I met Amalie, my wife, I had sort of resigned from any idea that I would have any other opportunities to create more family. And she was extremely saddened by it, that I was just, you know, she kind of liked me already back then, and that I was just so detached from any future hopes. And she did something about it, you could say. You know, she really made me, first of all, trust her and also I really wanted Lui to meet her, you know, that's the oldest one. So it was just boom, we fell in love. And she's 10 years younger than me, that also is an important fact and then it didn't take long and, you know, she got pregnant and we had Aurelio in 2021, yeah. And then two years ago we bought a house and we moved to the house, and all of a sudden, like, there's just so much householding to do, you know, and family to take care of. It's, like, oh my gosh, and I think that that's also what, over those years, with the new kid and Lui part-time and the restaurants, it's like, oh my god, there's just so much of my mental space being in so many things and there's just so much that puts me in a super-stressed out way because I have to run this as a business and it's also kind of, while it was my advantage, I believe, in the beginning, like, I can do everything, it also becomes a big stress factor, because when you have to run it as a CEO, you probably have some benefits from not knowing everything, because how can you have all that in your head? And you know, when I know all the processes and whenever I walk into the restaurant, I can see 25 things that are wrong and I know how they are supposed to be done and, you know, I have to talk to people about, because you are like, you cannot do any of it. That’s just extremely stressful. So even though you have like, oh, I'm home at night, you know, you can time block and thinking that that can solve everything, as I was saying earlier, like, it doesn't make a big difference if you mentally do not have space for any of the stuff that really matters, which is to be tolerant with your kids and, you know, be patient and have fun and, you know, not be bothered by whatever. You know, I think that lightness that I found, particularly now with the third kid, where we are, like, we've had one kid together before, we are much more relaxed about it, we don't cringe onto this idea of an earlier life that obviously for Amalie was a bigger thing when she had her firstborn, my second born. We are just much more chilled about it and we just enjoy the process. and that's like where I could conclude, okay, when I was offered, you know, we could buy you out and you can walk away, I was like, okay, I have a 13-year-old that I feel I've done plenty of great things with, but in, you know, 2, 3, 4 years, he's gone. Like, he's already like preferring other friends' companies than his parents' companies, right? And a 3-year-old that is like a nuclear warhead. Like, he's full of play and crazy ideas and just a lot to keep up with. And a newborn baby. So, when, if not now? And again, I have to say, like, this industry, you go in and you go full on, but very few people think about the end game, what is gonna be the way out. Nobody thinks about it. You know, a lot of people end up going bankrupt. That's how it ends. You know what I mean? Like, you are the shit, you are all, you know, interesting, da, da, da. Then whatever, the trends go another way. The wind blows the other way. You're not that interesting anymore. Stuff becomes difficult. All of a sudden you have to work harder than you did 10 years ago because you have to carry more of it on your own. And you just cling on to that idea of who you are and all of a sudden they call you and say, we have to shut it down. And again, I go out on my own terms, the best terms I could ever dream for. It’s like, I wanted to open my restaurant for my search for independence, freedom, the liberty to do what I wanted to do. I did it all. I did everything I could ever wish for, and as I was saying, when I was 17, this was my dream. I had it, I did it, and then what? Next phase. I'm in my forties, I can do a thousand things. For me, that's the greatest privilege, that choice, the freedom of choice not only to add things, but to say goodbye to things. That is not only a freedom financially, but also internally, mentally. I could detach from my ego. In terms of discussion about parenthood, that is the single most important lesson you get from being a parent, is that you are not the most important one, and it doesn't matter. And ego that I chased for years or years or years, which also I don't see it as a negative thing. Ego gets a bad rep. I think chasing your ego is what gets you places. If you don't have an ego, if you don't inside yourself think I can do this better than any of these idiots, then why would you open a restaurant? You have to have that. And I think that that's beneficial. But at one point you have to come to terms with it and say, okay, dear ego, you brought me a long way. I'm gonna leave you here and continue on a path with different priorities, and that's what my life has to be. Sometimes it comes up to the surface, we can have a little dabble, a little fun, but you know, something else matters and something else matters more. 

James: Now you've walked away, how does it feel? 

Christian: It feels so good. I feel so light, and I feel so relieved. I feel so excited about the future. Also because the business situation has just given me time to prioritize what I want to do, and I have time to let it grow slowly. I'm not busy and in the meantime, I just enjoy my time with my family at the most important time to do so.

James: Yeah, very nicely out. Well, as you said, you're in your forties now, so tell me what you think are the biggest differences between being a parent in your twenties and being one in your forties? And maybe start with the upside. 

Christian: Well, the ego thing is a big thing, right? I think the ego takes up more space at a younger age. It's easier to fight it when you get a little older. I think just the understanding of time. I think once you start understanding your own mortality. So when you look in the mirror, why is it that we so fear these…? It’s because it tells us you're gonna go, man. So the more you are closing in on that, the more you understand the beauty and the privilege it is to, to get that fresh life in your everyday life. When you have a 3-year-old just bursting with energy, it's like, wow. Like, I get to revisit everything in life by holding his hand and seeing how he sees, now it's the moon, or now it's the thing, and now it's the leaves, and now it's the birds. It's like, they see all the shit that you take for granted. And it just to get that at a certain age when you can appreciate it, it’s just so giving, like it gives you so much. People that choose not to have kids, you don't understand what it does to you. Like, your perspective on your day is different. Not when the kids are there or because they're there, it's just because everything's changed. You just rewire your operating system. It's just different. The downside is, like, you know, sleep  – that's never been my forte lacking sleep and, you know, that energy level is, it's like, it's hard. Like it's physically hard and mentally hard and conflicts all the time. With a 3-year-old particularly, it's like all the time. It's very demanding. It's very demanding. So, you know, when your age changes, what is the tradeoff? It’s that you're tired more, like, I go to bed like at 9, 9:30. Like if it's 10, it's like, oh my god, it's 10 o'clock. You know, I don't watch any football anymore because it's like, it starts at nine. What am I like, how am I, how am I gonna get by? I need the three o'clock weekend games to get me in on it. 

James: Yeah, you and me both. But tell me, have you made any lifestyle changes since becoming a dad again in your forties? Do you do different types of exercise, say or drink less?

Christian: I'm not sure whether it's because I now have kids, I do this, but as the toll on you gets bigger and bigger, that's also including the business and the stress from that, you really start seeing, okay, how am I gonna, like, I need to do something, right? And sleep's the first thing. But also alcohol. Like, very limited. Very limited. It's like, I'll have a great glass of wine, but not just a whatever glass of wine. Like, I just know how much it costs. My diet has been very on-point for quite a while and, you know, I exercise all the time and just live a much healthier life than I would've done before. Meditation, cold plunge, just the whole thing. I do all of it. But also because I don't have this urge to live a hundred years. I don't think that makes a lot of sense to me. I think that that's a basically non-philosophical approach to life. Like, the point is not to live a long time. The point is to live fully at all times. So whenever I can physically put myself in a place where I can do that the best possible way, I want to do it. And I really enjoy feeling that I do that, right? And to be physically capable among my kids, I think is also an important position I wanna take. You know, like, you have to physically be fit, like, for this life. It's not easier not being fit, you know? But in the end, it's like, everything comes down to sleep, right? So all the stuff that you do is also improving your sleep, and then in the end, that's what you really need.

James: Yeah. For me, one benefit to being a relatively older parent is that while we have more miles on the clock, we've therefore got more experience and are maybe a bit more well-rounded as individuals. Do you agree? 

Christian: A hundred percent. Like, I think I've grown so much in the last ten years, in terms of my perspective on life, and becoming a father also helped that. You know, I wouldn't have done that or been through that evolution without having kids. But most certainly, I'm a more well-integrated person than I was 10, 15 years ago. And I also, that's an ambition of mine. Like, I want to be when I'm like 75 and 80, at least 75, I wanna be an incredible conversation. Like, because I’ve tried a lot of shit now and in 30 years, I wanna just be able to, for my grandkids and my kids when they're grownups like I want them to wanna sit down with me and just be like, what? You know, like, wow, I didn't think of it that way. You know, that's a big ambition for me. Not only the physical being able to be a part of it, but I wanna study life as much as I can to be able to tell them about it. You know, give them some views and perspective that they can use themselves. That's extremely important to me. 

James: And do you think you're a more confident parent than you were in your twenties?

Christian: My wife now is a geek by nature and, you know, she studied medicine mostly because of it creating the most amount of homework ever possible to do so, and I think she has that approach to parenting as well. Like, there's not an important child psychologist that she doesn't know by heart by now, and books and how to talk to kids and how to listen and everything. And we just approach it very almost professionally, you know, like we think about it and discuss it. And I find it very stimulating because it's a high-level and high-resolution discussion about what do we want to give these kids? And I'm not as mature as she is, by that, because I'm much more temperamental. So the idea of absorbing their emotions and being so tolerant is just that much more work for me than just going like, you better... It's like, my go-to fight or flight mode is, you know, pointing the finger, and I've just become so much better at it, because we discuss it all the time and we plan for how to deal with some situations and we discuss how some situations were dealt with and how to do it better. And it just makes it, parenting also, I think, it makes, at least for someone like me, it makes the process in its own also interesting. It's not like, okay, these small people are here, ugh, we are all tired and ugh, life is hard. You know, like, okay, okay, okay. Like that's, you know, you can fast conclude that it's very difficult to have children, but going into the psychology of kids and what do they do with their emotions and how do you deal with those emotions, it's so fucking interesting, and you know, as I was saying, you practise over the kids, and you know, we're just so much smarter now than we were with the first one. And I'm a hell of a lot smarter than I was with my first one, you know? And it's also useful for the first one because now he's a preteen and you have to deal with that in a very, you know, particular way and it's all relevant to them. And I also have to say that I also became a much better leader and manager in work, because how you deal with a 3-year-old and how you deal with a 23-year-old, it's basically the same. You know, acknowledging what they feel and, you know. At times the 3-year-old is more easy – well, the thing is that you get to do the work when they're three and not when they're 23. The problem is that many of the 23-year-olds maybe were not dealt with in the best possible way. I think that that's extremely useful. And also to, again, learn things about yourself and why do I react? Because I think about my own childhood all the time. Why do I react the way I do? Well, fucking hell, man, everybody's just shouting at each other where I come from. The effort I need to put in to not go into that mode, there's a reason for it. You know, it's not my fault, it's just what I've seen.

James: So Christian, when I first reached out and invited you to come onto the podcast, you said this was the topic you'd given the most thought to in the last few years. Why is that? 

Christian: It's the ego. Like, it's the lack of ego. It is the evolution of your ego. It's like, oh, what am I driven by? Like, I'm ambitious. If you're ambitious, it's ego-driven. Like, it’s not bad. It's not negative, but there's not a lot of mental space for others in that, because you have a mission, you want to go do something, let's get at it. That doesn't mean you have to be a dick about it, but that's your mindset. And then you become a father for the first time, and that understanding, that, oh my god, this is just, like, this is it. Like, this is what it's about. Whatever the fuck I was going around doing was what it was about back then. Now I'm a father, it's different. It's completely different. It just chips away at your ego, over time. And the idea of, I would a hundred percent sacrifice my own success if I could by that guarantee my kids' success. Like a thousand percent, I wouldn't even think about it. A hundred percent. And it's just this way of, you come to terms with whatever has been your motivation, whatever has been driving you, probably roots back to your childhood, no? And some of it was good, and some of it was maybe not so good. And you get that opportunity to be like, okay, this has maybe brought me a long way, but it also kind of fucked me up because when I'm down, this is what happens. This is my thing. And I get to do something about it by making sure that that doesn't get passed on, because that is what people keep doing all the time, you know. They have, whether it's a trauma, whatever it is, the personality created by their childhood and their interaction with their parents and the love from their parents or the lack of love or whatever, and then it just repeats itself forever because then you just go into those patterns and you repeat it to your kids. And I'm like, the act of reflecting upon who am I, where do I come from, what do I appreciate about it, what am I thinking today? I wanna do better, And it's like, that is the greatest ambition you can ever have. You can actually do better. And I mean it's just so giving to have a child that is fun and inspiring and says crazy ideas and, you know, just has a good time playing. Like, the best thing I know with my 13-year-old, that's been the last couple of years actually, since he was like seven, eight, is to see him with his friends, it's the best. You know, you just see them communicating in the way that they do and they don't care about it. Particularly like when the seven, eight-year-olds, like, they say crazy shit and they just have fun and they don't think about anything, and you can just be there observing your child's childhood, knowing that you create the circumstances for them to have this good time. I mean, that's the best thing. 

James: All right, then, last question. You're in your forties and, as you said, anything's possible. So what does the future hold, do you think? 

Christian: Well, I wanna write. I wrote a book, which was a cookbook in its own, but then again was kind of more than that. Like, I put a lot of time into writing the ideas behind it. I think that that showed already back then that this process of thinking, reflecting, linking some ideas, putting it down on paper, and synthesizing something new, I just love that. So I wanna write a book that I've had on my mind for some time. The idea is that it's meditations on cooking and I want to write 10, 12 sort of basic ideas that I just think are extremely important in a life of cooking, whether it be restaurants or whatever kind of level. But particularly I would want that book for the me at 25, 27 that wants to go out and conquer the world as a little handbook to stick you on the right path, with my considerations, my ideas, and what I think is important and why you shouldn't fuck around with, and so on and so on. 

James: Brilliant. Well, I'll drop a link to your new website in the show notes so listeners can follow along. But that's all we have time for. Christian Puglisi, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.   

Christian: Thank you. Thank you, James.   

James: This episode was produced and hosted by me, James Clasper for Archipelago Audio. The music’s by Pete Morrison. For more stories and inspiration, head to dadmodeactivated.co. And if today's show resonated with you, please consider leaving a nice rating or review, or better yet, share the episode with someone who might enjoy it. Until next time, keep your dad mode activated.