Claus Meyer

Chef and entrepreneur Claus Meyer built a career that transformed Danish food culture, co-founded Noma, and launched an ambitious New York venture that earned a Michelin star after four months. But the New York project was an economic failure, and when he returned to Denmark, Meyer found himself in a depression so deep that he doubted he would ever contribute professionally again. In this conversation with host Sørine Godfredsen, Meyer describes how that collapse forced him to confront a pattern he had carried since childhood: the exhausting belief that he had to perform in order to be loved.

The childhood wound

Meyer was born in 1963 in Nykøbing Falster to teenage parents. His early years were warm, especially because of his grandmother, whom he calls "the light of my life." But when his grandmother died and his parents separated, the family structure collapsed. His father, a self-employed tool dealer struggling in an unwanted marriage, became distant and critical, calling Meyer fat and telling him he would never be good at anything. The most violent memory came when Meyer was 13 or 14: he borrowed his father's Jacoform shoes after his own got wet, and his father hit him on the side of the head with an open hand. The next day, Meyer wrote a note: "Dad, you lost your son yesterday." He says he never felt love for his father after that moment.