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Victoria Burrows

Hong Kong-born chef Edward Lee opened his restaurant Udtryk (pronounced “oot-trehk”) in Copenhagen, Denmark, on May 7. Just 41 days later, the restaurant was awarded a Michelin star – one of the quickest on record.
Lee says winning the star was a huge surprise.
“It was an absolute shock to the system on the night,” says the 38-year-old chef. “It’s absolutely wonderful. To go from zero to one star so quickly without a big-name chef or anything, that’s something to be proud of.”
Lee may not yet be a big-name chef, but Udtryk has certainly got the culinary world talking.
The restaurant melds Chinese with Nordic, French and Japanese approaches. Named after the Danish word for “expression”, it is the articulation of Lee’s gastronomic personality developed over the past two decades on opposite sides of the world.

At Udtryk, he draws heavily on his Hong Kong heritage. He only lived in the city until the age of five, but he often returns to visit family. He grew up in Sydney but kept connected to Hong Kong’s food culture through Sydney’s substantial Chinatown and Chinese neighbourhoods. The move to Australia instilled in him a lifelong fascination for different cultures and cuisines.
It was in Sydney that he got his first job in a professional kitchen – as a dishwasher. The energy and camaraderie of the professional kitchen gave him a profound sense of belonging. He found joy working in an environment that made others feel welcome.
He enrolled in formal culinary education, training in classical French, and took multiple apprenticeships before joining the team at Claude’s, a celebrated French restaurant in Sydney.
Singapore-born chef Chui-lee Luk was introducing Asian flavours to the dishes at Claude’s at the time – something unusual two decades ago when modern European dishes from chefs such as Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay were dominating the Sydney food scene, says Lee.
“My time at Claude’s showed me that you can cook Asian food in a refined environment in a very refined way. It was exceptionally inspiring,” he says.
After 37 years of service, Claude’s closed in 2013. Lee decided to expand his gastronomic horizons and left for Europe in 2014. He worked in top kitchens in the UK and Denmark, finessing his talent for modern European cuisine, becoming skilled in Nordic with its focus on local sourcing of ingredients and sustainability, and exploring the Japanese culinary lexicon loved by fine dining chefs in the West.

Udtryk is where he brings it all together.
“The key is in the name – Udtryk,” says Lee. “Some chefs, perhaps because of investors, are forced to cook in a certain way, or to follow a particular fad. But to me, it’s about learning from the masters, bottling it all up, and then expressing it in your own way.”
Throughout Udtryk’s 10-course seasonal tasting menu, Lee so seamlessly blends East and West that it is almost impossible to detect where one ends and the next begins.
A trio of small bites that begin the meal include a tiny tartlet of whipped, home-made tofu with white asparagus, cucumber, and the first of the season’s Danish peas. Then there is a croustade (pastry shell) with lobster claw marinated with Buddha’s hand (Asian fingered citron), paired with pickled magnolia and a jelly made from the lobster shells.

The beautifully refreshing dish of Norwegian trap-caught shrimp with new Danish green asparagus, nashi pears and yuzu juice comes before the impressive sustainably caught North Sea turbot, which is dry aged in-house for seven days. The fish is topped with a farce (stuffing) made from the tail and skirt of the turbot and 10-year-aged tangerine peel from Xinhui in southern China. The dish is served with a 10-year-old Shaoxing wine beurre blanc (butter sauce) on Royal Copenhagen plates.
Lee called in a favour from family in Hong Kong to get his hands on the prized tangerine peel.
“We’re the only ones who have this in Denmark,” he says. “I was inspired by the Hong Kong technique of using tangerine peel to minimise fishiness, and replaced the classic French combination of vin jaune with turbot with the Shaoxing wine as there were similar notes, although the Chinese wine has deeper, more sherry notes.”
Lee often looks for inspiration from Chinese food for more robust flavours, although not going as far as the very bold style of the Sichuan kitchen.
“I think the Cantonese style is very relevant to the Nordic and Japanese styles,” he says. “The ingredients play a big factor – we try to bring out the best in each ingredient.”
In the show-stopper final savoury dish, Lee ramps up the umami: koshihikari rice from Niigata, Japan, is cooked in an earthenware pot Lee imported from China. The rice is seasoned with an emulsion of lobster coral (the red cooked roe) and brain, and topped with sliced short rib from Denmark’s only Wagyu producer, Norlin, grilled maitake mushrooms and caviar.

On the side is a dumpling stuffed with chopped langoustine tail, duck liver and, supporting his low-waste ethos, minced meat from the legs of the quail served in the course before. The dumpling rests in a broth of Chinese double-boiled superior chicken and is served in a classic blue-and-white porcelain dish.
Dessert continues the multicultural kaleidoscope, with a palate-cleansing granita of milky oolong custard with melon, rose lychee and Amalfi lemon; a rhubarb, rose and ginger soufflé; and petit fours that mix white chocolate with yuzu, black garlic and licorice.
The culinary background of a dish or cooking technique – whether it is from the Chinese, Nordic, French or Japanese repertoire – is just one aspect Lee considers when planning his menu.
“The background is important for what you’re trying to convey in terms of a culinary message, but it also has to fit in within the menu flow. If I put a big typhoon-style fried chicken dish at the start, your palate is covered in salt and spice,” he says.
“We take it from a more classical perspective. I was always taught to start off lighter, more delicate, more mineral and then build it up from there. With too many explosive flavours, when you get to the eighth or ninth serving, your palate is over-dominated. We always position ourselves as guests to see how the journey evolves, from the palate to the storytelling to the culinary background of each dish.”

Lee has learned from a star-studded cast over the years. Most recently, he was assistant chef for Eric Vildgaard, chef-owner of Copenhagen’s Restaurant Jordnaer, known for its exquisite tasting menus of elegantly bold, internationally inflected Nordic dishes. During Lee’s tenure from 2018 to 2022, Jordnaer was awarded two Michelin stars; the restaurant has gone on to earn a third.
Lee also worked at the now-closed modern Nordic restaurant Studio, which was opened by Vildgaard’s brother, chef Torsten Vildgaard, who was previously head of research and development at Noma, and now helms FZN Dubai, which went straight to three Michelin stars in May.
Before settling in Denmark, Lee worked under Mikael Jonsson at the renowned modern European restaurant Hedone in London, now closed.
Udtryk is not Lee’s first restaurant. In 2022, he opened Gaijin, an affordable, ingredient-driven izakaya-style restaurant in Copenhagen, where, he says, there were limited options for Japanese food at the time. Gaijin closed in 2024; Lee cites issues with the investors.
“It wasn’t that we fell out of love with it or we didn’t want to do it any more. Things behind the scenes didn’t go according to plan,” he says.
Now he has a new investor, Bjarke Just Nielsen of the Norrlyst Group, which runs 14 other restaurants across Copenhagen. His romantic partner, Regitze Jensen, helps him run the restaurant as manager. Lee is thankful for the support: with the acquisition of the Michelin star, the restaurant is consistently packed.
“We’re running a full house for the next few months, it’s pretty full-on. We’re capping a few of the covers – my team has been working five days a week from 10am till close for the past month. We’re looking for new staff so we can cut the hours down to make sure everyone can still perform at a high level consistently without feeling exhausted,” he says.
“The goal is to make it a sustainable workplace with the ethos of ‘why not?’ I don’t want the restraint of ‘we must cook Japanese’ or ‘we must cook this style’. There’s never been more choices to eat. It’s never been a better time to be a chef.”


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Food and Drinks

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Croustade with lobster claw paired with pickled magnolia and lobster shell jelly at Udtryk, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Hong Kong-born chef Edward Lee’s latest restaurant opened on May 7 this year and gained its first Michelin star 41 days later. Photo: Restaurant Udtryk

Chef Edward Lee draws heavily on his Hong Kong heritage at Udtryk. Photo: Restaurant Udtryk

White asparagus, cucumber and whipped tofu is a seasonal bite at Urtryk. Photo: Restaurant Udtryk

A table at Udtryk. Photo: Mads Sommer Ankerlund

In his final savoury dish on the tasting menu, Lee uses Koshihikari rice cooked in an earthenware pot he imported from China. Photo: Restaurant Udtryk

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Food & Drink

Udtryk in Copenhagen, Denmark, gained a Michelin star just 41 days after it opened. Owner and chef Edward Lee recounts his culinary journey


Udtryk in Copenhagen, Denmark, gained a Michelin star just 41 days after it opened. Owner and chef Edward Lee recounts his culinary journey.


Asian diaspora

Denmark

Chinese cuisine

Chinese culture

One of the fastest Michelin stars ever – Hong Kong-born chef’s unique restaurant Udtryk

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Udtryk in Copenhagen, Denmark, gained a Michelin star just 41 days after it opened. Owner and chef Edward Lee recounts his culinary journey

Udtryk in Copenhagen, Denmark, gained a Michelin star just 41 days after it opened. Owner and chef Edward Lee recounts his culinary journey