A Michelin-starred Danish chef is scheduled to take astronomically expensive fine dining to the edge of space in late 2025 in collaboration with a Florida-based space travel startup, The Associated Press (AP) reported Monday.
Rasmus Munk, 33, chef and owner of the Copenhagen restaurant Alchemist, will serve space-inspired meals to the six guests aboard Space Perspective’s Spaceship Neptune as the spaceship travels to the stratosphere, according to the outlet’s report.
Guests will dine in the balloon-shaped spaceship at around 100,000 feet (30,480 meters) above sea level while watching the sun rise above the earth’s curvature, the report revealed.
The meal reportedly will cost a stratospheric $495,000 per ticket for the six-hour out-of-this-world experience. (RELATED: Runway Waiters: The Exquisite Service Experience of a Top Event Staffing Agency)
Munk was loathe to reveal his menu, cryptically saying he planned to incorporate glow-in-dark stars made from aerogel and jellyfish protein as well as “an edible piece of space junk from a satellite,” the report noted.
“And then, we want to talk about some of the things going on on the planet … from deforestation to temperatures rising and the garbage in our seas,” he reportedly added.
Historically, space has not been a major culinary destination. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, subsisted on beef and liver paste which he squeezed into his mouth from an aluminum tube, the AP reported. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) usually eat low-weight dishes packaged in rehydratable containers, according to the report.
In an exceptional case in 2006, ISS astronauts ate tinned gourmet food — including olives, tomatoes, quails, swordfish, and other Mediterranean dishes — prepared by the French master chef Alain Ducasse, the report noted.
Munk’s Alchemist has been named the best restaurant in Denmark and then in Europe and has maintained its Michelin star rating, which it earned in Feb. 2020 when it was just seven months old, according to several of Munk’s tweets. Munk himself was rated “Chef of the Year 2024” by Madrid-based Tapas Magazine.
Alchemist’s menu includes edible “impressions” such as the invasive Moon jellyfish and an eyeball-shaped dish called “1984, George Orwell,” according to the restaurant’s Instagram.
Eating at Alchemist “is a highly theatrical affair at the pinnacle of destination dining,” according to the Michelin Guide.
“I think fine dining, in general, is changing a lot,” Munk told AP. “And I think you, as a guest, require more [of] an experience in the future.”
Alchemist is the fifth best restaurant in the world, according to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants — an independent body with a 1,080-member panel of culinary experts.