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Kamilla Seidler

Lola

Kamilla Seidler was born in Copenhagen, as the oldest of eight siblings. She began working in restaurants at 15, and at 21 underwent training at the Copenhagen Hospitality College. After graduating, she worked at several well-known restaurants such as Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Mugaritz.

Seidler was invited to cook for Claus Meyer as part of an interview for a Bolivian food movement he was looking to set up. Four months later she became head chef of the restaurant Gustu.

Instinct for the future of food

Danish chef Kamilla Seidler has always had an instinct for the future of food. Her pioneering takes on Bolivian cuisine at Gustu in La Paz applied the ideas behind New Nordic Cuisine to local Andean food culture.

She is known in Latin America as “The Dane of the Andes,”. Kamilla Seidler built the menu using local, indigenous ingredients that were often disregarded. Moreover, she worked together with a local nonprofit to empower locals to do the same. After leaving Gustu in 2017, she embarked on the Kamilla Seidler Expedition. She travels around the world to apply the same approach in other locations.

She also helped launch the annual Freja Symposium in 2018, an innovative platform tacking gender equality in the Nordic food world—a sorely under-discussed topic. Now, Seidler is bringing her progressive, conscientious outlook back to her hometown of Copenhagen, where she opened her own restaurant, Lola.

“’I’ve had the opportunities to travel a lot—which is also an issue—but the vision is pretty much to be inspired from all over the world and then source what we can locally. So, all the fresh greens, fish, meats, and whatever we’re going to use, will be sourced locally. But then maybe we’ll add curry, or we’ll do a Pakistani-inspired dish, but with different ingredients. Do a Thai dish with a Danish fish sauce? So, there’s space for different flavor profiles, but the products are local.”

The Lola team Project

Lola gastronomic profile is an inspiration from all the wonderful places the chef has eaten, lived, and worked around the world. The classic kitchen hierarchy is mostly about promoting the well-known chef as the main attraction. This has its advantages to a certain extent, but the restaurant philosophy is that you are nothing without your team. Everyone can be part of the process, have ideas and create new ways of doing things, both gastronomically and in regard to communication and well-being.