Mikkel Beck was a fan of the chef, so he invested in the restaurant
Jim White
Traditionally, the only contact footballers had with the catering trade was buying a pub the moment they stopped playing.
Which, to be fair, was merely falling in line with expert opinion that it is always enriching during retirement to spend quality time on your favourite hobby.
So, if you want evidence about the way footballers’ thinking has moved upmarket, propelled by bloated salary cheques, it can be found on London’s Old Brompton Road where property is now so expensive that a lock-up garage recently changed hands for 250 000.
Here you will find Lundum’s, a smart and airy Danish restaurant serving food of such insistent quality it recently came to the notice of the compilers of the Michelin guide, who included the place in their latest edition.
Lundum’s has a further distinction: it is part-owned by the former Middlesborough striker Mikkel Beck.
“We opened about a year-and- a-half ago,” says Beck, who can be found in the restaurant most afternoons, fuelling- up after training with Queen’s Park Rangers, where he is currently on loan from Derby. “And already we are in the Michelin guide. We are very proud of that. It is the premier league of restaurants.”
Following the lead of Victor Kiam, who bought the Remington company because he liked its razors so much, Beck invested in his venture because he liked the chef’s food.
“I enjoy eating out, I’ve done it a lot, more or less once a day since I left Denmark seven years ago,” he says.
“But I always envied Italian players because wherever they play in the world there will be an Italian restaurant serving the food they are used to. For a Dane this is not so easy.
“I firmly believe that if you eat well you feel good about yourself and you play well. Then, one day, when I was at Middlesborough, I came down to London to see a friend who took me to this restaurant in the old Danish Club. Danish food: excellent. After the meal we got talking with the family who ran it and they asked if I’d be interested in opening a place with them, because they were only renting and they wanted somewhere of their own. And that is how it came about.”
Does this suggest that the modern footballer, known to be loaded, can’t even enjoy a meal without being bombarded by requests for financial backing?
“Not really,” says Beck. “This was something out of the blue. But I am very patriotic and I was keen to help any Danish enterprise to get a foothold abroad.”
Beck is coy about how much he put in, but his restaurant does not look like a cheap operation. Elegantly fitted out, in a prime location, on the lunchtime I visited it was full of the well-heeled enjoying an extensive menu of Danish fare.
Which raises the question: what exactly constitutes Danish cuisine, beyond the bacon Peter Schmeichel advertises on television?
“Fish,” says Beck. “But not battered like the English way. You ruin your fish, don’t you, with all that batter. At Middlesborough we used to go to Whitby, where Dracula had his summer house, lovely place, to this restaurant known for serving the best fish and chips, very, very posh. But I never ate it. I had something against fish and chips. When we make fun of English food in Denmark we always laugh about fish and chips.”
Fish maybe, but the co-owner himself always lunches on the same dish: an open sandwich of meatballs on rye bread with a cucumber and beetroot salad. It is, he says, the perfect fuel for the athlete, a tasty combination of protein, fibre and carbohydrate. Though it is not something he himself ever rustles up.
“I don’t know how to cook,” he says. “But I’m a very good judge. I tell them, cook something for me and I’ll tell you whether you’re any good or not. That’s my role at the restaurant: I said from the beginning I cannot cook, I haven’t got a clue about running the business, but what I can do is eat. I think I’m doing quite well there. Actually I feel uneasy in the kitchen, I know this is not my world.”
Which is odd, as many have compared the way a kitchen operates to a football team: it is, after all, about working together for a common goal.
“Yeah, but I saw the programme on the telly about this guy Gordon Ramsay,” says Beck of the former Rangers player turned celebrity chef. “I thought that was too much, the way he shouted. If you compare it to a football team, I suppose it’s important to have a hierarchy. But I don’t think you need to shout like he does.
“It’s the same with some football managers, they think it’s about shouting loudly. I don’t believe in that. I don’t think any human being can perform well in those conditions.”
The Beck softly, softly approach seems to be working. The restaurant has certainly found favour among his fellow professionals.
“Bjarne Goldbaek and Allan Neilsen, the other Danish footballers in London, come here,” he says.
“And I brought the Derby team here after the last game of last season. It was against Chelsea so I brought everyone, the players, the staff. They loved it.”
Even Jim Smith? He always strikes the seasoned observer as an inveterate pie- and-chips man, not a big fan of fancy foreign food.
“No, no. Jim loved it,” Beck says, polishing off the last of his smorgasbord. “I think.”
And the fact that soon after the visit he was farmed out on loan by Smith was entirely coincidental.
ENDS