The Chef Who Doesn’t Perform
Meet Robert Sandberg. Six years after trading Michelin kitchens in Scandinavia for the private dining rooms of Los Angeles, the Swedish chef has built something rare – a career defined not by spectacle or social media strategy, but by the simple, stubborn conviction that if the food is right, everything else follows.
Text by Marcus Dunberg
“I’m a chef,” he says.
But then, simplicity has always been Sandberg’s mode. He trained at Noma in Copenhagen and later cooked at Kong Hans Kælder, Maaemo in Oslo, and Frantzén in Stockholm – kitchens where discipline is a given and shortcuts don’t exist. In 2016, he won the Worldchefs Hans Bueschkens Young Chef Challenge. He arrived
in LA with serious credentials and very little interest in leveraging them for anything other than cooking.
“Michelin kitchens teach you discipline. They teach you precision and standards. What they don’t teach you is how to chase clout,” he says.
“I never learned that part. I’m not sure I’d want to.”
That directness has, paradoxically, opened doors that self-promotion might not have. Sandberg now cooks privately for some of the wealthiest people in the world, in homes where the budget is irrelevant. We’re talking Jeff Bezos. Elon Musk. Matt Damon, who has become a close friend; their families spend time together now, well beyond the confines of any dinner service.
“What I value most is the freedom,” he says. “No budget constraints, no limitations. I can cook exactly what I want. That kind of opportunity really only exists here. And once one person likes you, word travels fast in those circles. What started as work has become part of everyday life.”
“I’m tired of it, honestly. Too rehearsed. Too aware of itself."
In these homes, he isn’t treated like hired staff. He becomes part of the room – trusted, invited back, folded into a world where someone might casually spend three million dollars on a birthday party or call a pilot on a whim to fly to Thailand the next morning. The conversations are different when that kind of money is in the air, he acknowledges, but the dynamic suits him. He cooks. They eat. No performance required.
"The ramen counter that’s been refining broth for a decade. That’s what excites me.”
I fly several times a week, often with friends.
Life, by most measures, is good.
Sandberg is now an American citizen. He lives in a quiet, residential pocket of West Hollywood, far from the noise, even though most of what passes for LA’s social life happens well outside of Hollywood proper.
He trains regularly. He eats out constantly. He flies. And he tattoos his body – realistic black-and-grey work: two tigers, his dogs, fragments of memory – without much planning. “I started at fourteen. A friend was getting tattooed and I tagged along. My parents weren’t supposed to know. After that, I just never stopped.” He’s getting one more piece done next month, after which he considers himself finished.
