Martin’s story began in small, ordinary rooms. On Sunday mornings he stood beside his mother, separating eggs, sifting flour, coaxing pancakes to life. At Christmas, Swedish dishes appeared on a Peruvian table, familiar and foreign at once. In a childhood where the feeling of “family” was rare, those meals were when everyone finally came together. Food became the place where love, care and belonging could exist.

Long before kitchens felt inevitable, another current was already moving through him. As a child he played “Imagine” on repeat until the song felt like a doorway, then he found the piano and the guitar and stepped through. Music became a way to feel and to speak. It never left. In the kitchen it turned into rhythm and phrasing: service began to feel like a choreography, the line like a piece of music where timing, flow and intuition mattered as much as recipes. For him, sound and flavor are just two ways of telling the same story.

He crossed countries and kitchens, starting at the very bottom, learning the line, then later spearheading teams and leading rooms. Each restaurant became a chapter: places where creativity was welcomed and others where it was tightly held, nights that felt electric and nights that taught him exactly what not to repeat. Chefs, colleagues and mentors shaped him in different ways, sometimes with kindness, sometimes with friction. All of it settled into his hands: discipline, curiosity, respect for origin, and a belief that a plate can carry memory as clearly as a verse.

Out of that long, winding journey, a quiet truth emerged. He could not keep building only under other people’s visions. The need to create something of his own, to cook the way he dreamed and to let his full voice come through, grew too strong to ignore. That was the first clear outline of RUNA.

RUNA is that outline filled in. It is the seed finally in bloom, the moment his wandering path gathers into a single, honest expression of who he is. And it is also the beginning of the next story: a living, present place where everything he has learned — food, music, memory and wonder — can keep evolving into whatever comes after.