Love, tacos and fiord shrimp: Meet Danish taqueria owner Rosio Sanchez

Rosio Sanchez lives by a simple motto, which she learned from master pastry chef Alex Stupak: "Beyonce has just as many hours in the day as you."

The former Noma pastry chef behind Copenhagen taqueria Hija de Sanchez and Sanchez Cantina, grew up as a first-generation Mexican-American in south Chicago, an area largely populated by Mexican immigrants. An extremely segregated neighbourhood, where Spanish is the primary language, there are parts to living there that make her incredibly uncomfortable. "It's a little rough. There's a lot of gang violence – Mexicans on Mexicans – disgusting and pointless."

But there are good things about growing up in an area so immersed in its culture, too. There are taquerias on every block, and a tortilla factory not far from where she lived. Getting ingredients for good Mexican food was always easy. It's those flavours of her childhood that inform her cooking today.

The other part of the Rosio Sanchez Venn Diagram of Kick-Ass Cookery is taken up by two of the strongest personalities in the hospitality game, Wylie Dufresne and Rene Redzepi. Both pushed and influenced her in different but significant ways.

Her first three years out of culinary school were spent with Dufresne at New York's WD50, an early 2000s temple of modernist cuisine. "That was the perfect spot because they pushed everyone to be creative, and I craved that. Anyone that worked there, in some way, had to be creative with the menu. That was really exciting and it goes to show that you have to just keep trying. And you have to keep failing."

The sheer depth and breadth of ingredients the chefs could work with was staggering. Dufresne brought in an endless edible wishlist from every corner of the globe.

People still come to the restaurant that haven't had Mexican food – ever.

It was in stark contrast to the naturalist, terroir-based cooking of Redzepi at Noma. "Figuring out all the new ingredients and how to incorporate them was really fun. From Rene I learnt a lot of working within constraints. It was the perfect transition from doing anything you like, to going 'OK we're in Scandinavia, we're doing only this'. Just cooking more naturally."

Moving to Denmark from New York in 2010 was a big change of pace for the chef. Sunday, her one day off, also happened to be the one day the entire city closed down. "At first I was like, 'Oh my god, what am I gonna do here? Just stay home and do laundry?'. In New York, you can get anything you want, anytime you want. You need a sandwich at three in the morning? It's OK."

After nine years in Copenhagen, Sanchez has learnt to chill. She now meditates every morning. She rides her bike and she's learning to be a happier person. Ultimately, she says, it was a good push for life-recalibration. "I still worked a lot – I worked more at Noma than I ever did anywhere. Five years there is the equivalent to 10 years anywhere else."

What Sanchez really likes about living in Copenhagen is the quality of life. "The more I read into what makes people happy, those books always preach community. It's not just about your friends, but that you say 'Hi' to the guy that makes your coffee and you have these connections with people. That is very important and there's definitely that in Copenhagen. And it's really beautiful."

She'd been working alongside Redzepi for about four years when she started seriously thinking about exploring her Mexican roots. Until she opened her taqueria she'd struggled to find anything close to passable Mexican food in Denmark. "It got to a point where I was thinking about it a lot, and criticising what there was. And then one of my friends told me, 'You could probably do it yourself if you really wanted to make it better'. And that's where it started."

Now she's running her own businesses, she has a sense of liberation. She loves being in charge, and the creative freedom that comes with that. "It's very different and it's very exciting. You can really try to do whatever you want and if you see something's not working, you just try to change it. I wouldn't go back to working for somebody else."

Getting the Danes on board with Mexican food has been an interesting journey. "People still come to the restaurant that haven't had Mexican food – ever. I think we have to remember that, so you can't go too crazy. It's a good challenge and the thing that makes me the most happy is that it's tasty food. And that I want to eat it, so for me that's great."

There are also certain challenges with making Mexican food in Denmark. They import the essentials of chilli and corn themselves from Mexico. Anything they can't get, they do without or use Danish ingredients instead. You might see fried fiord shrimp on a taco. Aged cow's cheese. Gooseberry salsa. Danish licorice. Sanchez is pretty sanguine about it.

"I apply a little bit of everything. I keep reminding everybody that works with us and people that visit, we are a restaurant that's using Mexican ingredients and we're trying to make them as tasty as possible. But not forgetting that we're in Copenhagen. You have to think about these things so that you don't get too bummed out, be too hard on yourself and also not restrain yourself too much. It's never gonna be the same as in Mexico."

Sanchez doesn't like being boxed in by her ethnicity. "Anytime people ask me, I'm like, 'I was born in Chicago and my parents are from Mexico, you can decide whatever you want'."

She shrugs off questions around authenticity, too, accepting the fact that it's important but that it can be just as important to be authentic and true to yourself. "It's food that's more or less a reflection of me, where we are and having those backgrounds as influences and inspirations. It's so hard to find a place that's specifically 'something'.

"I think if you're looking for authentic Mexican restaurants, or authentic Chinese, then it's in Mexico and then it's in China. But even they have their own influences from other cultures."

Rosio Sanchez was in Australia for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.