After Eating at Noma, the Best Restaurant in the World, both its Reputation and Impending Closure Make Sense.

I felt moments of boyish glee spinning 200 feet above Copenhagen on the Star Flyer, a giant swing carousel in the city’s famous Tivoli Gardens, reliving childhood memories from a similar ride the Essex County Fair in Westport, NY. As I flew through the air and the people below me began to look increasingly more insectile, a thought popped into my mind. Has René Redzepi, the chef behind Noma, the restaurant that brought me here, ever been in this position? Has he shared the same boyish wonder that was possessing me at the moment?

Noma is a combination of the Danish words nordisk - Nordic, and mad - food. When Redzepi opened Noma in 2003 with then-partner Claus Meyer, he was still just a young and emerging Danish chef. The project would operate under the pretenses of a New Nordic Food Manifesto that Meyer played a large hand in creating, alongside Redzepi and many other prominent names in the Nordic food scene. 10 bullet points outlining how to celebrate local ingredients while maintaining sustainable practices would dictate Noma’s entire ethos. It was a bold and unprecedented move, but through Redzepi’s genius, it changed the way Nordic food would be perceived.

Though the (achieved) goal of Noma was to overhaul the region’s cuisine, its unavoidable influence eventually spread throughout the globe. Redzepi focused on turning often overlooked ingredients, such as year-old carrots, or foraged “beach herbs” to create masterpieces out of things you likely didn’t know were edible. This radical approach has earned Noma the title of top restaurant in the world a record-tying five times.

Despite being the closest thing that a restaurant could be to a household name, in the first days of 2023 Redzepi announced that the restaurant as we knew it would be closing down at the end of 2024. Noma is already in its second iteration following a hiatus in 2016-17 where the restaurant moved into a new home (more of a compound). Noma 3.0 will see the restaurant evolve into a food research lab, expand its development and production of purchasable goods, “Noma Projects,” and continue to do occasional pop-ups around the world that you will not be able to score a table at. Even before its impending closure was announced, getting a reservation was basically impossible. I had one at 6 pm.

I recently stumbled upon a copy of Noma’s Guide to Fermentation. Reading it prompted the hail mary I completed by throwing myself on the waitlist not even 3 weeks ago. Although its use of ultra-local foraged plants propelled Noma into the spotlight, in the forward of the guide, Redzepi describes fermentation as the “defining pillar” of the restaurant.

There is a section in the fermentation guide focusing on garums. Garum originated in the Mediterranean in ancient Carthage and found popularity with the Romans after their conquest of the city. Hacked-up fish was left out in the hot sun to ferment in its own stomach enzymes, resulting in a powerful condiment. At Noma, they make garums from all sorts of things: beef, squid, chicken wings, and even grasshoppers. The insects are blended and mixed with koji, water, and salt and left to ferment for months, resulting in something described by Redzepi as so delicious that they have to refrain from using it too often as a flavor crutch. Disregarding the suggestion that fermented grasshopper mush could be so good it inhibits culinary creativity due to the ease with which it adds flavor, the general concept of a grasshopper garum was enough for me to think, “This guy is crazy.”

I was not lucky enough to catch Redzepi during my dinner there. He was in the US promoting his new series, Omnivore, on Apple TV+. In a promotional image for the show, Redzepi is surrounded by the Noma crew holding up what seems to be a pepper. His floppy bangs are reminiscent of the hairstyles sported by middle school boys at the summer camp I used to work at, he has an inherent boyishness about him. There’s a mischief in his eyes that leads you to believe he thinks he is doing something he’s not supposed to.

So as I twirled around the Copenhagen sky with childhood innocence, thinking “These people look like ants,” I could only imagine that Redzepi may have also found himself in this situation at some point, but unlike myself, his thought went like this: “These people look like ants. I am going to serve people ants. And they will love it” (he has done this on several occasions). I concluded that it’s not just his physical nature that has a hint of child-like candor, but his mind as well. He is free of the creative inhibitions that limit normal adults, allowing him to conjure up diabolical creations like grasshopper garum, and use them in dishes to create flavors hard to imagine or describe because they’re so unique. Kids believe anything can and will work, they push boundaries and do things they’re “not supposed to” to learn and grow. Maybe the mischievously smug grin on his face in the Omnivore promotion is exactly what it looks like: a man not only unburdened by the typical bounds of creativity, but with a knack for scientific thinking to make his ideas come to life, doing things that by conventional wisdom, he isn’t supposed to do, and executing them really, really well.

I was served a completely vegetarian menu. Since its hiatus and transformation into Noma 2.0, the restaurant operates in three “seasons:” seafood, vegetable, and foraging and game. Nearly all of what Noma serves is grown either in their greenhouse or by local farmers, or collected by local foragers or team members on-site at the restaurant.

It’s almost futile to try to explain the ingredients. Most can only be found in this particular region of Scandinavia, and beyond those you are actually able to identify, there are several years of science experiments hitting your tongue at the same time. It could be mushroom garum, or peaso (yellow peas that undergo the same Japanese fermentation technique that creates miso), or one of the several other variations of these techniques they employ with different ingredients to create new flavors. None of them are exactly the same, but they all contribute to what our server (when I asked what it was I was detecting) called the “Noma flavor.” An oxymoronic combination of familiar yet unrecognizable umami, detectable but evasive, leaving me wanting more but unsure of what it was I actually wanted.

Throughout 12 savory and 3 sweet courses, each plate fell on a spectrum of embracing this “Noma flavor,” full of subtle and lingering umami, or slapping me across the face with a bite of food so fresh, light, and fleeting it had my pupils dilating. Some dishes balanced the two together, leaving me confused and curious, but every plate respected the vegetable that gave its life so that it could become a whimsical, excessive, but absolutely stunning piece of art consumed by the jet setting, Amex-wielding gastro enthusiast that it sat in front of.

There are a few dishes that best illustrate this. A kohlrabi “kebab” that looked like, and tasted better than, most steaks, represents the end of the spectrum of unapologetic umami. Thin strips of the vegetable, also known as a turnip cabbage were “marinated” with black truffle, and grilled. The result was a jus of sorts that left me in a conscious battle with my salivating taste buds as I attempted to not scarf down the rest of it in seconds. On my third or fourth bite, the real magic occured. Something unexpectedly burst in my mouth, coating my tongue with the same flavor as the “jus”, but this time it felt like a fatty bite of ribeye. Tree sap was dehydrated and then rehydrated in black truffle juice to form a jelly with the same consistency as perfectly cooked animal fat, and then snuck between the slices of kohlrabi to deliver an unanticipated explosion of everything I expected to miss in an all-vegetarian menu. And this was the first course. There was no amuse bouche to ease us in (which I loved — the non-traditionalist in me finds amuse bouches a bit annoying). It was Noma’s way of anticipating the chagrin of meat eaters having to fork over $600 for a vegetarian meal, and saying, “let us remind you of why you are here. We can do things you have not seen before.” Their message was received, and set an exciting tone for the rest of the night.

On the other end of the spectrum was the crudité of the day, a signature dish. Every ingredient had been picked that morning. Shaved turnips, strawberries of the deepest reds, different types of delicate lettuces and blossoms I cannot name, zucchini, grapes, carrots, and a wide assortment of herbs were nestled together on a plate, layered over one another. Each bite carried a different array of colors and flavors. The nonuniformity of the arrangement provided a different experience with each lift of the fork, a barrage of arrows on a battlefield impossible to evade, piercing with a freshness sharp enough to prompt me to look up how to start a garden. It all sat in a cool, luxurious, butter sauce made with green tomato water. It was inherently erotic, like performing cunnalingist on mother nature.

Grilled peas, served in their pod, carried an unbelievable green. Each pea sat in another jus-esque creation like an oyster in its brine, and we were instructed to eat it as such. Every slurp delivered a perfect balance of nature’s intrinsic flavor. A soft sweetness from the burst of each little pea, with a liquid gold bringing the typical comfort that a juicy steak might have, flipping a chemical switch in my brain, screaming from the rafters telling me: I want more of this.

Padron peppers and an artichoke heart from the grill lay in a jasmine tea foam. Red, yellow, and orange flower petals surrounded the veggies alluding to the flames that had just engulfed them, caramelizing them, and letting their natural flavors act as a centerpiece, like a hearth at which the complementing ingredients could find comfort. It was the artichoke heart, glazed with a sauce, or drizzled with an oil carrying a flavor reminiscent of the peas and kohlrabi before it, that opened the curtain in my mind and helped me recognize a pattern. It wasn’t like a magician revealing their tricks, but a magician revealing that you had been tricked in the first place without realizing, their method of doing so still wildly incomprehensible, but likely having to do with a deliberate extraction of amino acids that your brain is programmed to crave.

Noma lived up to the expectations its reputation had set for itself by presenting flavors inexplicable to those who haven't had the luxury of eating there. I found it worthy of the unprecedented attention it had garnered over the past two decades, but I still wanted a hot dog.

Outside the restaurant, as I was in the process of unlocking a Lime scooter, I encountered four Germans who had also just finished their meal. Over a cigarette, we briefly shared our experiences. If you are skeptical about how difficult it is to get a table here, one of them had four different interns open up multiple tabs on their computers, ready with the necessary details to secure a reservation. None succeeded (another member of the party had). I asked the group what they were doing with the rest of their night. “We are going to get burgers. We are trans fat addicts.”

I myself had already decided I needed to try a famous Danish hot dog to satisfy the cravings that, even if flavor wizardry was at play, vegetables could not satiate. I’m sure the other menus wouldn’t leave you with the same desire for grease. I have no doubt the seafood menu could convince you to drown yourself, and the foraging and game menu, famous for including reindeer penis, could bring you to question the dogma surrounding beastiality, but after 15 courses at the best restaurant in the world, five people stood outside craving nothing but nicotine and processed meat.

…

When Redzepi announced in early 2023 that the days of traditional dining at Noma were coming to a close, he credited unsustainable labor practices in the fine dining industry as the main factor.

While nearly everything at Noma was idyllic, making you feel like you had been transported to a fairytale land where the walls (of impeccable Danish design) might as well be edible, and the birds are chirping happy songs (there really were fake bird noises), there was one constant reminder that all of this magic was built on the grueling labor of nearly 100 employees. Throughout the meal, a stark and emphatic “YES [chef],” rhythmic, like the ominous drums of Khazad Dum, could be heard coming from the open kitchen. As I walked past it on the way to the bathroom, I saw nearly 30 cooks running around like the ants they’ve served in the past, tweezers in hands, shaping ice cream to look like a flower on a real branch, spraying things with infused essences to impart flavors no more tangible than a cloud in the sky.

It is impossible to imagine that this place, with so many employees, even despite the astronomical price tag, could be remotely close to profitable. Redzepi has acknowledged to the New York Times that in fact it is not. In 2018, Noma came under fire for their treatment of unpaid interns. One intern claimed that during her internship she hardly picked up her knife, and instead created fruit leather molds in the shape of an insect for three months. Accusations of an abusive work environment have also swamped the restaurant in the past, forcing Redzepi to acknowledge his role in perpetuating toxic practices in the kitchen. Throughout the meal, our servers were happy to emphasize that the interns at Noma are now paid, but this reportedly adds an extra $50,000/month in labor expenses. The result, as Redzepi explained to the New York Times, is a business model that cannot be profitable given the cost it takes to maintain their standards of quality, compared to what people are willing to pay for a meal.

Just 11 degrees south of the Arctic Circle, the summer sun seemed to be setting for hours. As daylight waned, across the canal from Noma, the powerplant you can ski on top of reflected a light that shifted from bright yellow to orange, to pink, before fading altogether. It was reminiscent of the drawn-out closure of the restaurant I was sitting in. In its twilight, Noma’s end has been coming for a long time. Though the announcement made in early 2023 is devastating to the thousands of people who will never escape purgatory on their waitlist, condemned to an internet server soon to be shut down with the restaurant, it might not be a bad thing for the industry as a whole.

I sat at a shared table with 3 single diners who, like me, had traveled to Copenhagen specifically to dine here. Toward the end of the meal, the question was raised about what the next it restaurant would be given Noma’s absence. Which restaurant will emerge as the undisputed best, spawning copycats and changing the way that we look at food? Redzepi has said that “fine dining is at a crossroads, and there have to be huge changes.” So it begs the question, would a new it restaurant be a good thing? Is it necessary? Are the boundaries of culinary possibilities still movable without further exploitation of labor, or even more insane prices than those which already exist? If a new restaurant emerges, it will not only have to put something transcendent on a plate, but also reinvent how workers are compensated, or food is created, to offset the costs required in creating a product of the caliber that can change the way we see food. This may be impossible, and that’s ok. Let’s just hope that the changes Redzepi sees as necessary actually take place, and we don’t resort to more of the same.