Restaurant Noma: Why a final visit is worthwhile

René Redzepi invented Noma.

What is special about Noma?

Its cuisine relied on local ingredients such as game, roots, herbs and berries, ferns, snails, musk ox meat, sea cucumbers, algae, and mussels, which the kitchen team collected on the beach. At Noma, there are three seasons each year - the Seafood Season in winter, the Vegetable Season in summer, and the Game & Forest Season in autumn.

Redzepi propagated the radical departure from classical haute cuisine with its luxury ingredients that have to be flown in from all over the world, combining experimental dishes with typical Nordic cuisine – and all at the highest level. At one point, ants even crawled over the plates from the in-house terrarium. Redzepi caused a worldwide sensation with his extraordinary ideas.

In 2005, the restaurant received its first star in the Michelin Guide, the second in 2007. Redzepi had to wait until 2021 for the third star. However, Noma was named the world's best restaurant five times, most recently in 2021.

The day before our visit, I become increasingly nervous by the hour. What if the airline goes on strike again? Why did I book a flight directly on the morning of our Noma dinner – and not the day before? If we don't arrive at the restaurant by 5:45 p.m. at the latest, we won't get a cent or a krone back – and never another table, as the restaurant is closing. For reasons Redzepi has his reasons.

Why is Noma closing?

Luxury gastronomy is no longer feasible with fair wages for the roughly 100 employees, he says. And the conditions under which fine dining is created are not sustainable. Now he wants to convert his Noma into a large food lab.

The restaurant is located on a small peninsula in the Christianshavn district. Redzepi and his team moved there in 2016. The building, which once stored mines for the Royal Danish Navy, has its own garden, several greenhouses where vegetables and herbs grow, and a fermentation lab where miso, soy sauces, vinegars, kombuchas, and garum, as well as lacto-fermented and black-pickled vegetables, are made.

Preserving food using old, traditional techniques is an important pillar of Noma's cuisine, and many other top restaurants have since adopted it. When we arrive, we are greeted by an employee who has been working with Redzepi for 20 years, as he tells us while leading us to one of the greenhouses where we are served tea by a fireplace.

Afterwards, we are taken past meadows and water to the modern main building. Through a door covered with shells, we finally enter the restaurant. An intoxicating feeling. As we walk past the open, modern kitchen on our way to our table, about 20 employees clap happily and greet us. The casual, easy-going atmosphere is surprising – you immediately feel at home.

The dining room is simple yet stylishly furnished. Floors and ceilings made of light oak wood, lots of plants and huge windows with a view of the greenery dominate the room. No tablecloths on the wooden tables, it's best to drink natural wine, homemade juices or teas with dinner here.

When we order from the sommelier – one of the cheaper wines – I hold my breath for a moment. Because in many high-priced star restaurants, this moment decides the rest of the evening. Expensive wine: We will treat you like royalty – cheap wine: Not worth the effort, probably can't afford a decent tip. Then it starts with the first course – out of 14. A whole cooked langoustine, deconstructed into its parts and draped like a work of art on the plate. Accompanied by an aromatic clam broth with bergamot, hidden under dense seaweed – while drinking it, you can smell the scent of seawater in your nose.

An incredible pleasure experience that involves all the senses. This is followed by a dish of different types of seaweed with fermented barley oil in a spicy, light sauce that melts on the tongue. Each course is explained by one of the very attentive, professional and at the same time relaxed and friendly service staff – my fear that we would be treated worse because of the cheap wine we chose disappears into thin air.

What dishes are served at Noma?

Then: mussel with beetroot – a brilliant combination. Two courses later follows one of my highlights: Paper-thin sliced raw squid on grilled koji. Absolute perfection and love for unusual details are demonstrated by the successive cod dishes: The tongue of the fish is served on the bone, which is taken from the head of the fish, along with an "eye" pie.

The waitress explained to us that it wasn't the entire eyeball of the animal, but just the white part – squid ink would have been used for the pupil. I still don't eat the pie and remember what I've read about Redzepi's penchant for experimentation: that he likes to work with fermented blood and that he once served warm duck brain, which had to be spooned out of the opened duck head. I probably would have left that too.

The next course: Cod collar and jaw are incredibly tender and spicy. And the grilled burbot is a fireworks display for the taste buds. The desserts are worlds away from what I would normally order in a restaurant, for example hazelnut milk foam with seaweed oil and caviar. Or snobrød (Danish twisted bun) on a seaweed skewer with yuzu syrup and mussel gel. But anyone who has dealt with Redzepi's cuisine knows that you can't expect Kaiserschmarrn.

After almost three hours the dinner is over and we end the evening in the lounge: dimmed light from vintage lamps, chairs from Nikari, the sofas are upholstered with sand-colored wool fabrics from Pierre Frey – the perfect place to slowly come back down to earth after this fulminant taste experience.

Our conclusion: The dinner was really worth it. Noma is a total work of art that inspires, saturates, and makes you a little bit happier.

What's next for Noma?

But what's next for Noma now? Among other things, with pop-up concepts. Redzepi has already moved several times with Noma team members and their families to other cities for a few months: for example, to Sydney (2016), Tulum/Mexico (2017), and Kyoto (2023). This year, they are returning to the Japanese imperial city for 10 weeks, from October 8 to December 8, 2024.

In the winter of 2024, the regular restaurant operation will be closed, according to their Instagram page: "To continue being Noma, we must change." However, this is not the end, but rather the starting signal for the Noma 3.0 project, which, among other things, aims to develop new foods. It will once again give us a taste of the future.