Noma's most challenging dishes: from oyster ice cream to duck brain tempura. Photo / Instagram, reneredzepinoma
Noma's most challenging dishes: from oyster ice cream to duck brain tempura. Photo / Instagram, reneredzepinoma
The famed Danish restaurant Noma which has claimed the title of world’s top restaurant several times said Monday it will shut down to transform itself into “a pioneering test kitchen” dedicated to “food innovation and the development of new flavors.”
Chef Rene Redzepi’s house of Nordic gastronomy will close by the winter 2024 and re-emerge as Noma 3.0, the Copenhagen eatery said on its webpage.
“In 2025, our restaurant is transforming into a giant lab - a pioneering test kitchen dedicated to the work of food innovation and the development of new flavors, one that will share the fruits of our efforts more widely than ever before,” it said.
Redzepi, who is Noma’s chef and co-owner, said they will travel to “search for new ways to share our work” and said there could be “a Noma pop-up” but didn’t specify where. After the sojourn, “we will do a season in Copenhagen.”
The innovative Danish restaurant Noma, said it will shut down and become “a pioneering test kitchen”. Photo / Jens Dresling via AP
“But I don’t want to commit to anything now,” Redzepi told Berlingske, one of Denmark’s largest daily newspapers.
Another major publication, Politiken said the eatery’s facility in Copenhagen will be transformed to develop products to the Noma Projects line - fermented sauces, cooking classes and an online platform.
“Serving guests will still be a part of who we are but being a restaurant will no longer define us. Instead, much of our time will be spent on exploring new projects and developing many more ideas and products.”
Noma has gone through an earlier transformation. In 2015, the restaurant announced it was closing at the end of 2016 and reopened near its waterfront premises with its own vegetable farm in the vicinity of the hippie enclave of Christiania in Copenhagen.
Noma — a contraction of the Danish words for Nordisk and Mad, meaning Nordic and food, opened in 2003. The restaurant grabbed two Michelin stars and was three times voted the world’s number one restaurant by Britain’s Restaurant Magazine in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
A greenhouse at the Noma test kitchens: the pioneering Danish restaurant will close to focus on developing new flavours. Photo / Annie Spratt, Unsplash
The dishes that made Noma
Touted as the ‘world’s best restaurant’, Noma was at the forefront of the foraging and nativist dinging revolution. From pickles and preserves to seasonal dining, Rene Redzepi transformed Copenhagen from a culinary backwater to one of the world’s top dining destinations.
The city took first and second place in the ‘World’s Best Restaurants’ list in 2022, with Geranium - founded by Noma alumnus Ronni Mortensen - knocking Noma into second place.
Many gastronomes will be sad to see the restaurant go dark next year.
But what are the dishes that made the Danish so great?
Quince and oyster ice cream
A strangely sweet entry from Redzepi’s seafood recipes - the salted quince ice cream is made with slowly reduced oyster juice and brine and served in a nest of seaweed.
Celeriac Shawarma
A vegetarian kebab that Redzepi said “might be better than meat” saw Noma chefs roast celeriac slices, basted in truffle juice on a shish. Taking hours of meticulous work, the chef called it “one of the best dishes we’ve ever made”.
Duck brained dish
Not all of Noma’s recipes are vegetarian friendly. This duck dish which came with a trigger warning for vegans and saw Redzepi serve tempura duck brain and seared breast served under the wing of a blue-feathered duck. The provocative dish was designed to champion the ‘snout to tail’ ethos of getting the most out of an animal. The founder of the foraging movement has said that, if you’re going to eat it, you might as well use every morsel.
