Fine-dining fanatics, we have bad news. Noma – the three-Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant synonymous with the city’s culinary revolution – has announced it’s shutting up shop.
Noma is renowned for its inventive take on Nordic cuisine, which (under influential head chef René Redzepi) went on to influence high-end tables around the world. Its menus focus on hyper-seasonal ingredients, rotating three times a year to showcase game in autumn, seafood in winter and spring, and vegetables in summer.
While the restaurant still gets its fair share of plaudits – securing the top spot on the coveted World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2021 – Redzepi told the New York Times that the model on which Noma is built has become ‘unsustainable’.
Redzepi cites the unsavoury hours and demanding working conditions involved in running a fine-dining restaurant as one of the reasons behind the closure. (Gruelling conditions for staff at Noma and other top Copenhagen restaurants were the subject of a newspaper exposé last summer.)
According to a post on Noma’s website, ‘winter 2024 will be the last season of [N]oma as we know it’. So what’s next?
Big things, apparently. In 2025, the restaurant will transform into a ‘giant lab’, where they'll continue experimenting with flavours and ingredients to create innovative new dishes and food concepts. The website promises Noma will continue serving guests with pop-ups around the world, and, eventually, ‘a season in Copenhagen’.
For the next two years, Noma will continue to serve those lucky enough to nab a table at its Copenhagen establishment. If you want to experience one of the world’s best restaurants before it turns into something completely different, you can (attempt to) book a table here.
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