Whitebook: Noma | René Redzepi

T he Playgro und of

Nordic Cuisine the art of cuisine no.4

Situated inside a quayside warehouse just a half hour’s stroll from the heart of Copenhagen sits Rene Redzepi’s two Michelin-starred restaurant, Noma.

Since its 2003 opening, Noma has made it to the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list six times. This prestige has transformed Copenhagen’s gastronomic fortunes and those of its Nordic neighbours. Whether it is using the succulent langoustine tails sourced from the waters of his Icelandic neighbour or the peculiar astringency of sea buckthorn, every dish coaxed out of Scandinavia’s localities is guaranteed to be steeped in colour, immeasurable in eccentricity and absorbing in flavour.

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It is strange to think of a chef’s life spent largely outside the four walls of a kitchen, but Redzepi’s day transports him between the restaurant and nearby woods and shores. His belief that a restaurant must make and serve food that is freshest and truest on its given patch on the planet has reinvigorated the currently popular “farm to table” sentiment. Redzepi is often found sifting through the region’s flora and fauna for unfamiliar flavours, scouring forgotten traditions for ingredients that have lost relevance in everyday cooking. With the exception of chocolate and coffee, Redzepi is notoriously draconian in enforcing Noma’s rule that if Scandinavia doesn’t yield it, he doesn’t serve it.

Into The Wild A meal at Noma can last hours, averaging 12 courses per seating – and that’s not including the myriad of appetisers and desserts that Redzepi has carefully crafted over years of experimentation – during which the chef conducts his guests’ experience to a symphonically sensual perfection. To dine at Noma is to dine with nature; a simple dish of asparagus and pine is followed by “The Duck and The Egg,” where diners are asked to cook eggs in a hot skillet at their table, seasoning the event with herbs and curls of potato.

Redzepi’s inspiration traces back to his childhood; born of a Danish mother and a Macedonian father, his back-to-the-land approach grew out of a diminishing Danish culinary identity. Exploring his patriarchal roots in rural Macedonia where he spent about two months every year through age 15, he learned from there to scavenge in the wild. There, as Redzepi has recounted, “life took place in nature, people lived on the land.”

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At just 12 tables, the restaurant seats up to 40 guests in a room lavished with Scandinavian wood, stone, leather and fur – the experience is engulfing. With some dishes serving a close-to-nature experience, diners are asked to eschew utensils and instructed to instead use their fingers to drag the food through its ablutions. Redzepi favours this sensory theatrical experience,

From Terr o i r to Pl a te

underscoring the inherent connection to earth he effervescently promotes. Such presentations cause pause; it’s not unusual for diners to double check that they are indeed in a restaurant and not a garden mid-meal, or to pinch themselves to make sure everything transpiring on the table is truly taking place.

One of Redzepi’s most famed dishes presents root vegetables in a flower pot where “soil” is disguised as a layer of malt and h a z e l n u t fl o u r o v e r a n emulsion of sheep’s milk yoghurt, with tarragon and herbs as dip. In a following course, a dish of shrimp and sea urchin powder is arranged as a beachscape with scattered stones and tufts of grass, picturesque in the most visual sense to awaken even more sensory switches. Vivaldi may have his Four Seasons, but Redzepi is the maestro who composes nature into gastronomic masterpieces, instrumental in “exploring seasonality to the extreme.”

★ René Redzepi ★

Born in 1977, is a Danish chef and co-owner of the two-Michelin star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark. Noma was ranked as the Best Restaurant in the World by Restaurant magazine in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Redzepi has previously worked at El Bulli and spent some time at French Laundry. Redzepi is noted for his work in reinventing and refining new Nordic cuisine and food that is characterised by innovation, simplicity and seasonality.

Text = Nicole Chan

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