The world-famous restaurant Noma is closing its doors
The acclaimed and world-famous three-Michelin-star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen will close its doors at the end of 2024. Performing at the highest level every day – working sixteen hours a day, five days a week – is something no one can sustain. Not even chef and owner of Noma, René Redzepi. ‘Gruelling hours and an intense work culture’ have reached a breaking point, René Redzepi told The New York Times.
Noma opened in 2003 and quickly became the figurehead of the new Nordic cuisine – Noma stands for ‘Nordisk mad’ – a culinary movement that experiments deliciously with local ingredients. And it caught on, to put it mildly. Noma was named the best restaurant in the world five times. Getting a reservation is virtually impossible, but once you have secured a table, a true spectacle awaits you – along with a spectacular bill of around 500 euros per person.
That is a lot of money, but apparently it is still not enough to pay the staff properly.
Noma: from restaurant to laboratory
Noma will not disappear completely, by the way; the restaurant will occasionally appear as a pop-up restaurant and will be transformed into a laboratory dedicated to food innovation and the development of new flavours. Hey, where have we seen that before? Spanish El Bulli, also named the world’s best restaurant several times, opened the experimental El Bulli Lab in 2014, after chef Ferran Adrià closed the restaurant’s doors in 2011.
The products Noma develops in the food lab will also be available to buy online.
You can dine at Noma in Copenhagen until the end of 2024. Noma on a budget? Then grab a burger at Popl, the Noma burger joint that was founded during lockdown to make people happy with Noma food after all.
Also read:
- Restaurant Noma launches its own product line
- These are the favourite bargain wines of top sommeliers
- 11 eating habits that show we’re not nearly as mature as we think
Source: Misset Horeca, de Volkskrant, The New York Times
