The Noma is closing. Yes, we are talking about the Noma. And yes, it is probably not necessary to introduce the cult place of high pleasure. But since this is also, in a sense, an anticipated obituary, we follow our journalistic duty and provide some hard facts.
What happened so far?
The gastronomic flagship of chef and operator René Redzepi, opened in 2003, has not only been awarded 3 Michelin stars, but has already been named the best restaurant in the world five times in total (most recently in 2021). And rightly so. After all, Noma shaped an entire era of Scandinavian cuisine with its “New Nordic” style. Starting from the ideas in a Swedish army manual, the award-winning restaurant has continuously evolved successfully over the past 20 years. New concepts in harmony with nature and the seasons have always been tried out at different locations. And yet the word is now out: Noma is closing.
2024: The Last Season
The winter season 2024 will be the last for the time being – so with a little (or rather a lot) of luck you will still have the opportunity to experience Noma 2.0. How it got this far? “Fine dining at its highest level, with its grueling hours and intense workplace culture, has reached a breaking point. It’s not sustainable,” René Redzepi answers this question in an interview with the New York Times. Neither economically nor humanly justifiable. The concept needs to be rethought and renewed, he says. Plans for the coming developments have already been driven forward over the past two years.
2025: New Beginnnings
The Noma closes, and yet it opens again. Albeit with a different structure and in a different environment. The restaurant itself will be transformed into a giant laboratory. A test facility for food innovation will be created: Noma 3.0. Remarkably, the entire staff is to remain employed and be part of the journey. In the search for new flavors, pop-ups may emerge around the world, which will then be the expression of a true restaurant revolution.
Not only content, but also working conditions are to be discovered and imagined differently. This time sustainably. Fortunately, the operators around Chef Redzepi have already succeeded several times in reinventing Noma. For example, anyone who has tasted the flavor explosions of the Smoked-Mushroom-Garum-Project No1. of the “Noma Projects” knows that these are not just empty word shells. So we are already very excited about what the Noma team will have in store for us in the future.
