At this year's World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards in May, Danish restaurant Noma was again placed at number one. This is the third year the Copenhagen-based restaurant, located in an old shipping warehouse, has won the accolade.
The top restaurant in the list has always led culinary trends. Before Noma it was Spanish wonder El Bulli, which headed the list's inaugural year, 2002, and then again from 2006 until 2009. The restaurant closed in 2010, the year Noma took over.
Helmed by Ferran Adria, El Bulli was defined by avant-garde cuisine that pushed the envelope on a technical level, popularising techniques such as spherification and emulsification under high pressures to create espumas or foams. Noma is now doing the same for ecological awareness.
Many have heard of Noma's chef and co-owner Rene Redzepi. His partner in the restaurant is Claus Meyer, who was at the centre of the formalisation of a manifesto for the New Nordic Kitchen in 2004, which was adopted by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the official body of co-operation of the Nordic countries, as a framework with which the region's food culture should move forward.
Drawn up by 12 chefs, the manifesto consists of 10 aims, and together they express the goal of eating and cooking in a manner that is sustainable and preserves cultural authenticity. In practice, this includes featuring produce that is highly seasonal, and locally produced or found, as well as promoting the producers and foragers of this produce. At Noma, this is expressed through ingredients such as 'vintage' carrots, which have been kept in the soil during the region's harsh and normally carrot-less winters, powder made of juniper berries, which are native to the region, and seaweed foraged from the shores. This philosophy is not unique to Noma; it has been taken on board by a generation of chefs driving what is better known as New Nordic cuisine.
One of these chefs is Rasmus Kofoed, chef-owner of Geranium in Copenhagen, who won the gold medal at Bocuse d'Or, the highly respected international chef's competition. This makes the city home to the world's top restaurant as well as the top chef.
