Why Noma Kyoto, with its US$850 menu, is the ‘centre of the gourmand universe’, and why one guest was told to sell his booking if he couldn’t make it

Rene Redzepi’s Noma Kyoto pop-up is one of the hottest tables in the world right now, with food lovers, and chefs like David Muñoz, travelling far to dine there

Securing a booking is hard and means ‘bragging rights for a lifetime’. It’s not cheap, but top ingredients and culinary wizardry made it ‘magical’ for one diner

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Chef Rene Redzepi of three-Michelin-star restaurant Noma has secured top Japanese ingredients for his Noma Kyoto pop-up through the links he’s forged with local producers. One diner tells us how this contributed to a “magical” meal. Photo: Instagram/@nomacph

Published: 11:15am, 10 May 2023

Rene Redzepi’s charisma can charm dragons.

Through two decades, the Danish chef’s lofty gastronomic ambitions and unfussy approach to hospitality turned his Copenhagen restaurant Noma into a culinary magnet – paradoxically inaccessible to most diners, yet enchantingly popular.

He has withstood controversies, relocations, critics, closures and Michelin’s long refusal to give him a third star, before it finally relented in 2021.

Those charms have made Noma the restaurant that gastronomes have to get to when they visit not only Copenhagen but any place in the world Redzepi decides to set up shop.

Rene Redzepi, chef and owner of Noma, is running a pop-up of his world-class restaurant, in Kyoto, until May 20. Photo: AFP

That’s why I flew all the way to Japan from London. He had taken Noma to Kyoto, making it the centre of the gourmet universe for the season. Every foodie wanted to be there.

I kept running into people I knew. I was at a table in a humble izakaya – a type of Japanese-style bar ubiquitous throughout the country – in the Ebisu neighbourhood of Tokyo, when a photographer I know only from Instagram called out to me from the counter.