Noma, 5-time winner of world’s best restaurant title, is closing its doors
- The Danish foodie destination, run by chef-owner Rene Redzepi, will shut next year and transform into a giant food lab and test kitchen
- The restaurant lost money in 2021 while selling US$700 lunches, even with government support
And you already thought it was difficult to get a reservation at Noma.
The Copenhagen restaurant, one of the world’s most famous and a top destination for food tourism, has given notice that it will permanently close its doors to regular service.
The good news for fine-dining groupies: the closing won’t come until the end of 2024.
Rumours that Noma would close have been swirling for months. Rene Redzepi, chef-owner of Noma, said on Monday that it was not possible to make the maths of fine dining work for his almost 100 employees and himself. “We have to rethink the industry,” he told The New York Times.
In 2021, the restaurant lost money, even with government support, while selling US$700 lunches, although it said it expected a better result in 2022.
The restaurant is currently offering a seasonal tasting menu including sika deer, game birds and reindeer with forest-scavenged mushrooms and berries for 3,500 Danish kroner (US$500), with a 1,800-kroner wine pairing. A Noma representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Noma turned Copenhagen into a culinary destination, put New Nordic cooking in the world’s lexicon and made foraging the coolest pastime a chef could engage in. After opening its doors in 2003, it operated mostly under the radar until snagging the No 1 spot on the World’s 50 Best in 2010. It has won that title five times in total, as recently as 2021.
Now Redzepi will focus on Noma Projects, the lab and fermentation studio that has begun selling products like their sold out smoked mushroom garum, a condiment made from mushrooms that have been cured with salt and the rice fungus koji and then cold-smoked.
How did Danish cuisine become the best in the world?
Redzepi and his team are expanding production of the facility.
“Winter 2024 will be the last season of noma as we know it,” Redzepi said in a statement posted on the restaurant’s website. “We are beginning a new chapter; noma 3.0.”
“In 2025, our restaurant is transforming into a giant lab – a pioneering test kitchen dedicated to the work of food innovation and the development of new flavours, one that will share the fruits of our efforts more widely than ever before.”
The restaurant said it would “pop up in different parts of the world – including Copenhagen”.
The closing of Noma is another bad omen for fine-dining restaurants, where dinners routinely cost US$500 or more.
At the end of 2022, the noted California chef David Kinch closed the doors of his three Michelin star Manresa in Los Gatos, California.
“Three-star restaurant dining is transitioning really hard,” Kinch told Bloomberg. “Chefs who were used to having armies of people have had to rethink their operating manual.”
If you just can’t get a table at Noma, there are other opportunities to dine on Redzepi’s cooking. Noma Kyoto will operate at the Ace Hotel Kyoto this spring. And Redzepi also operates Popl, a burger bar he started during the pandemic that now has a permanent place in Christianshavn.
