COPENHAGEN: Noma, one of the most influential restaurants if not the most influential restaurant in the world will close in winter 2024 for good as chef René Redzepi pledges to transform the restaurant into a giant lab – a pioneering test kitchen dedicated to work on food innovation and the development of new flavours.
Winter 2024 will be the last season of noma following which Redzepi and his team will start a new chapter with what he calls 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.”
Rene announced that in this new phase, the team will continue to travel and search for new ways of working. Noma pop-ups will stay in the new configuration and when the team has gathered enough ideas and flavours, they will create a season in Copenhagen. “Serving guests will still be part of who we are but being a restaurant will no longer define us. Instead, much of our time will be spent on exploring new projects and developing many more ideas and products.”
While the news came as a surprise for many and was shared around the four corners of the globe, in June of last year René Redzepi had already said that 2023 would be the last year of Noma as we know it. Back then, he had said: “We have a plan and I cannot wait to share more with you later this year but for now, it is good to know that big changes are happening. We’ve been laying new foundational stones so we can continue to grow as an organisation for the next 20 years.”
Noma remains today one of the most influential restaurants in the world, if not the most influential and is the only restaurant together with el Bulli to have won the title of World’s 50 Best Restaurant five times, the last time in 2021 when it was eligible to compete in its noma 2.0 configuration.
“Our goal is to create a lasting organisation dedicated to groundbreaking work in food, but also to redefine the foundation of a restaurant team, a place where you can learn, you can take risks and you can grow,” Redzepi said.
Noma Projects, which was launched in spring 2022 will take a central role in the development of the new organisation, channelling the past 20 years of R&D at noma into a variety of projects, products and new flavours. Over the coming years, Noma Projects will share new releases in larger volumes that will be available on their web shop. The first products from the Noma Projects lab were always instantly sold out.
Later this year, Noma will head to Kyoto, Japan for its latest pop-up.
In an interview with the New York Times, Redzepi said that fine dining at the highest level, with its grueling hours and intense workplace culture has hit a breaking point and was unsustainable.
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