Noma (restaurant)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Noma, a restaurant in Copenhagen, once arranged for live ants foraged in Denmark to be flown to London and served to diners. Nobody treated it as a stunt. The kitchen behind that dish was already being watched by critics and chefs around the world, and it had started life in a former trading warehouse. This documentary asks how a restaurant built on a deliberately regional idea of food rose so fast. It asks what it takes to keep a kitchen at that level running, and what happens to a celebrated restaurant when its own model stops working. And it asks what changed when the people who worked there began to describe what life in that kitchen was like.

  313032

• 2. Warehouse on the Harbour

  ›

  Dry fish, salted herring, whale oil and skins once sat inside the warehouse at Strandgade 93, waiting to be sold on to European markets. The building stands in the Christianshavn neighbourhood of central Copenhagen, on the waterfront of the Inner Harbour. Beside it lies the Greenlandic Trading Square, which for 200 years was a centre for trade with the Faroe Islands, Finnmark, Iceland and, above all, Greenland.

  In 2003 the warehouse was turned into North Atlantic House, a centre for the art and culture of the North Atlantic region. Noma opened at the same time, started by the chef René Redzepi and Claus Meyer. The firm Space Copenhagen designed the interior.

  The name is a syllabic abbreviation of two Danish words, nordisk, meaning Nordic, and mad, meaning food. Redzepi arrived with a serious résumé, having worked at The French Laundry, El Bulli, Kong Hans Kælder and Le Jardin des Sens.

  891162

• 3. New Nordic Cooking

  ›

  In the book Noma - Nordic Cuisine, Claus Meyer made a careful distinction. The cooking, he said, was an interpretation of Nordic food rather than classical Nordic food itself. He and Redzepi set out to reshape what Nordic cuisine could mean.

  Foraging sat at the centre of that effort. Local and seasonal ingredients gathered from the seashore and the forest were what the kitchen worked with.

  One notable dish was called The Hen and the Egg, and the diners cooked it themselves. The pile on the table held potato chips, a wild duck egg and slightly wet hay. Alongside them came salt, herbs, wild forest plants, hay oil, thyme, butter and a wild garlic sauce. Judges who ranked restaurants around the world soon began to take notice of cooking like this.

  2532662

• 4. Climbing the List

  ›

  In 2006 Noma first appeared on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, run by Restaurant magazine, at number 33. It then rose to 15th in 2007, 10th in 2008 and 3rd in 2009. That same year it also took the Chefs' Choice award.

  The jump to first place in 2010 was a shock. El Bulli had held the title for four consecutive years, and Noma was a relative newcomer. The previous first and second place chefs, Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal, had just announced that they would temporarily close their restaurants. Noma was seen as the head of a new movement to spread New Nordic cuisine.

  In 2011 El Bulli withdrew from the competition because it was closing for good, and Noma won again. It did so without having earned a third Michelin star. In 2012 Restaurant praised Redzepi's restaurant as the standard bearer for the New Nordic movement. The magazine also admired his attention to detail and his innovative approach.

  In 2013 Noma fell to second place, behind El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Catalonia, Spain. On the 6th of October 2013 it appeared in Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. In 2014 Noma regained the top spot.

  The list placed it 3rd in 2015 and 5th in 2016, then back at number one in 2021. Other honours came from several directions. In 2008 it was named International Chef of the Year at the Lo Mejor de la Gastronomia conference in San Sebastián, Spain, and TripAdvisor called it the best restaurant in the world. The Michelin Guide gave it two stars from 2008 to 2020. The third star came in 2021 and was held through 2025.

  4344454647

• 5. Kitchens Away From Home

  ›

  From the 28th of July to the 6th of August 2012, Noma moved to London for a 10-day pop-up hosted by Claridge's hotel in Mayfair. The Copenhagen restaurant was closed from the 22nd of July to the 13th of August for refurbishment. Redzepi and head chef Matt Orlando served a nine-course menu at £195 per head. It included the kitchen's versions of scones and clotted cream, and a Lancashire hotpot made with British ingredients.

  On the 29th of March 2014 Noma announced a move to Japan for two months at the beginning of 2015. On the 24th of July 2015 it announced a 10-week stay in Australia at the beginning of 2016.

  On the 12th of April 2017 Noma Mexico opened in Tulum, Quintana Roo. The kitchen partnered with Traspatio Maya, a nonprofit network of 15 Maya communities, for Yucatecan ingredients. These included white Naal Teel corn, Ixil onions, Xtop pepita, bee larva and Melipona honey from the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. Other products came from across the country, such as Baja California wine, Chiapas coffee and Oaxaca artisanal plateware. The pop-up closed on the 28th of May.

  A Brooklyn pop-up announced on the 13th of April 2022 ran from the 16th to the 20th of May. In spring 2023 Noma held a 10-week pop-up in Kyoto, Japan.

  In July 2025 Redzepi announced a months-long Los Angeles residency, tentatively planned for the spring of 2026. He had earlier stayed in Manhattan Beach with his family and enjoyed meeting local chefs such as Roy Choi and Kris Yenbamroong. Of the plan he said: "it will be five or six months of energy and trying to meet all the creative people of Los Angeles, and learn from them and be inspired by them".

  3031323437

• 6. Illness, Closure and Rebirth

  ›

  Between the 12th and the 16th of February 2013-63 of 435 diners became ill after eating at Noma, according to a Danish Food Administration report. The symptoms were attributed to norovirus. It was believed to have been unintentionally spread by an infected kitchen employee.

  Redzepi later planned to close Noma after the 31st of December 2016 and reopen it in 2017 as an urban farm near Copenhagen. The restaurant came back on the 15th of February 2018, after a year-long hiatus. It had also moved. The Strandgade site now houses Restaurant Barr, and Noma's current address is Refshalevej 96.

  In May 2020, during the COVID-19 crisis, Noma reopened as a wine and burger bar with takeaway options. Food media sometimes called this version Noma 3.0. Redzepi planned to keep it open for at least part of the summer of 2020. That same July, the leadership of the kitchen itself was about to change.

  1314151719

• 7. Chefs and Interns

  ›

  In July 2020 Kenneth Foong replaced the Canadian chef Benjamin Ing as head chef. Foong held the post through Noma's final years of regular service. Earlier head chefs included Dan Giusti and Matt Orlando.

  Behind the paid brigade stood a large unpaid workforce. Noma relied heavily on interns known as stagiaires, a common practice in fine dining. A 2022 Financial Times investigation reported about 30 unpaid interns working alongside 34 paid chefs, with interns putting in up to 70 hours a week. A 2023 Vice report found that roughly half of the 60-person kitchen staff were unpaid.

  In October 2022 Noma began paying all of its interns. The change added an estimated $50,000 to $70,000 per month in labor costs. Three months later, Redzepi made a far larger announcement.

  272829

• 8. The Final Service

  ›

  In January 2023 Redzepi announced that Noma would end traditional restaurant service at the end of 2024. He cited the financial and emotional toll of the fine-dining model. He told The New York Times: "It's unsustainable. Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn't work." The restaurant would become a food innovation lab, developing new products and techniques while still hosting periodic pop-up residencies.

  The last regular dinners took place in Kyoto. That final 10-week residency ran from the 8th of October to the 18th of December 2024.

  In March 2026 The New York Times published an exposé built on interviews with 35 former employees. It reported that Redzepi had physically abused dozens of people who worked for him. Thirty employees said that being hit by him was routine. When staff broke rules, he was known to punch them or ridicule them publicly.

  Redzepi responded in a statement to the paper. "Although I don’t recognize all details in these stories, I can see enough of my past behavior reflected in them to understand that my actions were harmful to people who worked with me," he said. He added: "To those who have suffered under my leadership, my bad judgment, or my anger, I am deeply sorry and I have worked to change." Later that month he resigned, saying that "an apology is not enough; I take responsibility for my own actions".

  Noma continues as a food lab and through periodic pop-up residencies, the form Redzepi chose when he left the dining room behind.

  21222324