Noma Blog Post

I was really excited to get tickets to attend the Phaidon book launch, and I must at this point, add a special thanks to Simon Hulstone (insert link) for his hard work, in trying to obtain the books for The Staff Canteen, which Simon had tried to arrange for signed from Noma, and then suggested the book launch evening.

On a very wet Friday in early November, I set off armed with six reserved tickets and “Billy No Mates”. I’m en-route to the Free Mason Hall just off Drury Lane in Lonon’s theatre land, strangely not quite knowing what to expect from the evening. Noma is simply one of those places, which quite literately “Everyone is talking about”, not just chefs, but the main and trade press, bloggers and critics alike.

I’ve spoken with Chefs who will claim that it is the best meal that they have ever eaten, which when you consider where such a statement has come from, then this is huge praise indeed. Noma has become almost a pilgrimage for Chefs, it has become the place that they have to eat, and many of them, on far more than one occasion.

So what is all the fuss and hype about? A small Nordic country with less than six million habitants, a country that previously had, had, little or no reputation for its food culture, suddenly had became the focus of attention for the great and the good of the food world.

Noma began in August 2003 when three Danes set out on a journey or tour of the North-Atlantic. A young Chef Renè Redzepi and Mads Refslund also a Chef and best friend of Renè, were accompanied by a cookery writer Claus Meyer. The three men covered a seventeen day voyage of the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland, often in sub zero temperatures.

It was Claus Meyer that offered the then only twenty five year old Renè the opportunity to become Chef and partner, with himself and entrepreneur Kristian Byrge in a new venture, which was to be situated in an eighteenth century warehouse that had had been part of the cultural centre for Iceland, Greenland and the Faroes. A building situated in a roomy warehouse loft space in the Quayside just on the edge of Christian and unspoilt section of old Copenhagen, this would become “The World’s best restaurant in 2010″.(insert picture of Noma)

So what do we know of René Redzepi? (Insert Picture of Rene) Other than, in my opinion, he’s a look-a-like for Paul Heaton, from the House Martins and Beautiful South!! Renè was born December 1977 his Mother from Denmark, with his Farther Ethnic Albanian from the former Yugoslavia, now Macedonia. Renè spent his early years in Yugoslavia, before the start of the independence wars that saw the country torn apart by years of civil war and ethnic cleansing, leaving it divided into the states and regions that we know today.

What do we know of Ren̬ the Chef? We know that it is something that he simply happened to choose Рto be a Chef, there was no great thought plan, or inspiration that delivered Ren̬ into the culinary arena, it simply just happened.

He began his career in Denmark at the restaurant Pierre André , which quickly gained a star. He then travelled to El Bulli as a guest in 1998 returning to work in the kitchen’s of Ferran Adriá, and worked there for a season in 1999.

Two stints followed at Kong Hans Kælder, in Denmark, these were punctuated by a four month Stagè at Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry in California.

So what is Nordic cuisine, a cuisine that even by the locals had been frowned upon, a cuisine that almost never really existed. René and his team have run the gauntlet, have had “Seal Fucker” Whale Penis and the Blubber Restaurant thrown at them, from his own peers within his own country.

What René and Noma set out to achieve was something very brave, it was at a time when the Danish food scene was at a very low point, you could argue that at this point, anything new would grab attention, which Noma certainly did.

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