René Redzepi: 'It’s time to kickstart ourselves, kickstart the world'

Tanwen Dawn-Hiscox

Deputy Editor

René Redzepi’s three Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant, Noma, is set to pop-up in Brooklyn, New York this Spring

Set a purpose-fitted warehouse in the trendy 'DUMBO' area (short for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), 50 covers will be available on each of the five nights between 16th-20th May 2022, with tickets priced at $700 a head, plus tax.

As the event is being hosted in partnership with American Express Platinum, only holders of the card (or a Centurion card, a Delta SkyMiles Reserve card or a Hilton Honors American Express Aspire card) will be able to book a table when bookings go live on 27th April at 12 p.m. East Coast time. The collaboration has been on the cards for a while - with the 2022 Olympics in Beijing a contender - finally settling on this.

'I'm ready to feel like a world citizen again'

The chef owner of the number one restaurant on the World's 50 Best Restaurants 2021 list told Bloomberg: “It’s time to kickstart ourselves, kickstart the world.”

“I’ve appreciated being a local restaurant, but I'm ready to feel like a world citizen again.”

The menu will, unsuprisingly, feature some of René's signature dishes based on the ingredients he can get hold of in the Big Apple, including, he said, "something with cauliflower and truffles and waffles,” his take on Danish aebleskiver, and perhaps dishes involving wild lobster and East Coast seafood.

He will also to replicate a dish on the Copenhagen 'Oceans Menu' called “Fjaesing & Cabbage.” The restaurant's director of fermentation, Jason White, is said to be working with a local expert to create a kombucha to be served with the meal.

“We’ll base the majority of the menu on that and what’s in season, from a spring perspective,” the chef said.

The team won't be recreating New York classics like they did when Noma popped up in Tokyo, or Tulum in Mexico, nor will they be taking 120 staff and their families over to the States. This time 18 members of the crew will join René, and they will work with US recruits.

The event is the restaurant's first venture back out into the world since the beginning of the pandemic, but the chef has promised there are more to come: another pop-up will take place in the autumn, the location of which is still under wraps, which will involve shutting down the main restaurant and moving the whole team somewhere else.

“We’ll probably be gone from Copenhagen from October for the rest of the year,” René said.

“But the first journey to getting back for us is sniffing around in Brooklyn.”

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