Famous Danish restaurant Noma starts new taste quest

COPENHAGEN – Famous Danish restaurant Noma, which has claimed the title of world’s best restaurant several times, said on Monday it would close to transform itself into a “pioneering test kitchen” dedicated to “food innovation and developing new tastes”.

Chef Rene Redzepi’s house of Nordic gastronomy will close by winter 2024 and reappear as Noma 3.0, the Copenhagen eatery announced on its website.

“In 2025, our restaurant will be transformed into a giant laboratory – a pioneering test kitchen dedicated to the work of food innovation and the development of new tastes, and will share the fruits of our efforts more broadly than ever before,” it said.

Redzepi, the chef and co-owner of Noma, said they’ll be traveling to “look for new ways to share our work,” and said there might be “a Noma pop-up,” but didn’t specify , where. After the stay “we will do a season in Copenhagen”.

“But I don’t want to commit myself to anything right now,” Redzepi told Berlingske, one of Denmark’s largest daily newspapers.

Another major publication, Politiken, said the Copenhagen restaurant’s interior will be revamped to develop products for the Noma Projects line – fermented sauces, cooking classes and an online platform.

“Serving guests will still be a part of who we are, but being a restaurant will no longer define us. Instead, much of our time is spent exploring new projects and developing many more ideas and products.”

Noma has undergone a previous transformation. In 2015, the restaurant announced it would be closing by the end of 2016, reopening near its waterfront with its own vegetable farm near the hippie enclave of Christiania in Copenhagen.

Noma – a contraction of the Danish words for Nordisk and Mad, which means Nordic and food, opened in 2003. The restaurant has two Michelin stars and was voted World’s Leading Restaurant three times by British Restaurant Magazine in 2010, 2011 and 2012.