noma (Part Six)

It's here. noma (Part Six). Here's hoping you enjoy it more than Gene and Roger enjoyed this awesomeness.



While we were away, noma wrested the title of best restaurant in the world back from Celler de Can Roca. It's a bit surprising considering that this also happened this year. Perhaps it's all the new buzz they're getting from this blog. According to this article, bookings have increased five-fold since the announcement. 

We are - as you've probably noticed - trendsetters. If you missed it - or if you just wanted to read them again, imagine that!? - please enjoy parts one, two, three, four, and five.

Today we finish it. I promise. Unless there's an afterward. Or is that a coda? Let's get to the desserts.

Emily and I have a long history of watching Top Chef - Collin shakes fist angrily at Nicholas Elmi's obnoxiously arrogant sweaty face - and for some reason, desserts are often an afterthought. Most of the chefs haven't had much experience doing them and / or don't care. I think that's unfortunate and - because I have watched too much Top Chef - stupid. I mean, you know that you're going to have to make dessert. HAVE AT LEAST ONE DESSERT THAT YOU CAN MAKE IN A PINCH. Now I feel much better.

At noma the dessert-as-afterthought issue is happily not a problem.

Aronia Berries and Söl

This one tops out as one of my favorite strange flavor combinations of the evening. Arronia berries look a bit like a blueberry but are far more bitter. The icecream was made from söl, an icelandic seaweed. This worked tremendously well and I throroughly enjoyed every bite.

Going through all of these pictures again reminds me that I should really have more fun serving plates.

Potato and Plum

Zang. Here we have - from left to right - a cream made from plum stones, a sweet potato mousse, and a plum mousse. I loved this so much that I've forgotten what it was sauced with. At this point we're nearing food-coma levels.

In terms of strange but delicious dessert combos, it reminded me of the first time that we ate like this, at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago. We had one dessert that was some sort of ridiculous roasted beet / chocolate combo that was, in my very best Kirstie Alley voice, decadent.

At this point we would have been quite happy with the evening, but here's where we had a few nice surprises. Our server proceded to lead us to the lounge / bar area. Upon arriving, we were seated at a small table in low, comfortable chairs and enjoyed some very nice - Ethiopian-style I believe - coffee. 

Then came the treats.

Yeast "Toasts" and Skyr

These were little caramel-yeast-fudge-toasts. The "white" in the bowl is icelandic yogurt - skyr - with some jam hiding below. Yes please.

A Play on a Traditional Danish Pastry

This is one that I don't have enough memory of to properly describe. I liked it but cannot for the life of me remember much of anything about it. Emily can help with out with this.

Chocolate Covered Fried Pork Skin w/ Berries

This, however, I remember in all of its glory. Did you ever want to see Jimmy Kimmel and Stringer Bell cook chocolate fried pork skin with René Redzepi? Did I even have to ask? Take it away Rene.

I'm pretty sure that they weren't cranberries in our version. Maybe blueberries? Or aronia again?

So that was it, or so we thought. After paying the bill, we received an excellent guided tour of the entire facility. It was really great. I am terrible with names and immediately forgot the super nice / talented chef that showed us around. I suck. He was from Guatemala and is currently working in - and I'm probably forgetting this as well - pastries.

As you'd expect, it's an extremely orderly place and there are all sorts of different stations where different parts of the operation take place. It was fun to see some good ol' Weber grills hanging out in the back for any needed grilling. Fun fact, they previously had several Big Green Eggs but something like four of them cracked under the pressure of heavy usage. That's disappointing.

We were taken upstairs to the staff area. They've recently redone the staff eating area. I've never worked in a restaurant - and I likely never will - but staff meal is one of those restaurant things that I envy. Something gets whipped up by someone, and - much of the time - it's that someone's notion of home. I would like to sit around at noma and share a staff meal.

As I think I mentioned before, noma's kitchen is completely international. This may seem like nothing, but in København, it's something.

And there we are. I surely didn't do the experience justice, but I tried goddammit. At least I did that.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing this with us! As always, direct any and all questions my way. If you're ever in Denmark and feel like treating some friends to a night at noma, you know who to call.

noma (Part Five)

Now we're in the home stretch. High five!

Today I hope to finish up the main dishes and save the desserts for part six. Apologies that this wasn't done in one post, but really, you would have hated it. Trust me, you would have stopped reading long ago. I think that I've already lost your attention. In this modern world my attention span is such that I can only take in information in short bursts. Damn you internet age!

If your attention prevails, go forth. In case you missed it, here's parts one, two, three, and four.

I'm losing a bit of memory and steam here, but I'll do my best to continue to do this meal justice. Apologies in advance.

Emily and I finally watched the entire Anthony Bourdain : Parts Unknown - Copenhagen yesterday morning. It's a good time, check it out if you can. I think it's available on Netflix. I particularly enjoyed the old dude who kept yelling Gammel Dansk at Tony.

I think that it worked out that we watched it after our noma experience. It was fun walking through the doors with a blank - blanker than blank - slate.

The episode particularly reminded me of the power of fruits and vegetables at noma. As you've probably noticed, there hasn't been very much in the way of meat-with-a-capital-M in the courses leading up to these. That will continue - we'll finish up with  some duck, but things remain fairly veggie focused. I think that this is great.

There's a scene in the episode where Rene and Tony wander around one of noma's supplier farms and pick various vegetables and forage for greens. They come back to the farm house and whip up a lunch in something like ten mintues. It looks amazing.

I think there's something to be said for this sort of simplicity. Obviously the stuff at noma isn't like this - at one point in the episode a chef mentions that a certain dish took twenty man hours to complete - but the thought behind them is. Take delicious local ingredients and allow them to shine.

Beetroot, Sloeberry, Herbs

These beets were just lovely. Earthy and wonderful. To note, I love beets. Beets that are hard. Beets that are funky. Beets that could get you hooked like a crackhead junkie. Consider me hooked.

Celeriac, Cabbages, Cream, Nasturitum

To note further, I have found a new love for celery root. And Jerusalem artichokes. And all sorts of roots. This was fantastic.

Duck, Pear, Kale

The duck is wild. Language fun - it's extra-fun when you hear "there may be bullets" when they mean "there may be pellets". I love the idea of a bullet hiding inside a slice of duck.

Coming up next - and possibly last - desserts!

Day 483 - Skate or Die

No, we're not talking skateboarding, we're talking roller skating. Although, really any excuse to watch old NES videos is a good excuse.



It's that time of the year. It's Friday Night Skate. Every other Friday in the summer, people take to the streets and skate København. We live on a pretty busy street. This is what it looks like during FNS.

Day 482 - MUSICFRIDAY

I spoke last year on Danish music festivals. This year - if they keep it together long enough to get to that point - Outkast will be one of the headliners at Roskilde Festival. I'm with Rembert, this reunion / final tour should have been Outkast shows, not festival shows. I won't be going to Roskilde, but I'm almost entirely certain that 90% of the audience will only know Hey Ya!. 99% of the audience will only know Hey Ya and / or Ms. Jackson. This is sad.

I'd likely to thank the one and only Sascha Singhal for taking me through the catalog. I was lucky enough to see them in the STL at some point on the Stankonia tour. Great stuff. 

Without further ado, favorite is impossible, but this is just one of many. Note, if you do not like hip-hop and / or explicit material makes you uncomfortable, choose not to listen. Otherwise, enjoy.

noma (Part Four)

Emily and I had a very nice Easter break. Please enjoy the fourth installment in an ongoing series recapping our epic noma experience. Sadly I won't be helping any Russian peasants with farm maintenance.



In case you missed it, here's parts one, two, and three.

Here we are, eleven bites later. I am a terrible liar, as the cabbage sandwich and sea urchin toast were definitely two to three biters. So in reality we're talking more like 15-17 bites. And there was also bread. So many bites. Sorry about all of that.

Next up, we have one of my favorites - both in presentation and deliciousness. It's apple and kelp.

That's an apple that has been slow cooked in sloe berry juice. Or is that sloe cooked in slow berry juice? I also didn't realize that you can use sloe for things other than sloe gin. This was sweet sweet candy. The stark ice-scape was also an excellent time. I felt quite stupid for leaving some of the core, should I have eaten it? We didn't get instructions with this one. Luckily we didn't try to eat the twigs and / or ice. We are smart.

I'd just like to take a moment to thank the excellent and far far far better put together blog starvefood for this excellent noma review / recap. It has been extremely helpful when it comes to going back and remembering the tiny details of a meal that happened weeks ago. Thanks again. You're the best.

Shrimp and Ramsom

Here a play on ravioli where the "shell" is made from ramsom - wild garlic greens - and the "filling" is tiny raw shrimp. The broth is made from yeast and it was topped with edible flowers. It felt like I was in some sort of far-east-asian water garden.

It is now time for...more insects!

Tartar and Ants

So yeah, this was awesome. We asked the chef, well, why ants? The answer was sadly not "well, why not ants!".

The story goes as such. A while back noma had a visiting Mexican chef that had previously done many things with ants. She was curious, how might Nordic ants compare to their Mexican counterparts? Answer, they have a bit of lemon-y flavor. I have no idea why.

I find it ridiculously awesome that I spent a good amount of time - in one of the best restaurants in the world - trying to get a single ant onto my fork.

I also have no idea how or where they "catch" the ants. Is that a sort of foraging? Or is it hunting? I guess that it's probably hunting. One can only hope that Ozzy is involved.

The last for today is the "Egg and Greens". Here we have more foraging - this doesn't look exactly like what we had, but the intent is the same. Fresh foraged flowers and greens with a very nice egg and a very nice broth. Earthy. Too earthy if you don't dig earthy. Again, beautiful.

Stay tuned for the end of the "main" courses tomorrow or Saturday.

Day 481 - Fun with Gangsters / Tillykke med Fødselsdagen

A pool hall near the Lindevang Metro station has been advertising heavily in our Metro station. This is my favorite part of the advertisement.

Watch out for notorious Chicago gangster Allan Capone! It turns out that this is actually some sort of Danish video game / slot machine. I can't tell for sure.

More importantly, you should take this time with me to wish Emily a happy birthday! Happy birthday Emily!

noma (Part Three)

Here it is, the third installment recapping our epic noma experience. In case you missed it, here are parts one and two. Enjoy.

Last time we had just finished some delicious cabbage and samphire sandwiches and were ready to move on to the end of the finger-food section of the meal. Finger-food is probably an undersell and happily reminds me of those melted cheese sandwich appetizers that Navin was talked out of. Sophistication.

Æbelskiver (prounced A-bell-ski-ohr, or at least that's what it sounds like to my American ears) are Danish pancake like puffs that can be either sweet or savory. The sweet sort are quite popular around Christmas and they can be served with powdered sugar, jam, whipped cream, etc. They are cooked in a special pan that looks like this.

I've thought about buying one of these pans, but I have so many one-use kitchen implements already that I can't handle having one more.

noma has its own version of æbelskiver. While ours were delicious, I'm mildly disappointed that we didn't get to bite into these bad boys.

In Collin's America there will be more dishes with animals launching themselves through pancakes. This is what our æbelskiver looked like.

Æbelskiver with lovage and parsley

The æbelskiver are cooked in beef fat, brushed with a fermented sauce made from grasshoppers, and topped with seeds from parsley and lovage - the herb not the Automator / Mike Patton / Jennifer Charles project. Did I just gloss over fermented sauce made from grasshoppers? Yup. The first insects of the night!

This all wrapped around a wonderful spinach / lovage / shallot preparation. Awesome, buttery, deliciousness.

Sea urchin toast

So, this was difficult to eat and I looked like an idiot doing so and I don't care. It was worth it. As we learned later - stay tuned for part 6! - this was done outside on the grill. Toast topped with sea urchin topped with crispy duck skin. Have mercy.

Burnt leek and cod roe

This one is another where the staff saves the idiots at the table from eating the wrong stuff. The leeks are delivered "closed", at which point we opened them and found delicious leek / cod roe / blueberry paste. Open the leek first! These were also "burnt" out on the grill.

I'll digress here and talk about living with food allergies. As I'm sure that most of you know, I have both peanut and tree nut allergies. It's not a big deal, I get around it fairly easily. It's annoying when you go to these sorts of restaurants because there are certain dishes you miss out on but what can you do.

For some reason this one gave my mouth a bit of the itch, but I'm chalking that up to the burnt-ness hitting that nutty flavor. My mind getting the best of me once again.

That's the end of the finger-food / bites / starters. Tune in tomorrow for the next stage. Spoiler, it starts with bread!

noma (Part Two)

If you're new to the party, check out part one here.

And we're back. When we left you last, Emily and I had just finished up drinking mushroom soup out of a turnip through a straw. Or was that actually a parsnip? Or another root vegetable? Tursnip? Paturnsip? Anyway, onward and upward.

It's probably appropriate here to actually post the menu and by doing so, I'll stay on task and in order. One can dream. That's the food on the left with the wine on the right.

I'll agree with Roy here, this menu might be one of the least descriptive menus ever. "Apple and Kelp" is a particular favorite.

At some point I will dig into the wines further but for now I will just mention that the approach to wine at noma dovetails with their approach to food - sustainable, unorthodox, unfiltered, biodynamic, etc. When you - as I have done - read through noma review after noma review hunting for pictures and thoughts, you'll find a huge divide on the wine.

Many reviewers found them to be - at best - inaccessible and - at worst - terrible.

Perhaps it's that we don't have very many preconceptions about the way this wine or that wine should taste. Mostly, I think that we dig trying new things. I mean, that's why we're at noma, right? Or maybe it is that we don't know very much about wine.

Cheese "Cookie" with Rocket and Stems

The "Cookie" up close

This entire series of utensil-free bites was very fast and very fun. The above is a play on those Danish butter cookies in the tin. As will be a trend here, these were nearly as amazing to look at as to each. Those are some very finely chopped herb stems piled on top of a cheese - and I cannot remember what else - cracker / cookie / crisp. A nice mix of sharp and sweet.

This very well might be my favorite of the night. Our server delivered this lovely ceramic / stoneware egg to the table. What's inside? Salty. Smoky. Delicious. Perfection.



At this point my brain may have ceased to function. With just one bite, this simultaneously smokey and briny little quail egg bursts open and everything is right with the world.

Caramelized Milk and Cod Liver 

After regaining consciousness post-quail-egg, we were treated to this cod liver and caramelized milk. The cod liver is frozen and shaved very thin and had this somehow intense and smooth at the same time flavor. This - after the quail egg warmth - was ice cold. This whole sequence might be my favorite of the night.

To note here, this is the first of these sorts of tasting menus that we've had where there isn't standard - or at least as I've come to think of standard - progression. We jumped all around with temperature, texture, flavor, etc. Fun.

Cabbage and Samphire Sandwich

The last one for today is this "sandwich" where the "bread" is cabbage leaves that have been dehydrated. Inside is a preparation of samphire, a wild sea green that looks a bit like thin asparagus. It is also known as a sea pickle. There was a very nice sweet / salty thing going on here. This one was a little hard to eat, little bits of dehydrated cabbage are probably still stuck to my sweater, but it was worth it.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part three where we'll finish up the small bites segment.

Day 473 - It's like high stakes Legos

Thank you Nick Miller. Things are always easier with a good helper.

noma (Part One)

Because we're crazy, on a whim Emily and I went to noma last Tuesday. Why not?! Restaurant magazine rated it as the best restaurant in the world from 2010 - 2012. Anthony Bourdain enjoyed himself and, quite predictably, so did we.

noma is located on the harbor, a short walk from the Christianshavn Metro station. Everything in this part of the city is under construction. It's always fun to walk to one of the best restaurants in the world weaving one's way though varoius dumpsters, chain link, and the odd piece of construction equipment. We made it with time to spare.

Hilariously, I thought that this was noma. It's actually in the building next door.

Sad note, this is the only picture I took all evening. I hate taking pictures at restaurants and I hate the people who do it. This said, I should have taken pictures. Lesson learned. To substitute, I have stolen all sorts of pictures that approximate the dishes we enjoyed. I apologize for stealing them. If you are unhappy that I have stolen your picture, please contact me and I will happily remove it. I am a terrible hypocrite.

Now that that's done, let's get started.

noma was opened in 2004 by København cooking giant Claus Meyer with René Redzepi - a mere 27 at the time - as head chef. The goal was to showcase the Danish subset of the new nordic cuisine movment.  Generally speaking, this has focused on highlighting locally available, seasonal, and sustainable ingredients while combining new - think elBulli or minibar - and old - salting, smoking, organs - cooking techniques. Foraging - literally going out and about and picking stuff - also plays a role here. If this reads as if I've copied it from Wikipedia, good on you, I totally did.

To add a few about observations on my own past new nordic / new danish dining experiences;

• As you'd expect, design plays a huge role here. This falls under food-as-art or engaging-all-of-the-senses. At first sight one might think, is this food? How do I eat this? Wouldn't it be nicer to put this in a gallery instead of ruining it by eating it?
• There is a casual-ness to these restaurants. Patrons are dressed in all manners. Jeans are totally fine. Specifically, noma has a feel that you're in a cozy / comfortable, for lack of a better word, lodge. It's clean / simple but not harsh. Warm. Hyggelig to the max.
• The staff serves pretentious food without pretention. Chefs routinely serve the front of the house. They're more than happy to stand and talk about the food. They accept the fact that you probably don't understand it. Let's be honest, how would you? They enjoy helping you to understand it. They even tell you how to eat it! I love this.

The menu contains somewhere around 20 dishes and the entire night took about 4 hours or so. We probably dragged it out longer than it normally goes - I'll get on to that later.

The meal began with several small shared dishes, most of which didn't require utensils.

Currants w/ Lemon and Lavender

Fried Reindeer Moss from Sweden

Nordic "Coconut"

So we started with these three. The currants were very nice and refreshing, I guess a sort of palate opener / cleanser. 

The reindeer moss - the light brown / beige colored moss not the green moss - resembled the model railroad shrubs that they sell in hobby shops . Specifically it looked like the shrubs that I used for a shoebox Robinson Crusoe diorama I put together when I was eight. Looking back I probably had the vegetation all wrong for a desert island.

Yes, that is a terracotta pot. We were specifically told to only eat the reindeer moss and not to eat any other moss or sticks. I imagine that this probably happened once, thus the warning. This was served with some crème fraîche. I've had reindeer moss twice in Denmark!

The third - and final - picture here is the Nordic coconut. This is the sort of stuff that makes going to these sorts of places so much fun. That moment when the dish comes out and you say to yourself, what the heck is that?! Two turnip-y things with straws sticking out of them sitting on a burlap sack?! What?

Interestingly enough, noma uses different "coconut" vessels for this dish. Sometimes it's a potato. Sometimes another weird root vegetable. We got a quick explanation of the contents that we would be drinking out of the "coconut" - mushroom, quince, and a few other things that I can't remember. What we didn't know was that it would be a warm dish - the "coconut" kind of hides that from you. It was delicious.

Stay tuned for parts two, three, and likely four.

Day 471 - MUSICMONDAY

Have you ever wondered what a bizarro Danish Licensed to Ill-era Beastie Boys / rappy-er NKOTB might sound like? I present to you - without further comment - Rockers by Choice.

Day 468 -- MUSICFRIDAY

I'm going to take Collin's idea from last week and run with it, with a twist.  I'm not really sharing music, not new music anyway, but instead a video that always makes me laugh.  a fitting end to a stressful week.

Enjoy!

And congrats to Stephen Colbert and The Late Show.

Day 465 - This is what it sounds like

when the support for the OS on your "ancient" computer ends. Sniff.

To celebrate, Emily and I will be living the dream and dining at Noma tonight. Only kidding, we're not idiots. We are going to Noma because, on Saturday, we randomly looked for reservations and shockingly saw an open spot for tonight. I think that it was the only spot for the next three months. Score.

Reports forthcoming.

Day 461 - MUSICFRIDAY

I am lazy and don't feel like coming up with anything new and interesting to post. Instead, I'll start MUSICFRIDAY. This is where, on a Friday, I share some music. I may - at any point I deem fit - change this to a MUSICMONDAY or MUSICTTHURSDAY, but for now it's MUSICFRIDAY. On this FRIDAY, we have José González.



Side fact, I cannot describe how excited I am about this.

Bonus MUSICFRIDAY!