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.