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!