Five Months After Noma Founder René Redzepi’s Fall From Grace, Restaurant Reopens Without Him At The Helm

But five months after Redzepi's public downfall, Noma says it is beginning a “new chapter” with longtime chefs taking charge and a menu that will change monthly to focus even more on the seasonality of ingredients.

“It’s been crazy tough,” new executive head chef Pablo Soto said in a recent interview. “There’s been a lot of media attention and questions about what we’re doing, but we’re still here standing.”

Redzepi, arguably the world’s top chef, had for years been dogged by reports of mistreatment of his staff, as well as his yearslong use of unpaid interns to staff the pricey restaurant. Criticism came to a head just days before the opening of a Noma pop-up in Los Angeles, and an article in The New York Times detailed several former employees’ accounts ranging from verbal abuse to physical assault at the hands of Redzepi and his deputies between 2009 and 2017.

Redzepi declined to be interviewed

Redzepi, 48, later apologised and announced his intention to “step away” in a tearful video posted to the restaurant’s Instagram page. The restaurant declined to make Redzepi, who is now in a creative director role, available for an interview. In an Instagram video he said he was excited to see “fresh energy” come into the restaurant.

Absence of 3 Michelin stars

Aside from Redzepi in the open kitchen, another notable absence next week will be the restaurant's three Michelin stars. The third was awarded in 2021. In May, the restaurant said it would not be part of this year’s Michelin Guide, saying it didn't meet the guide’s requirements for being open long enough in 2026.

The Copenhagen location shuttered in January ahead of the Los Angeles pop-up and remained closed for much of the year.

Noma expected to reinvent itself

Tom Sietsema, food correspondent for Washington-based news organisation NOTUS, believes that Noma’s dedication to innovation and reinvention since its 2003 opening will help it weather the fallout – if its founder stays in the background.

“For years it’s been the number one restaurant in the world,” he said. “And that suddenly doesn’t just vanish. I think this is a rough time for the restaurant, but people are still curious about it. People will go just to see, ‘oh, is it really as bad or as good as people say it is,’ right? I expect it to remain in the conversation for years to come.”

Soto said the restaurant is almost fully booked for its first three months, up until the end of October. Guests will pay a set price of 4,500 Danish krone (S$889) per head for the menu, with 2,000 krone (S$395) extra for wine pairing.

Soto said the restaurant conducted an internal audit, and there are “many systems in place” to make sure staff are happy and “can grow”.

“We’ve gone through a period of crisis,” he said. “This means we need to be much more attentive to each individual.”

Menu will change monthly

Noma, a contraction of the Danish words for Nordic and food, opened in 2003 dedicated to “a simple desire to rediscover wild local ingredients by foraging and to follow the seasons”.

While previous offerings were shaped around three distinct seasons, the reopening will see chefs embrace constant change in the menu.

“In this new iteration of Noma, we are opening up our creative process to a new seasonal rhythm,” the restaurant's website says. "This is the 12 seasons of Noma. We are building a continuous flow of creative output, evolving from month to month as the year unfolds. Each month will carry its own distinct seasonal rhythm, shaped by subtle shifts in ingredients, weather and landscape.”

During a visit to the Copenhagen restaurant on Tuesday, chefs practised preparing pike perch, brown crab, shrimp, and mushrooms in Noma’s open kitchen.

Mette Brink Søberg, the head of research and development, delicately topped a berry gazpacho dish with colourful flower petals, recently plucked from the nearby garden, in the test kitchen.

“We feel that now we’ve done this for so many years, we’ve really become experts in all the flavours, the techniques, the concepts,” Brink Søberg said. “I think we’re ready to take one step further.”

Restaurant reckoning prioritises staff now

Redzepi’s fall from grace was hailed by some as a reckoning over when “brigade de cuisine” becomes abuse, and whether the time is up on the storied bullying and intimidation of fine-dining kitchen culture.

Sietsema said he's noticed restaurateurs and chefs focusing more on how their staff are treated and paid to get buy-in from the ground up. They are reevaluating the conditions in their kitchens, as well as rethinking time-off allowances so that staff might get two or three days at home in a row. Noma started fully paying interns in 2022.

“All those little examples add up to a big change in the industry, I think,” he said. “People are really rethinking how they want to work, how hard they want to work, and I think it’s resulting in some better restaurants – better hospitality – overall.”

Source: AP/sr

The original version of this story first appeared in CNA Lifestyle.

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