Since opening two decades ago, Copenhagen restaurant Noma, which now serves grilled reindeer hearts on a bed of fresh pine and saffron ice cream in a beeswax bowl, has transformed fine dining. A new global class of gastro-tourists plans first-class flights and all their vacations around the privilege of paying at least $500 per person for a wide variety of tasting menu.
Noma has repeatedly topped lists of the world’s best restaurants, and its creator, René Redzepi, is hailed as the most brilliant and influential chef of his time.
Still, Mr. Redzepi told The New York Times that the restaurant will close to normal service at the end of 2024.
Noma will be a full-time food lab developing new dishes and products for e-commerce operation Noma Projects, and its dining rooms will only be open to periodic pop-ups. His role will be something closer to creative director than chief.
This move is likely to send shock waves into the culinary world. To put it in football terms: imagine Manchester United decides to close the Old Trafford stadium to fans, but the team will continue to play.
The decision comes as Noma and many other elite restaurants face scrutiny for their treatment of workers who produce and serve these exquisite dishes, many of whom are underpaid or not paid at all. The fine-dining style that Noma helped create and promote around the world – wildly innovative, labor-intensive, and extremely expensive – may be experiencing a sustainability crisis.
The signature of Noma and its cuisine is its luxurious, modern rustic aesthetic. Credit… Ditte Isager for The New York Times
Long acknowledging that it takes grueling hours to produce the restaurant’s kitchen, Redzepi said the math of paying the nearly 100 employees at prices the market can handle while maintaining fairly high standards isn’t viable.
“We have to completely rethink the industry,” he said. “This is very difficult and we have to work in a different way.”
“The last 30 years have been a gilded era,” said chef David Kinch, who closed his three-Michelin-starred restaurant Manresa in Los Gatos, California, last week, as pretentious restaurants proliferated and became less formal and more exciting. His casual restaurants will remain open, but he said fine dining is no longer something he doesn’t want to do himself or impose on his staff, describing the business as “disruptive”.
“Fine dining is at a crossroads and there needs to be big changes,” he said. “The whole industry is aware of this, but they don’t know how it will turn out.”
Fine dining like diamonds, ballet and other elite pursuits often involves abuse, said Finnish chef Kim Mikkola, who has worked at Noma for four years.
“Everything luxury is built on one’s back; Someone has to pay,” he said.
Mikkola, who founded KotKot, a chain of sustainable, fair-run fried chicken sandwich shops, said he values the art he learned at Noma. “Do we want to tell everyone not to have great experiences, just eat potatoes?” said. “Absolutely not. That’s the dilemma.”
Creativity and its Costs
As the human cost of the industry came under scrutiny, Mr. Redzepi’s headaches multiplied with media reports and online activism criticizing Noma’s treatment of foreign workers and its reliance on unpaid interns. In October, Noma began paying its interns, adding at least $50,000 to monthly labor costs.
Over the past two years, Mr. Redzepi and his team have climbed to the top of the last remaining mountain to earn a third Michelin star, and the record-breaking fifth-time Noma has topped the list of the world’s influential 50 Best Restaurants, making it ineligible for future awards. .
Mr Redzepi denied that any of these factors led to Noma’s decision to close its doors. Instead, he said it has long been untenable to operate at the high level of activity that has earned Noma international praise. But she said she never stopped working until the Covid pandemic kept her at home, enough to question whether her entire business model would be disrupted.
For the past ten years, Mr. Redzepi, 45, has been on a highly public spiritual journey, embracing therapy, coaching and walking meditation to fire the notoriously angry, volatile and workaholic young chef he was when he opened Noma in 2003. He said the process brought him to this breaking point.
“Unsustainable,” he said of the modern fine dining model he helped create. “It doesn’t work out financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a person.”
A new generation of empowered workers began to oppose this model, often using social media to address employers. The Willows Inn in Washington State, run by Noma-trained chef Blaine Wetzel, closed in November following a 2021 Times report of systemic abuse and harassment; Top destinations like Blue Hill at Stone Barns and Eleven Madison Park have faced media inquiries over their working conditions. Recent movies and TV series like “Menu,” “Boiling Point,” and “Bear” have brought into popular culture the image of hordes of troubled young chefs silently wielding tweezers in the service of a chef-auteur.
In a 2015 article, Mr. Redzepi admitted that he bullied his staff verbally and physically, and he often admitted that his efforts to become a calmer, more courteous leader were not entirely successful.
“In an ideal restaurant, employees can work four days a week and feel strong, confident and creative,” said Mr. Redzepi. “The question is how to pay them enough for kids, a car and a house in the suburbs.”
Mr. Redzepi’s reputation has been built on his defiance of fine dining tradition, most famously ditching imported flavors like French foie gras and Italian truffles in favor of local and harvested ingredients like spruce tips, biennial carrots, and duck brains. His style of cooking became known as the New Scandinavian and brought all of Scandinavia to new status as an elite culinary destination.
Numerous chefs moved to Denmark to study Mr. Redzepi’s work, after which he spread his style to other countries; Several alumni said that having a Noma pedigree has opened doors and wallets for investors all over the world. Frequent keynote speeches at food summits elevated Mr. Redzepi to his role as a global visionary. He was knighted by the queen of Denmark and published a book on leadership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
But the culinary culture in Noma has not always lived up to the ideals it reflects. Dozens of people who worked at Noma between 2008 and 2021 said in interviews that the 16-hour workday has long been routine, even for unpaid workers.
A Noma spokesperson replied, “While our industry is characterized by long working hours, this is something we at Noma are constantly working to improve.”
Life of an Intern
Noma’s internship program also served as a way for Noma to supplement its workforce, providing between 20 and 30 full-time workers (“stagiaires” is the traditional French term) who do most of the painstaking work – peeling and sorting walnuts by hand. lavender leaves from stems – this defines Noma’s food and aesthetic.
Until last October, the program only provided work visas. But being able to say “I took the stage at Noma” is an invaluable culinary identity. For this reason alone, many of the graduates interviewed said interning at Noma was worth the expense, fatigue and stress.
Namrata Hegde, 26, had just graduated from culinary school in Hyderabad, India when she was selected as a trainee in 2017. He flew to Copenhagen to live and work without knowing anything about Noma except that many people call it the best restaurant in the world. she at her own expense for three months.
Ms. Hegde said that most of the time her only job is to produce fruit-skin bugs, starting with a thick black fruit jam and silicone molds from which the insect pieces are carved. Another trainee taught him to spread the jam evenly, watch the drying process, and then use tweezers to join the head, thorax, abdomen and wings. Ms. Hegde repeated the process until she had 120 perfect specimens; a single insect was served in a wooden box to each restaurant.
He said experience taught him to be quick, quiet, and organized, but little about cooking. “I didn’t expect to be told that I would only use my knife a few times a day or be told that I didn’t need my tasting spoon because there was nothing to taste,” she said.
Ms. Hegde was told that she had to work quietly by the junior chefs she assisted (Mr. Redzepi was rarely present in the kitchen where he worked) and was specifically forbidden to laugh.
“I thought the internship was about both learning and contributing to Noma’s success,” he said. “I don’t believe such a toxic work environment is necessary.”
A spokesperson for Noma said that all restaurant staff are expected to perform repetitive tasks and that Ms. Hegde’s account “does not reflect our workplace or the experience we wish for our interns or anyone on our team”.
The fact that exploitation and abuse in kitchens continues, even in protectionist societies like Denmark, was highlighted by Danish activist Lisa Lind Dunbar, a recent industry veteran in Copenhagen (who did not work for Noma).
He and a dozen others said a loyalty rule among Noma alumni, including chefs at many of Copenhagen’s top restaurants, made it impossible for workers at those restaurants to talk about working conditions, sexual harassment and other issues.
“It’s a Mafia mentality and he’s a donor,” he said of Mr. Redzepi. “No one can challenge him publicly or privately.”
A Noma spokesperson replied, “This is not something we accept as true.” He also said that he has long acknowledged these systemic issues and is working to change them.
But Ms. Dunbar said Mr. Redzepi had twenty years to do this. “He didn’t try hard enough,” he said.
Termination of the ‘Production Line’
So what about the Noma brand?
Mr. Redzepi said that this did not make him wealthy, as his dedication to high-quality materials and flawless execution were too costly. He declined to provide details, but according to public records, he is the majority owner of Noma and partial owner of several popular ventures run by Noma alumni.
He said that opening satellite restaurants around the world, as many chefs do to increase revenue, will not solve the problem. “I have been offered numerous blank checks in Qatar. It doesn’t appeal to me.
Mr. Redzepi, who has been a professional cook since he was 15 years old, said he has long wanted to move out of the “production line” aspect of restaurant cuisine. He said advance commitments and building Noma Projects, including a new manufacturing facility with 60 to 70 full-time employees, were the reason why the change didn’t go into effect for nearly two years.
“Hopefully we can prove to the world that you can grow old, be creative and have fun in the industry,” he said. “Instead of the heavy, arduous, low-paying jobs that wear people out under mismanagement.”
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