Noma

While the restaurant will soon accept its final reservation, chef Rene Redzepi said this is not the end of its story.

In announcing the rebrand, Redzepi said he would continue to travel to learn and potentially open Noma pop-ups in different places. After its previous re-branding, [it ranked No, 1 again](https://www.theworlds50best.com/the-list/1-10/Noma.html) in 2021. This is not the first time Noma has closed and re-branded. The However, the iconic Copenhagen, Denmark restaurant is expected to reopen in a new capacity. "Noma as you know it is closing as we begin a new chapter.

The Copenhagen restaurant that defined an era of fine dining announced that it will close its doors in 2024.

In the world of fine dining, interns are rarely paid, and routinely asked to maintain grueling work hours in exchange for the invaluable “experience” of working at a top restaurant. As Noma prepares to close, here are six allegations about working conditions that some interns faced at Noma. “Winter 2024 will be the last season of noma as we know it.” The restaurant is known for fantastical and sometimes eye roll–worthy dishes like Moldy Egg Tart and Reindeer Heart Tartare and garnered three Michelin stars in 2021, as well as several first-place rankings on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Once the restaurant closes its doors this final time, Noma will transform into a full-time food lab, which essentially means the newest player in the world of direct-to-consumer food products (like [Wild Rose Vinegar](https://nomaprojects.com/products/wild-rose-vinegar) and [Smoked Mushroom Garum](https://nomaprojects.com/products/smoked-mushroom-garum)) is the world’s most famous restaurant. “Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.” No, really: After several announcements over the years that Noma was [temporarily closing](https://www.eater.com/2015/9/14/9324311/rene-redzepi-closes-noma-urban-garden), opening up pop-up locations in [Mexico](https://www.eater.com/2017/4/11/15259192/rene-redzepi-noma-mexico-tulum-open), [Japan](https://www.eater.com/2015/1/9/7520049/inside-noma-japan-ants-chocolate-covered-mushrooms-tokyo), or [Australia](https://www.eater.com/2016/1/28/10860246/noma-australia-menu-photos), becoming a [pandemic-era burger joint](https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/nov/22/hold-the-18-course-dinners-noma-chef-opens-up-a-burger-joint) or otherwise reinventing itself, the renowned restaurant is shutting down.

Sea snails on Noma's first seafood menu. A yellow ramekin of sea snails on a gray plate. Jason Loucas/Noma. Like many whose Google News ...

And I hope that the next time a place exists that influences global cuisine so much, it is not because of fanaticism around a singular supposed genius, or the [rigidity of its philosophy](https://www.eater.com/2018/3/13/17102098/rene-redzepi-noma-restaurant-culinary-philosophy-conservative) (which [one Danish newspaper described](https://theworld.org/stories/2012-04-08/fascist-food-fight) as “fascism in avant-garde clothing”), but because it models some sort of real sustainability, both environmentally and in labor. Outside the cost and the schlep, Noma always seemed like it was built on the assumption of a diner’s reverence. There are enough Noma alums — and alums of restaurants opened by Noma alums — that Noma is all around us. [closing next year](https://london.eater.com/23546160/worlds-best-restaurant-noma-closing-rene-redzepi-copenhagen?_gl=1*7lp0od*) (to focus on e-commerce and the occasional pop-up). Dinner with a wine pairing [is 5,500](https://noma.dk/reservations/) krone (currently nearly $800), which amazingly is not as expensive as [some tasting menus in New York](https://ny.eater.com/2023/1/5/23539650/per-se-thomas-keller-tasting-menu-inflation-2023-nyc-restaurants), but is still a lot. Maybe I should have saved my money and used every connection possible to get a reservation and it would have been a singularly transcendent experience.

The famed Copenhagen restaurant Noma, voted the World's Best Restaurant multiple times, is closing its doors. Chef René Redzepi's fine-dining destination ...

The home gourmand e-commerce route is certainly one way to give a legendary restaurant with a difficult chef a dignified ending; [The Menu’s](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-menu-movie-restaurants-adam-platt.html) s’mores approach is another. These conditions, paired with the fastidious nature of the restaurant experience for customers, were one source of inspiration for Mark Mylod’s 2022 fine-dining satire [The Menu](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-menu-review-a-deliciously-mean-satire.html). In an interview with Thrillist, production designer Ethan Tobman [cited Noma](https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/the-menu-movie-behind-the-scenes-food) as an inspiration for the film’s fictional hyperlocal, hyperexpensive restaurant, Hawthorn. [Blue Hill at Stone Barns](https://www.eater.com/22996588/blue-hill-stone-barns-dan-barber-restaurant-work-environment-ingredients). “This is simply too hard, and we have to work in a different way.” Noma charges over $400 a seating before wine pairings, but it only began paying interns this past October. This news comes months after conductor Lydia Tár quipped in the hit film Tár that a nervous student’s music “sounds like René Redzepi’s recipe for reindeer.” Whether Redzepi is shuttering his successful culinary destination in direct response to getting epically owned by Lydia Tár has not been confirmed, but we mustn’t dismiss the possibility.

Chef Rene Redzepi's house of Nordic gastronomy will close by the winter of 2024 and re-emerge as Noma 3.0, the Copenhagen eatery said on its webpage.

Noma — a contraction of the Danish words for Nordisk and Mad, meaning Nordic and food, opened in 2003. Instead, much of our time will be spent on exploring new projects and developing many more ideas and products." After the sojourn, "we will do a season in Copenhagen."

Chef Rene Redzepi's house of Nordic gastronomy will close by the winter of 2024 and re-emerge as Noma 3.0, the Copenhagen eatery said on its webpage.

Noma — a contraction of the Danish words for Nordisk and Mad, meaning Nordic and food, opened in 2003. Instead, much of our time will be spent on exploring new projects and developing many more ideas and products." After the sojourn, "we will do a season in Copenhagen."

Chef Rene Redzepi's house of Nordic gastronomy will close by the winter of 2024 and re-emerge as Noma 3.0, the Copenhagen eatery said on its webpage.

Noma — a contraction of the Danish words for Nordisk and Mad, meaning Nordic and food, opened in 2003. Instead, much of our time will be spent on exploring new projects and developing many more ideas and products." After the sojourn, "we will do a season in Copenhagen."

Ferran was the trailblazing wizard of El Bulli on the Costa Brava— a supremely innovative kitchen that made culinary history. Rene had worked there briefly and ...

While Jose has built a successful business of several restaurants around the US, he has also become a secular saint. Munk is too young to have eaten at Ferran’s restaurant but he was enraptured by the presence of the master. It’s great to be part of history — but not really comforting to know you have become part of the past. In the interim, he took his operation overseas for elaborate pop-ups. However successful the endeavor, the next chapter will be very different from being the acclaimed chef of the best restaurant in the world. He had been working hard to turn the site of El Bulli into a center for innovation in all endeavors. I’d been following the evolution of the post-restaurant El Bulli and was aware that Ferran had so many ideas for the project that shaping it had become a monumental task in itself. I could see how he beamed when we ate at Rasmus Munk’s acclaimed Alchemist, where the cuisine is, in many ways, a living tribute to El Bulli. Rene had worked there briefly and credits Ferran with freeing the imagination of cooks around the world from the dominance of French gastronomy. That ambition had gotten a lot of attention but most of it derived from Ferran’s own compelling personality and his historic role in making Spain a mecca for the culinary avant-garde — or as he prefers to say in Spanish, la vanguardia. The news that he will close its doors as a restaurant at the end of 2024 brought me back to the afternoon of Sept. Ferran was the trailblazing wizard of El Bulli on the Costa Brava— a supremely innovative kitchen that made culinary history.