Noma

For anyone following food fashion, Noma is the center of the current culinary universe and has been covered and hyped ad nauseum.  Touted as the Best Restaurant in the World for 3 years in a row and a holder of 2 Michelin stars, its founder Chef Rene Redzepi, is credited for creating 'New Nordic Cuisine', which in my snider moments I dubbed 'Crap They Pick Off the Beach and Trees.' Reservations for mere mortals can be next to impossible - ironic, since the restaurant is located in Christiania, the largest remaining hippie freetown community in the world.  What is all the fuss about??  Last night, I was lucky enough to find out.

A colleague at Dennis's work put her name on the waiting list and got a call Tuesday that the restaurant would be willing to put together a table for 8 on Thursday night if she could confirm in 2 hours.  We jumped at her offer to join the party despite knowing there would be an exorbitant price tag attached.

Preparing oneself for such a fine dinning experience is not to be taken lightly, especially if one knows that it may never happen again.  Getting dressed properly was the first challenge (all black), and involved tricky removal of foundation that somehow ended up in my hair?!  I don't get dressed up much, can you tell?  Next were the pre- and post-dinner preparations.  We had been warned that food portions would be tiny served on plates that would be huge, and while plentiful in number, might not fill a ravenous stomach.  With that in mind, I prepared a small snack (crostini topped with leftover canned cranberry sauce and melted blue cheese; tasty, cheap and quick!) and also baked a batch of brownies, god-forbid chocolate was not served for dessert.  Then, just to be safe, I paid off the credit card!

The restaurant is located at the end of a bumpy street in a converted brick warehouse.  Clearly, this was a case of 'make them come to us'.  It was freezing cold last night, so the warm candlelit greeting was especially welcome even after the short walk from the car.  There were literally 10 staff members ready to greet us with big smiles on their faces acting if they had been waiting all day with eager anticipation to welcome you into their home.  That simple act of hospitality set the tone for the rest of the night.

We were led through the small intimate dinning room (15 tables max from my quick count) decorated in sparse Nordic upscale luxury (think exposed beams, brick and plaster, wood plank floors, and plain linen curtains) to a semi-private alcove furnished with Danish-style furniture and rustic yet elegant white place-settings.  No formality, no stuffiness or condescension, instead just a warm friendly welcome that immediately put us at ease.

Each table is assigned what I can only describe as a Master of Ceremonies who sets the pace of your dinner and explains each wine and course.  We would be enjoying dinner in 2 phases, it was explained, with the first phase consisting of 11 different small bites coming in rapid succession and the second phase served more leisurely and consisting of entree type dishes.  A wine tasting could be selected to accompany the meal, or a juice tasting for diners electing not to drink - how cool is that?!  I did select a Danish white wine (who ever heard of such a thing) to start the meal and learned that the wine is named after Redzepi's daughter, Arwen, who's birth coincided with the first vintage in 2008.  I don't even like white wine, yet this was delicious.

I can't and won't try to describe each dish as they are all too intricate and complicated, but I will attempt to describe some highlights.  The very first thing they set on the table were huge cold raw potatoes with a green stem sticking out of a hole bored into the middle.  We stared at them in silent puzzlement wondering what on earth they were meant to be and then burst out laughing when the MC described them as Nordic Coconuts!  They were hollowed-out potatoes filled with a luke-warm bouillon that became infused with flavor as you sipped through the green dill straw.  Now, I wouldn't want to be the unlucky kitchen intern tasked with hollowing out the potatoes, but it sure was a fun way to start the evening.

This was then proceeded by an armada of impressive dishes served by an equally impressive and large armada of servers, who were actually the chefs.  As we learned later, there are 25 full-time chefs and 25 interns all working 90+ hours a week, with their days starting around 9 AM and ending around 1 AM.  It's a very young eager hip tattooed staff (20-30s) numbering about 100 total with only 2 chefs from Denmark and the rest hailing from 21 different nations.  The timing of each dish is precise, hence the sometimes swarming service for one course when 10 chefs showed up to individually serve and sauce fresh milk cured and blueberry preserves simultaneously for just our table.

The combination of flavors and labor-intensive painstaking preparation behind each component of each dish is staggering.  You realize very quickly that what you're really paying for is quality labor, not just quality ingredients.  As for fancy culinary techniques - I didn't think you could do stuff like this to a plant!  Case in point - they used the inside of tiny plum pits to flavor a whipped cream (tasted like delicious marzipan) and reconstituted the flesh into a concentrated plum puree.  And only a Mad Hatter genius can think to pair sorrel leaf with cricket paste, cucumbers flavored by finely ground blackened cucumber ash, wild duck and pear with kale and deep-fried beech leaves, and a concoction of mashed potatoes (probably made from those hollowed-out Nordic Coconuts!) and plums for dessert.  In total, we were served 24 different dishes from the moment we sat down at 7 PM until 12 AM when we finished with coffee in the lounge.  Favorite tastes included deep fried reindeer moss sprinkled with truffle powder, blue mussels and celery, crispy potatoes and duck pate, leek and cod roe, brown cheese and sloe berries, and an amazing apple juice flavored with pine needles (?!).

As for the knowledge and level of service by the staff - mind-boggling.  Each staff member knew the detailed pedigree and 'terrior' of every single ingredient and vintage.  Most impressive, they were happy to go find someone to come answer your question if they didn't know something and could answer you in multiple languages.  Our table alone was a mini-UN (German, Italian, Brazilian, French, Finnish, American, Chinese, Norwegian) and the staff happily provided ingredient names in a each diner's mother-tongue (okay, to be fair, I wouldn't recognize 'oyster' in Chinese now if my life depended on it, but you get my point).  Indeed, my one complaint might be to say that this attentive informed service was over-whelming at times, as each dish was presented by a mini-lecture and Q/A session that made table conversation impossible.  While their eagerness to share their culinary passion is understandable and very appreciated, being interrupted 24 times gets tiresome.

The friendiless of the staff extended to a personal escort to the bathroom (thankfully, they merely walk you there and don't accompany you inside, although I'm sure if I asked, they might).  Although, I had to laugh when one of our party was discouraged from using the facilities when she wanted to in order to accomodate the serving of the next dish.  Kinda like the Soup Nazi from 'Seinfeld' - "No!  You will NOT use the bathroom!"  Too funny.  And every time I thanked one of them for something, their reply was "No, thank YOU!"  I'm going to have to insist my children respond to me like that from now on.

The excellent and accommodating service continued to a tour of the 3 kitchens and the large and airy staff area.  The King of Denmark, as Redzepi is called, is currently in Mexico, but it's clear he runs a tight ship and his disciples adore him.  The chefs and staff were busy wiping down the kitchens as we were escorted through by charming Chef Alex (I bet he's barely 25, if that).  He proved very engaging and offered up lots of insights and information of how things are run behind the scenes.  I admit, I guess I'm a kitchen groupy, as I don't think I could have been more thrilled getting a back-stage pass to see Dave Matthews.  As if to drive home the point of eager friendliness, as we interrupted the nightly staff meeting when they discuss tomorrows service, the entire group of 15+ chefs standing around a prep table all looked up with big smiles and cheerfully said good night and thanked us for coming.

The magic wore off a bit when it came time to settle the bill, go figure.  Let's just say that we could have bought a roundtrip ticket to San Diego for the price of dinner.  But was it worth all the fuss??  Yes.  It's not so much dinner as an entire experience.  And it's not so much about the food as it is an entire culinary production.  And the ambiance they create, seemingly authentic yet certainly carefully couched and orchestrated, is extraordinary.  That level of service is impressive anywhere in the world, let alone Denmark, where services is notoriously bad.  Sure, I've had better food (Cafe Mukkefuck in Garmisch, Fagioli in Florence and Market in Del Mar), but never in such comfortable attentive surroundings.  By the end of the night, I was starting to feel like I had been to dinner at a new friend's house where I would end up saying 'Next time, my place!'  Wouldn't that be a hoot?

p.s.  We didn't need the at-home brownies after all, because they did finally served chocolate covered potato chips with coffee at the very end.  My 2 favorite foods all in one yummy concoction - worth the price of admission right there!