Trip Report: Noma

During the initial research phase of this trip, shortly after we booked the airline tickets back in January, I discovered that Noma, at that time voted the best restaurant in the world, was in Copenhagen. "Wouldn't it be sort of hilarious if we went to Noma?" I asked Ben. But of course it's impossible to get a reservation - they open up a month's worth of bookings three months ahead of time, and you have to be available right at the second it opens to get in an online queue, and even then you probably won't get a reservation, much less on the day & time you want. You can ask to be added to the waitlist at any time, though, so I ended up doing that even though I knew it was almost definitely a lost cause. My boss has gotten into the French Laundry via waitlist before so I thought it was worth a shot.

A few weeks after we re-booked the airline tickets, I was browsing the Lonely Planet forums and noticed someone had posted a thread asking for people to fill out their reservation on September 17th at 7pm. Two guys had gotten a table for 8 - they woke up in the middle of the night and got in the queue and even so, by the time it was their turn the big table was the only thing available. They took it, and then went to the internet to try to fill all the other spots. September 17th! We were going to be in Copenhagen on September 17th! It was clearly meant to be. I responded to the thread and we hooked up via email and I sent him proof we were real people who were going to be in Denmark at that time. And voila! We were going to Noma.

We arrived a bit early to meet up with our group and everyone was very relieved that all eight of us had shown up. In addition to the two guys from Philadelphia who made the reservation, we also ate with a pair of sisters from San Francisco and a married couple who lives in Copenhagen and had actually been to Noma eight years before. 

Our seating at 7pm was the first of the night, so when we walked in the door the entire kitchen and waitstaff was gathered around waiting to greet us. Although this is a very well-regarded (and expensive, obviously) restaurant, there was absolutely no pretension to any of it. The staff was young and excited and from all over the world, and everyone seemed to understand how special an opportunity it was for us to be there.

What makes Noma really special is its focus on local, in-season food. They are very, very serious about both those things, which can be a bit of a challenge given that Denmark's growing season is not very long. 

They started in with our first course immediately: applesauce with grilled lemon thyme.

Second was cabbage leaves with (I think) white currants. The leaf on top was steamed and there was a grilled leaf below. The bowl was smeared with parsley puree.

Next up was a mixture of grilled and fresh greens, on a plate glazed with scallop fudge. We were instructed to eat this with our hands, smearing everything around to get plenty of the glaze on each bite.

This is various herbs and some kelp, and underneath was milk curd - like a savory custard.

Next up is tiny Danish potatoes served in nettle leaves. We ate them by spearing them with that little branch. The nettle leaves were very salty - they told us to only eat a little because it would be too overwhelming otherwise.

This is an onion which was grilled over high heat for forty minutes. It was scored so we could split it open and eat the deliciously soft, caramelized insides.

Here is a bad picture of the insides of Ben's onion.

Then we got tiny grilled baby corns, which they remove from the husk and brush with beef fat and then put back in.

Ben and I both got the juice pairing in lieu of wine, as he doesn't drink at all and I was concerned about how I would feel after 20 courses worth of wine pairings. The juices were for the most part really delicious, although there were a couple I didn't bother to finish - one was just straight cabbage juice, and the other was turnip and something else. My favorites were a sweet pine and something-apple.

This is sea urchin with hazelnut oil and slivered hazelnuts. I had never had urchin before but it was kind of sweet, almost peanut buttery. I have no idea what regular urchin tastes like or if this was a feature of Noma's dish, though.

These are tiny raviolis made from nasturtium leaves, filled with sweet shrimp, in a rhubarb oil with pickled radish on top. We were all a little worried that we were going to have to eat live shrimp, which is one thing Noma often foists upon people, but someone opened these up and confirmed they were not alive. Ha.

This was a 100-year old clam from the Faroe Islands! 

And this is the best thing any of us had ever eaten in our lives. It is butternut squash and some grilled thyme in a broth of fermented barley and butter. The broth was just insane. It was so rich and sort of sweet and just incredible. 

That awesomeness was followed by black garlic licorice with white currants, brushed with wood ant glaze. This sounds extremely weird but was really fun and good - almost a Fruit Roll-up texture. 

Then they brought out wild-caught grilled ducks, two for the eight of us to share. The breasts were sliced and we were to eat them wrapped in leaves.

The meat was very rich and tender, nothing like what you would expect from poultry. 

Alongside the duck were these little walnut tarts with walnut oil.

They took the duck away after we ate the breast, carved it up, and brought it back for us to finish off. That's the head at bottom left. A couple people (NOT ME but maybe Ben) ate the tongue (report: chewy) and the brain.

Then they brought us a selection of extremely pungent pickled items from their stores - some cherries, which were actually the least tart of the bunch, and three different flowers & herbs. All of these were great.

And finally, dessert! This is a kind of ice cream, with balsamic reduction, but the texture was like a delicate cake that melted in your mouth instantly. 

And finally we have a bowl of chocolates. One was semi-normal, filled with some kind of liqueur, one was a thinly sliced mushroom coated in chocolate - a very nice chewy texture - and finally we have flash-fried reindeer moss, sprayed with chocolate. Noma is famous for making people eat reindeer moss, so we were excited to see it show up here. And it was good! 

We also got eggnog to accompany the chocolate. Fortunately it had vodka in it, so I got Benjamin's portion in addition to my own.

All of this took about three and a half hours, but it went quick! After dinner they took us all on a tour of the kitchen and the rest of the restaurant. Upstairs they have a little herb garden. At the end of next year Noma is closing because the chef wants to open a new location with a full-fledged adjacent farm, which makes sense given his commitment to in-season Nordic food. In the mean time, though, these are the only plants they grow themselves.

There is also a big testing kitchen upstairs where they try different things out and also cook for each other. Noma employs chefs and interns from all over the world and every week they have a different couple of people cook for their staff dinners from their home country's cuisine. That week they had been eating Indian food every night!

We also got to see the grill area - when they tell you things are grilled, they mean for real, on an outdoor grill. I do not envy the guy who has to stand out there all night in Copenhagen's not entirely lovely weather. They also have a pretty large fermenting facility you can smell from a good 30 feet away; they try not to waste food, so if they end up with extra ingredients they pickle or ferment it for later use.

Finally we got a group shot in the main kitchen!

This experience was absolutely the highlight of our trip. It was obviously a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try something really different from what we would usually do, and it was just so FUN! We had a great time talking to all the strangers we were thrown together with, too. Everyone was just so happy to be there! It's hard not to have a good time when everyone around you is aware you're doing something really special.