Three years ago when I ate at Noma I predicted Rene Redzepi could achieve "the sort of super-stardom enjoyed by Ferran Adria, Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal." Yesterday he overtook all three of them when Noma was proclaimed the World's Best Restaurant in The World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards. Here's my account of what makes this extraordinary restaurant so special. (I'll give you an update when I return there in June!)


It’s not often you come across a restaurant which is so strikingly different and original it takes your breath away. Let alone one that is run by a chef who is just 29. But that’s exactly what happened to me a few days ago.


Noma is not new - it opened in 2003 -but has been gradually creeping up on the radar as not only Denmark’s best restaurant, not only one of Scandinavia's but, at the risk of hyperbole, one of the world’s best. Certainly one of the best I’ve been to.

Its incredibly talented chef René Redzepi has cooked at The French Laundry, El Bulli and Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier but is one of those rare chefs who doesn’t simply seek to recreate the dishes and techniques he’s learnt back in his own country. His cooking, which like all great chefs, doesn’t rely just on flavour and visual appeal but on temperature and texture is evolving so fast that his food already looks different from the pictures in his newly published cookbook Noma. He’s (mercifully) done foams and moved on.

He pays respect to molecular gastronomy but his food isn’t remotely gimmicky. He eschews expensive international ingredients in favour of the unique and indigenous ingredients, traditions and techniques of his part of the world. Despite his use of unusual and quite challenging ingredients it’s not remotely taxing to eat in his restaurant. It is a meal not a performance. The surroundings overlooking the deep blue water of the Inderhavnen are beautiful, the building clean and spare. As you can tell, I really loved it.


For those who are not lovers of blow-by-blow meal descriptions, I apologise but the food was so extraordinary that this is an experience I would love you to share. Even though the food and wine pairings didn’t always reach the same heights as the food.

• First there was a basked of the most unusual crisps and dips you can imagine - intensely savoury chicken skins (particularly delicious), puffed cod skins, handcut potato crisps dusted with ground icelandic seaweed, little beignets of dried, salted smoked bakskuld (dabs) with confied duck tongues, crisp knækbrød (flatbread) served with cep mayonnaise and the most sensational ‘oyster and parsley emulsion’ that tasted of sea-flavoured cream They were paired with the 2005 J2 Riesling from Becker Landgraf, a fresh crisp young riesling from Rheinhessen. They would also have been fantastic with champagne.
  

• The same wine was paired with the next course, pale, delicate Greenland shrimps served with cucumber juice, crisp flakes of potato skin and horseradish ‘snow’. No flavour was strong - just a faint hotness from the horseradish but all the sensation was in the temperature and contrasting textures, the horseradish snow almost acting like a palate-cleansing sorbet

• Spelt bread rolls arrived, still warm from the oven, tucked in a brown felt bag. They were served with two spreads - creamy white pork fat seasoned with parsley and pumpkin seed oil and butter mixed with ‘skyr’ an Icelandic dairy product similar to fromage blanc that tasted like a very delicate cream cheese.

• Next there was smoked eel served with a fresh apple vinegar jelly and a creamy, green-flecked soup with dill oil, an extraordinary dish that was subtly smoky and herbal with a touch of sweetness from the apple. This was paired not very convincingly with a Provençal rosé, the Domaines Terres Blanches 2005, Les Baux de Provence but was better with the riesling

• A beautiful crab dish followed - Norwegian king crab just-poached in butter with leeks rolled in ashes of hay, toasted buttered breadcrumbs and a creamy sauce made with mussel stock, birch wine and cream and lemon juice. The sauce gave a classic element to the dish though it was lighter than similar French sauces would have been. The crab and the leek were a textbook combination. But what made the dish quite remarkable again was the textures - the crab only just cooked, the leeks still quite crunchy but tender and sweet and the crumbs crispy and buttery. It was a dish with which you’d have tended to reach for a Chablis or Puligny Montrachet but which was daringly served with a 2004 Steinbach Silvaner from the Franken region of Germany, a deep-coloured greenish gold wine with an exotic passionfruit nose. It worked - just.

• As Noma has a three page beer list we had asked to try a beer somewhere along the line so were served a 4.2% Nilso Oscar Farm Ale from a small brewery outside Stockholm. It was very much in the English mould and though served cool was slightly too malty and bitter for the superb dish of cod with mead and wild mushrooms which followed, a umami rich dish with lovely herbal (dill, parsley, chive and tarragon) notes and a little touch of crunch from what tasted like pork crackling but apparently was simply rye bread croutons. Again the cod was perfectly cooked - there is some incredibly precise temperature control in this kitchen

• A rough hunter’s knife with a bone handle and leather sheath was put in front of us with the next course, a dish of lamb and turnips. Only of course it wasn’t just that. The lamb, which had a soft, buttery texture despite being served very rare, had a remarkable depth of almost muttony flavour, the gravy was made from smoked marrow and the turnips were served like a triple decker sandwich, fine, barely cooked slices alternating with thick, buttery well cooked ones. And it had an egg yolk with it, the only touch during the whole meal we felt was misplaced. The recommended wine match with the dish - an unfiltered Les Baud Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2003 was quite perfect, however, handling the gamey, slightly smokey notes in the dish and also contributing a wild berry sweetness. And the beer that didn’t do justice to the cod was terrific too.

• Next a remarkable dessert - a mousse of sheep’s milk yoghurt, served with a crisp wafer of nougatine and a sweet-sour granita of garden sorrel. Forest green against the white of the mousse, clean, grassy and slightly aniseedy, I’ve never had a better palate cleanser. It was served with an incredibly pretty 2004 Emrich Schonleber Auslese Riesling from the Nahe, very intense for its 8.5%

• Finally - and believe it or not, we didn’t feel overwhelmed by this amount of food - a show-stopping finale described as ‘caramel in textures, malt in textures’. Redzepi had been telling me how he wouldn’t use ingredients out of season but few chefs would have had the ingenuity to get so many different flavours and textures out of just milk and sugar - a caramel mousse, an ice cream, ‘malt chips” which tasted like a shattered creme brulée topping, more skyr (see above) and what the waiter explained was ‘malt soil’ - dark, sugary crumbs that turned out to be made from malted flour and white flour, ground hazelnuts, beer and butter. It was creamy, caramelly, sour, sweet and salty and it tasted sensationally good with the sweet, slightly woody, tawny port-like 1998 Château la Casenove Rivesaltes Ambre from Roussillon in the south of France, which added its own deep layer of caramel flavour.

An interesting postscript: During our visit we learnt a Time magazine reporter had apparently just spent five days with Redzepi and his suppliers (to his slight bemusement). Food and Wine magazine had also recently visited twice. The coverage could propel Redzepi towards the sort of super-stardom enjoyed by Ferran Adria, Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal. Book now while you can still get in . . .

Noma’s website is at www.noma.dk Reservations can be taken on (+45) 3296 3297 or booking@noma.dk