As the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and this is proven to be true again. According to Bloomberg, Noma, one of the world’s most highly-rated restaurants in the Danish capital of Copenhagen, is set to close its doors for regular service by next year. The restaurant, which is considered a top destination for food tourism, will close by the end of 2024. Since its inception two decades ago, the Copenhagen restaurant, which is credited with inventing New Nordic Cuisine, has topped the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants five times, most recently in 2021.
However, after years of serving dishes based on foraged ingredients, such as reindeer brain custard with bee pollen and quince and fermented rice ice cream with an oyster caramel, chef René Redzepi’s three-Michelin-star venture will close its restaurant chapter at the end of 2024. It will be reborn as a “giant lab” the following year, dubbed Noma 3.0.
To continue being noma, we must change. Therefore, dear guests, colleagues, and friends, we have some exciting news to share. Head over to https://t.co/8DqGez12f2, to read more about noma 3.0.
— restaurant noma (@nomacph) January 9, 2023
“Winter 2024 will be the last season of Noma as we know it. Noma 3.0 will be a pioneering test kitchen dedicated to the work of food innovation and the development of new flavours”, Rene Redzepi said in a statement.
Noma 3.0 will thrive around the world, including in Copenhagen, according to the statement. The lab and fermentation studio Noma Projects has already begun selling products such as their infamous and already sold-out smoked mushroom garum.
Why the Noma restaurant is shutting down?
Redzepi said, “If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how fragile our dreams can be, how incredibly gruelling and difficult this industry can be”. Hitting at Noma’s change in direction then, he also added that the team had “spent the last year half dreaming of something. We’re going to go build it now”.
Noma 3.0 has been in the planning stage for the past two years, a period during which many in the industry have been hit hard.
As per Bloomberg, even with government assistance, the restaurant will not be profitable in 2021. While selling $700 lunches, the restaurant expected better business results in 2022.
With the onset of Noma in 2003, the Danish capital developed into a food and cuisine destination, engaging New Nordic cooking in the world’s lexicon and making foraging the coolest pastime a chef could put in. Chef Redzepi also runs Popl, a burger bar that began during the pandemic and is now a permanent fixture in Christianshavn.
