The best meal of my life
Last week I had my mind (and tastebuds) blown at noma, René Redzepi’s famed restaurant in Copenhagen.
My aunt tomiko decided that for her 80th birthday she wanted to eat at the best restaurant in the world. Months in advance, she booked 8 seats at noma for her nearest and dearest. Excited, my husband and I watched David Chang’s “Mind of a Chef” episode on noma to see what we were in for. It’s one thing to see the dishes and Redzepi’s inspiration behind them. It was a whole other to experience noma for myself.
When we first arrived at noma (6:30pm) we were greeted outside and led into the restaurant, only to see the entire kitchen staff, headed by Redzepi, waiting for us at the door. tomiko was ecstatic. She’d read Rene’s journals and was thrilled to meet him in person. It was a warm, personal welcome that made us feel like rockstars. René chatted with tomiko about her upbringing on a farm and her Japanese background as the rest of us made our way to the table.
The restaurant is housed in an ancient brick warehouse at the edge of a picturesque canal. Big wooden beams span the ceiling and dried herbs and flowers hang from the rafters. Faceted metal forms deck the dark grey walls and the whole place has a modern, organic atmosphere. Most importantly, noma feels good. Warm and unpretentious in true Danish style.
Dinner is served
Redzepi’s food centers around foraged ingredients from the nearby forests and coast. He has 5 staff members out all day, every day, gathering the ingredients used in each dish. That’s a serious commitment to local foods. The ingredients clearly reflect the Nordic landscape and bring an incredibly strong sense of place to the meal. Lots of fish and seaweed and wild greens. Yum!
The meal itself was a revelation. 20 courses of pure, joyous food. 12 appetizers, 6 main courses, 2 deserts, followed by tea, coffee and several sweets. We had juice pairings throughout the meal, also divine. You don’t get to see the menu at the beginning of the meal, so the courses arrive as a complete surprise. This added to the thrill of the evening, as each course unfolded with a new delightful experience.
Course 1: Pickled red current and gooseberry
The palate cleanser. The berries were tart and cold (almost frozen, but not quite) with just a hint of salty and sweet. At the bottom of the dish was a small pool of verbena oil that added an herby, lemony layer to the berries. Refreshing!
Course 2: Nordic coconuts
Hollowed kohlrabi filled with a kohlrabi “juice” (more like a cold soup). Each person picks up their own kohlrabi and sips the juice through a Spanish chervil straw. The soup was pleasant and simple, made infinitely more enjoyable by the creative presentation. I’d seen this dish in photos of noma and was glad we got to experience it. A totally fun way to start the meal.
Juice 1: Apple and lemon verbena
tomiko is famous for her apple juice, which she makes every year from local Calgary apples that she picks herself (there is tree climbing involved — this lady is a firecracker). We’re unsure of the apple’s variety, but she’s been picking apples from the same set of trees for years. The apple juice comes out pink, and she juices it with ginger and lemon. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever tasted.
noma’s apple and lemon verbena juice was on par. Sweet, clear, and fresh with a lemony tang from the verbena, this juice wowed us all. It was served for the rest of the appetizer courses. Let’s just say I had my glass refilled more than once.
Course 3: Moss and crème fraîche
The first bite didn’t taste like much, but as you chewed, the moss developed a subtle, nutty flavor. The moss was either dehydrated or fried and crunchy, really nice dipped in the homemade crème fraîche. I absolutely loved the presentation. So whimsical and fun. It was like eating a little piece of wilderness.
Course 4: Flower tart
A thin, rustic tart shell made with kelp paste, topped with a watercress cilantro puree, and edible flowers. Fresh, bright flavors with a hint of the sea. Very very pretty.
Course 5: Peas and radishes with chamomile
An incredibly simple dish that showed off Danish peas in all their garden-fresh glory. I enjoyed this one but found it missing a little something (salt maybe?).
Course 6: Pickled and smoked quail egg
I loved this course. The server placed a large, speckled egg-shaped dish on our table. As she opened it, smoky steam from the hay wafted out and engulfed the eggs. Quail eggs are tiny and these were eaten in one fabulous bite. The combination of tart, smoky, and rich creamy flavors was divine.
Course 7: Flatbread and wild roses
This was another of my favorites. A rustic Nordic flatbread made with malt flour and beer, grilled on a barbecue right outside the kitchen. Topped with a browned butter emulsion and wild roses picked from a nearby beach. The scent of roses was powerful and the floral notes perfectly balanced the rich butter and malty, smoky flatbread.
Course 8: Charred cucumber with ants and scallop fudge
Another wow dish. Totally weird, insanely good. You see those black specks? Ants. It turns out that ants (at least the ones used at noma) are sour. They use them as a tart garnish in their dishes. The scallop fudge was some sort of frozen scallop paste, almost the consistency of ice cream, sitting in a pool of olive oil. The combination of fresh (but slightly smoky) crispy cucumber, tart ants, and rich scallop fudge was incredible.
Course 9: Crispy white cabbage and samphire
Samphire is an edible plant that looks a little like baby asparagus and grows along the coastline in Europe. I’d never heard of samphire before this dish. The samphire was mixed with a paste of greens and sandwiched between two leaves of dried crispy white cabbage leaves. The cabbage had a hint of bitterness that complemented the fresh salty greens well.
Course 10: Caramelized milk crisps with monkfish liver
Kinda fishy, really good. Not everyone’s favorite but I really liked this one. The sweetness of the milk crisp grounded the fishiness of the razor-thin slices of monkfish liver. The crisp was small enough to eat in one or two bites, and tasted surprisingly like ikura (salmon roe). The flavors were very clean — it was like eating a piece of the sea.
The milk crisps are really cool — the chefs at noma reduce milk in a pan until it caramelizes and becomes dark and sweet and almost pancake-like. They scrape it off the pan and then dry it. So each crisp is 100% milk.
Course 11: Æbleskive with lovage and parsley
Spectacular. So frikin good. This was the most traditional Danish dish we were served, which typically comes stuffed with apples. In this case, the rich bready donuts were stuffed with a green center of wilted lovage and parsley, glazed with fermented grasshoppers (insect #2 of the night after the sour ants) and topped with dill flowers.
The outside was just a bit crispy, and the whole thing had a buttery, immensely satisfying flavor. Little pockets of yumminess — a definite crowd favorite.
Course 12: Burnt onion and walnut oil
Pictures don’t do this one justice. Onions on a campfire, a taste of nostalgia. The chefs char the onion, take the inside out and season it with ramps, capers, pickled thyme flowers and a little bit of walnut oil, then stuff it back into the skin. There’s a slit at the top and you’re supposed to eat the insides with a spoon. Once I got the first bite the rest went into my mouth with my hands. I licked this one clean.
Juice 2: Cucumber and yoghurt whey
This new juice marked a transition to the main courses. Fresh, savory, and very cucumber-y. I couldn’t taste the whey, which the server said was added to give the juice a richer body.
Sourdough bread and crème fraîche butter
With the main courses also came bread, and oh, what a fabulous bread it was! Made with sourdough starter and a wheat flour from the Swedish island of Öland, it was served with butter made by a former IT consultant turned Swedish “butter viking”. The butter is the only item on the menu not made in-house at noma. We ate lots of it.
Course 13: Shrimp and goosefoot with radish and yeast broth
I found this dish challenging. Goosefoot, a beach herb, was wrapped around Atlantic shrimps served raw, with a broth made of rhubarb and yeast. The shrimp lilly pads were lovely, but the tangy yeast broth wasn’t my taste.
Course 14: Sour blackberries with turbot roe and seaweed
I grew up in Vancouver, BC where blackberry bushes grow in abundance on the shoreline. The blackberries combined with salted turbot roe and seaweed broth tasted like summers in British Columbia to me. Tart and salty with a taste of the sea.
The broth was made from an Icelandic red seaweed called dulse that they dry and age for one year. I don’t love dulse so the broth wasn’t a favorite.
Juice 3: Apple and pine buds
Similar to the first juice in its clarity and fabulousness, this juice had a flavor unlike anything I’d ever had before. It tasted a little like christmas and forest and wilderness. Really special.
Course 15: Beef tartar with ants
You guys — ants and raw beef! I’m not a huge fan of raw beef, having tried it for the first time in a Danish smørrebrød a few days before, but the ants were super cool.
The ribeye tartar was seasoned with an oil made from seaweed and a celeriac vinegar. The ants were intensely sour and brought a nice tang to the meat. Even though this wasn’t my favorite, I still enjoyed it and the flavors were much less weird than you’d expect considering the ingredients. The strongest flavors were celery from the oil and the tartness of the ants.
Course 16: Salad root
My favorite dish. Grilled lettuce root with wild greens, walnuts, and a lemon verbena sauce. Deceptively simple and so very good. The greens were hearty — none of that thin wispy lettuce business. The root was served warm, as was the sauce. The components came together beautifully.
Juice 4: Celery and seaweed
Our server described this juice as the most challenging in the evening’s juice lineup. It was certainly strong — an aggressive celery flavor, naturally salty, with only a hint of seaweed.
Course 17: Cured egg yolk, potato, and nasturtium
I liked this dish but it wasn’t everyone’s favorite. The potatoes were a little al dente for my taste, but the flavor combo was dynamite. The sauce, made from nasturtium leaves — a spicy, biting green — and beeswax, which added a rich almond-y flavor, paired wonderfully with the firm, silky egg yolk and slightly crunchy potatoes.
Course 18: Turbot and horseradish cream with wood sorrel
Turbot, a firm, meaty fish, was lovely with the rich horseradish cream. The wood sorrel, a naturally tart green, brought a much needed brightness to the fish. I could have done with twice the amount of horseradish cream. I was also so full at this point that this was the one course I couldn’t finish.
Course 19: Rhubarb rose with crème fraîche and sorrel
There’s always room for desert though! This dish gets 5 stars for the gorgeous, inspired presentation. I wasn’t crazy about the flavors at first — the crème fraîche clashed with the tartness of the rhubarb and sorrel and the whole thing felt disjointed. Once I mixed everything up, the dish came together beautifully — the cream brightened up and the acid mellowed, making for a lovely melding of flavors.
Interesting fact: apparently it takes the chefs 5 minutes to assemble each rose.
Juice 5: Lingonberry
Mellow, slightly tart and fruity, it balanced the sweetness of the next desert perfectly.
Course 20: Raspberries with double cream and rye
Fantastic end to the meal. The dish was superb. Every single one of us licked our bowl completely clean. Apparently, Danes regularly eat a porridge made from stale rye bread and leftover beer. Our server said it was a frequent breakfast of his growing up. For this course, the porridge was blended with double cream. This made for a mind-blowing malty and sweet cream sauce with hints of caramel. The pairing with fresh sweet raspberries and edible flowers was divine.
Post-dinner drinks & sweets
Once we finished with the 20 courses our server walked us to noma’s lounge at the other end of the restaurant for coffee, tea, and sweets. This part of the meal was a total surprise. We had no idea that the experience would continue and that the food would keep coming.
Sweet 1: Caramel crisps with yogurt
As we settled into the lounge, our server brought out the first surprise. Each person got a little crisp of rye bread to dip into yogurt. I fully expected the bread to be savory and the yogurt sweet, but the crisp was cold and sweet and caramel-y and the yogurt was totally tart. The crisps were unlike anything I’d ever tasted. They looked like crisps, but actually melted a little in the mouth. I have no idea how they were made but they were incredible. I wasn’t expecting more food so forgot to snap a photo of this one.
Sweet 2: Butter pastry with malted barley and seaweed
So decadent and so good! Flaky, chewy, buttery perfection. Instead of being topped with chocolate, the cream was mildly sweet and made of malted barley and seaweed.
Sweet 3: Pork rind with chocolate and berries
The final decadent surprise, served in a cookie tin. Large chunks of airy, crispy chicharrónes topped with milk chocolate and dehydrated berries.
Kitchen tour
The grand finale to an incredible night. Our fearless server Anders led a tour through noma’s kitchen and showed us where all the goodness originates.
At 11:30pm, 5 full hours after we first arrived, we stumbled full, giddy and satisfied into a cab back to our airbnb. I’ve never had a meal like this before, and I may never have one like it again. But wow, am I grateful for the experience. Thank you tomiko. What a special night.
