The Downfall of a Food Icon

Noma was one of a handful of restaurants to achieve true cult status. You’ve probably never eaten there (I haven’t), but you most likely have experienced its trickle-down effects: Tweezed flower petals and moss on your plate in Sydney? Noma started it. A distinctly Nordic feel to a menu in Berlin? Ditto.

But after two decades of being synonymous with the most creative and revolutionary food in the world, Noma has become a byword for toxic kitchen culture.

A recent story in The Times detailing accusations from former employees that its founding chef, René Redzepi, violently abused his staff for years was so damning that he stepped down last week. Today I’m talking to Tejal Rao, one of our chief restaurant critics, about what Noma did — and didn’t — change about fine dining and restaurant culture.

Stellar food, toxic kitchen

Tejal, have you ever eaten at Noma?

I have. Not at the original Noma in Copenhagen, but I went to two of their pop-ups, in Tokyo and Sydney, Australia, in 2015 and 2016. That was kind of the height of Noma’s celebrity and influence.

What was it like?

It really was like an artistic performance. It wasn’t about eating to feel satiated. It was about beauty and fun and excitement and energy. It was thrilling, and there were also dishes that sort of horrified me.

One featured the subcutaneous fat of crocodiles, which came from a farm that raised them to make Louis Vuitton handbags. They used the crocodile fat to make a film with chicken stock and draped it over pieces of raw shellfish — oysters, mussels, clams. And it was, well, the way it sounds: It was strange and a little bit aggressive and dank and sticky. There were things that were very delicious in that meal, but there were things that were quite challenging as well.

So what made Noma and René Redzepi such a big deal?

He really did revolutionize fine dining.

One of the things Noma became famous for early on was creating a strong sense of time and place in fine dining. Instead of conforming to standard ideas of luxury ingredients — you know, certain fatty cuts of tuna, gold leaf, wagyu or stuff you can’t find locally — Noma turned that on its head. It sourced its ingredients in Iceland and Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

But eating local is not a new idea, right?

It’s not new at all. But taking it to this extreme, particularly in a place like Copenhagen, was new to fine dining.

Noma also challenged ideas about what food should look like and how it’s presented. Redzepi would put bones on the plate, or beaks or shells — elements of nature that sort of forced you to examine and think about what you were eating in a way that’s a little uncomfortable.

And anyone who went to restaurants in the 2000s in New York or anywhere else would see this. Regardless of where the chef was from or where you were, you would start to see things like tweezed flower petals on the plate, foraged ingredients and fermentations. Sometimes it didn’t make any sense — like, why are we eating sea buckthorn in New York City? But that’s a measure of Noma’s cultural reach. Its ethos and philosophy influenced cooks and foodies all over the world.

Redzepi had to step down after our colleague Julia Moskin wrote a story based on interviews with dozens of former employees about his abusive behavior. How normal was Redzepi’s behavior in the restaurant industry?

What he did was so horrific that I want to believe it’s not normal. The violence, punching kitchen staff. The image I can’t get out of my head is of him crouching behind the chefs, where diners looking into the kitchen can’t see him, and stabbing them with a barbecue fork.

It was happening right in front of us, and there’s definitely a broader problem. I keep hearing stories from chefs, and from people who stopped working in kitchens too. I used to work in kitchens where it was just expected that someone would get very angry with you if you made even a small mistake.

What is it about restaurant work culture that makes them this way?

I don’t know, but it’s been passed down for a long time, particularly in kitchens that operate under the brigade system, which is essentially military. If you talk to chefs who worked in great kitchens in Lyon and Paris they’ll tell you, “Well, this is the way it’s always been.”

And I worry that it’s not just normalized; it’s kind of glamorized. That’s really one of the great tragedies of Noma: People were going there to learn from the best of the best. There are so many cooks who moved through that kitchen and went on to open their own places. And, inadvertently, they were being taught, this is what it takes.

You argued in your column that Noma could have remade restaurant culture along with remaking food, but it didn’t. Explain that.

Noma was operating on this cutting edge of creativity and pouring all of these resources into research and the cooking itself, what the diner experienced on the plate. And those things were extraordinary. And it’s so sad to look back now and think if only some of that creative juice had gone toward thinking about the people who work there and reimagining what kitchens can be like, reimagining that culture. Paying people fairly, treating people well. If Noma had exported that culture from its own kitchen — it’s an alternate timeline. And a much better one.

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BEFORE YOU GO …

I’ve written before about the advantages of living in a relatively small city like Cardiff. One is the sense of community. Another is the short distances.

People sometimes think there’s less culture than in bigger cities, but I’ve never seen more gigs, plays, movies and poetry recitals than I have since I moved here. That’s in large part because getting everywhere is so easy. Last year Stevie Wonder played in the park next to my house. This year, it will host The Cure.

I say this because this past week I went to two concerts, two movies and a warehouse party (!). I could do this because they were so close to one another: The party was a spontaneous stop on my walk home from one of the concerts.

My highlights from my very cultural week:

Lily Allen, performing her tell-all album “West End Girl” from start to finish in a small theater. You can watch a version of it here.

The Herbaliser Band, playing brassy techno jazz from the 1990s. Here’s a taste.

And Roni Size, who did a blissful drum-and-bass set at Tramshed. Put this on if you also fancy a dance.

Have a great weekend! — Katrin