Blackbook

Dispatch Something Is Cooking in the State of Noma’s celebrated chef, René Redzepi may get all the buzz, but... By Howie Kahn

everal hundred feet beneath Geneva, Switzerland, a 17-mile loop of a machine called the Large Hadron SCollider smashes together subatomic particles at the speed of light. Protons rev up, crash, explode. Physicists, intent on understanding what constitutes and holds together our world, study the impact—all those marvelous bursts of energy that illuminate and transcend the tube. After a week of eating in , where dining is both intensely high-minded and dogmatically earthy, I found myself thinking a lot about the L.H.C.—all that beautiful matter and controlled force—which may be an abnormal thing to consider while

Clockwise from upper left: The bar at Kodbyens Fiskebaren; Copenhagen’s cafe-lined riverside; in the kitchen at Kodbyens; pork with aronia berries, paisley and butter whey

at Radio; snowcrab rolls at Kodbyens; forager extraordinaire Roland Rittman; lumpfish roe, smoked cheese, pea shoots and three types of bread from Kodbyens KODBYENS RADIO; MIKKEL BO/COURTESY COURTESY FISKEBAREN; KODBYENS THOMAS BUSK/COURTESY RIGHT: FROM TOP CLOCKWISE STOCK SOEBY/GALLERY JÖRGENSEN; MIKKEL BO (2); MARTIN ©PER-ANDERS FISKEBAREN;

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digesting a kilo of wood sorrel leaves, but it’s Do men or women taste better in a churned not at all off the mark. The big wonder in dairy spread? Denmark these days is an eight-year-old called Noma. Based on the scene hrough all the devotional speed that’s emerged all around it, it must be a kind cleaning and the marathon geekery, of particle accelerator too. Twhat’s represented by each member of That the restaurant is “ranked” number the Noma corps—and what’s now been one in the world is hardly what makes actualized at new across Copen- Noma significant. All champions one day hagen like Manfred’s, Relæ, and Radio—is lose their title, and their true importance the idea that any current cook could walk can only be measured once its peak moment out the door and put their knowledge of fully passes. With food, newness often year-old carrots, pickled beach plants and hypnotizes and clouds value judgments. The pine-needle desserts—all those scrappy, issue for the most ambitious restaurants low-lit Nordic things—to use in their own should actually be legacy. And while Noma kitchens. Each member of the team will long be known for its groundbreaking represents the potential for creating new treatment of Nordic cuisine, for chef René matter elsewhere. In this way, Noma is not Redzepi’s Whitmanesque-cooking style only an incubator for culinary talent, it’s a (contradictions, multitudes) and its deep, prime example of how a restaurant, through doctrinal concern with time and place—so its own intense, internal bursts of energy, built into its fabric that the installation artist can ultimately transcend its own walls and Olafur Elliasson wrote the intro to the function as an act of urbanism—a way of restaurant’s cookbook as if it were a transforming life, shifting space. Which is a conceptual art monograph from MoMA, very good thing for anybody visiting not Noma—what’s most impressive about Copenhagen who’s hungry for its new the operation now is how much force its signature tastes. Getting into Noma is exerting on its city. almost impossible. I begged for one of its 50 seats in ways both professionally aggressive ere’s what I mean about the particles: and nauseatingly passive aggressive. Getting Every day around 5 p.m., upstairs in into the other places, however, can still be as Hthe Noma prep kitchen, the restau- easy as walking in the door; and what, with rant’s crew buzzes around scrubbing regard to bourgeois hunger, is more alluring surfaces, washing knives, hosing down the than the freedom of a good walk-in? floor. Purposeful music—“Ramble On,” Manfred’s Sunday dinner crowd is made “More than a Feeling”—blares through up of men who look like different castings speakers. Racks of turquoise-gull eggs and of Ryan Gosling. Their women, in deifying bunches of hay await attention. For a while knitwear, have blonde topknots and skin it’s all bodies zipping through tasks. The resembling milk in the moonlight. Out- restaurant, which opened with just eight side, unlocked bicycles lean up against one people in the kitchen, now employs 15 another, clustered like snuggling campers. cooks and, at any given time, takes on an The restaurant itself, in Nørrebro, on a additional 25 to 30 interns who come to street where drug dealing was recently far Copenhagen from as far away as Bolivia and more common than pouring organic wines Japan to work 17-hour days for free. Then, from magnums, is named after a food there are the extracurriculars, like foraging stand that the principles—Noma alums for elderberries to stack three feet high Christian Puglisi, 29, and Kim Rossen, across the length of a 30-foot table—or 37—put up one year at the Roskilde music staying until 2 a.m. on Saturday nights. festival. It served peas and pea soup. A After service, everyone gathers to present “Manfred,” they then decided, was a man “projects,” new dishes to workshop and with a white moustache selling peas on the discuss. At the end of one recent round, a shoulder of a country road. Where Noma purveyor made a presentation about his compounds two abbreviations—“no” for butter until three, sloughing flakes of skin Nordic and “ma” for mad, the Danish word off both male and female cooks’ arms and From top: Chef Tktkt of Kodbyen; pickled vegetables for food—implying, it seems, a kind of using it as the active enzyme in competing, from Noma; TKTK Kim Rossen of Ral� nosing a TK wine edible jingoism, Manfred’s is named for a

gender-specific butters. The question was: fictional seed peddler whose goods JÖRGENSEN (2) ©PER-ANDERS FISKEBAREN; KODBYENS METTE HELBAEK/COURTESY FROM TOP:

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From left: The lively dinner scene at Kodbyen; NOMA manager James Spendbury before the dinner rush; Kodbyen’s autumn mackeral fresh from the Baltic Sea

ultimately satiate stoned concertgoers. Flecks of bright-green some, some work out. I relate to it.” “Working at Noma required a certain It should be noted here that Ulf, the kind of intensity,” says Anders Hansen, now seaweed sit atop an oyster other guy pouring wine—a tall, bespec- the wine director at Manfred’s. “Here I can LIKE NEWLY tacled Swede with a loose, dark ponytail and do more what I want.” And while there is a big glasses—looks not unlike a healthy kind of outer-borough looseness about the DROPPED CONFETTI. David Foster Wallace and, also, that place—with its leather aprons, mismatched Kierkegaard is buried just up the street. This coffee cups and tiny sunken-seating area— hours, then sliced and served cold—comes being the atmosphere, it’s no wonder the there’s also something elementally Danish garnished with tarragon and crispy rye Gamay makes me think of the periodic table going on. In Copenhagen, so much of crumbs, each containing a loaf’s-worth of and the Beaujolais seems to be about the no- public and private living has to do with flavor. It’s a spectacular city where things as tion of dealing with challenging, fully following all the inspired lines. Just on my mundane as bread crumbs and chairs expressed things. Describing wines like these walk over—from a hotel for which Arne consistently resonate as objects of beauty. with adjectives like “oaky,” “rubbery” or Jacobsen created both the Swan and Egg “shrubby” would be a misunderstanding, chairs—I came across a brilliant pedestrian he whole conceit of minimalism falls like calling a person of exceptional character bridge followed by a park’s eye-catching away with the restaurant’s wine and complexity “nice.” When wine is about yellow pavilion. Each would be prominent Tservice. On top of being a good place risk, it’s not about figurative language that design features in other cities, but here, they to eat tongue and sculptural plants, could only serve to make a thing more easily blend into the master plan. It’s as if innova- Manfred’s is the only natural wine bar in understood. And, actually, it’s a pretty tion is just another form of subtlety and Copenhagen, with over 350 bottles from awesome act of egolessness to just drink a simplicity is held to a higher standard of producers, who, according to Anders, “just glass and think, gratefully and contentedly, both elegance and functionality. use the juice from the grapes.” Essentially, Damn, I just don’t understand any of this at natural wines and the filtered ones with all. As if that’s not good enough, some ome of the dishes are as smart as the added sulfur that we usually drink don’t Leonard Cohen songs come and some furniture and the buildings. They, too, even taste like the same beverage. After a Beatles songs follow, and Anders puts one Smake me consider the integrity of the glass of Romorantin that smelled like more glass of the Beaujolais on the table. line. Kohlrabi comes shaved, the shape of ripeness and Aperol, I asked Anders for a “Life,” he says, in a sing-song voice, “is very double-wide pappardelle. But the cabbage flavor description and he sort of rolled his short.” cultivar’s rigidity allows for the strands to eyes, which was actually a perfect answer to Puglisi and Rossen also own Relæ, right stack up in ribbons—Frank Gehry–style. my lacking question. Instead, he talked across the street. “It’s pronounced relay,” says Chunks of giant Limfjord oyster and its about what the wine meant to him. “You Puglisi, “like the electrical device. It refers to brine dress the cucumber-colored vegetable. taste the risk,” he said. “The risk the maker our time learning at Noma, which was Flecks of bright-green seaweed sit atop, like puts into it when he decides not to use any electric. It means the energy in the restaurant newly dropped confetti. A plate of veal chemicals. It moves me every time I open a has to be electric too.” Puglisi was born in

tongue—salted for a day, cooked for nine bottle. It’s like life in that way: You lose Italy, so electricity metaphors come naturally KODBYENS JÖRGENSEN; MIRA ARKIN/SPISELIV/COURTESY ©PER-ANDERS FISKEBAREN; KODBYENS THOMAS BUSK/COURTESY FROM LEFT: FISKEBAREN

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to him. In Denmark, an electric atmosphere meat is boldly red and cut into shapes pretty much means the lights are on, resembling plump grains of rice. Its effect is functioning well and will continue to shine. mostly textural. The pureed lovage on the But Relæ has a very real buzz about it. bottom is, by far, the more prominent Ulf, who previously poured wine at flavor. Overall, the ingredients are fewer, the Noma and works at Relæ as well as Man- techniques are simpler and the meal is no fred’s, starts me out with a glass of cham- less pleasurable for its editing. Where the pagne. “Bubbles?” he asks. His affect is food at Noma is constantly challenging anything but bubbly. He brings some notions of time and place, a meal at Relæ lettuces and wood sorrel in a celeriac asks only that you’re in the present. wrapper to my seat at the bar. He shows me where to find my silverware: in a crisply he crumbled cauliflower looks like designed drawer that slides out from freshly fallen snow. Burned garlic beneath the countertop. Then, chummy Ttakes on the tone of soil. I thought I’d after the last two days of service, tells me I’m get sick of these presentations after a while. treating my “autumn roll” incorrectly. Meals with endless diorama elements should “You’re missing the point of how to eat it,” become comical after a week, shouldn’t he says, “so you get the salty first and then they? Where’s the taxidermied musk ox? the acidity.” I listen. Take an all-encompass- Where’s Margot Tenenbaum? I should be ing bite. And he’s right. One should follow wondering; instead, I’m wanting more of the other. Simple enough, but there are rules. that snow, more of that dirt. Bread comes next in a stout leather RADIO is Copenhagen’s newest acceler- basket—a small, warm boule thoughtfully ated particle. , who founded broken in half by hand. In Denmark, the Noma and literally wrote the manifesto for whole don’t-fill-up-on-the-bread thing has the New Nordic Kitchen, owns the place. to be set aside. The bread here is simply too Jesper Kirketerp, 32, one of its two chefs— good to eat in moderation. In fact, meals in Rasmus Kliim is the other—started out in Copenhagen must be treated as two meals: Bethlehem, er, at Noma too. Dinner is the food meal and bread meal. You’re to similar to that at Relæ—impressionistically partake in both. No excuses. plated, ingredient-driven, loyally local and creative to a point. I think Radio has better nother important maxim is this: light fixtures, but in Copenhagen that’s like always eat dishes that look like the arguing about which supermodel is prettier. Aforest floor, the bed of the ocean, a That the food is like Relæ’s, and influenced scrubby tract of beachfront, part of a tree or by Noma’s, doesn’t mean it’s unoriginal. anything that resembles a magical plant Calling out similarities isn’t a knock and I’m from Japanese animation. Sometimes, not about to complain that too many places Nordic plating can go a little far, like at here are grilling lettuces, seasoning with Noma, where the meat of one lone mussel is pickled alliums and valuing fresh produce— served amidst a plate of blue-black shells. even the weird kinds—over meat. All that just The effect is that of a vanitas painting, and makes me want to stay. What’s going on in if you happen to be eating alone, as I was, Copenhagen right now is of a specific all its emptiness brings too close to mind the moment, but it’s hardly trend-driven cooking. idea of death. I know Noma is concerned Rather, for the first time, a biodiverse national with big ideas, but drawing so directly on cuisine—it’s replacing the old standard: mortality is perhaps a little much, even for pork-a-thousand-ways—is emerging and local “the best restaurant in the world.” chefs are all eager to start speaking the At Relæ, the touch is lighter, though no language. The restaurants here aren’t exactly less refined. A small dome of aerated sheep’s- interchangeable, but they are of a piece. And milk yogurt conceals jewel-like purple they all have the same origin. On the one radishes. Nasturtium petals, their stems still hand, it’s Redzepi, his Noma army and the intact, fully shingle its surface. All together, kind of energy a kitchen almost never it looks like something urchin-y from the unleashes on a city. On the other, it’s a long movie Spirited Away or, like Olafur Elias- From top: Brill with bread crumbs and spring vegetables overdue creative response to foods that have from Kodbyens; NOMA’s famous dish, the Hen and the son’s idea of a toy. Even simpler is a plate of Egg; selecting wine at Kodbyen always been here and repressed desires like

hand-ground beef, oysters and lovage. The those will usually fall away with a boom. FISKEBAREN KODBYENS MIKKEL BO/COURTESY DITTE FISKEBAREN; ISAGER; KODBYENS MIRA ARKIN/SPISELIV/COURTESY FROM TOP:

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