Denmark Noma’S Celebrated Chef, René Redzepi May Get All the Buzz, But

Blackbook Dispatch Something Is Cooking in the State of Denmark 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 Copenhagen, 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; 000 departures.com Blackbook DISPATCH 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 restaurant 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 restaurants 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: 000 departures.com Blackbook DISPATCH 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.

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