Noma is closing its world famous restaurant. Is this the future of fine dining?

As one of the most famous restaurants in the world closes its doors, Canadian chefs who work there wonder if there is a future for fine dining as we know it.

Noma – the Copenhagen restaurant known for its lavish and inventive 20-course meals – has announced that it will become a “pioneer test kitchen” in 2024.

This means that the fine dining establishment – which has three Michelin stars and has been named the best restaurant in the world by several publications – will not be open to the public in the near future.

The founder, chef René Redzepi, says there will be a Noma pop-up at some point, and that he will return home to “do a season in Copenhagen.” But overall, told the New York Timesthe modern fine-dining model that helps to make it “unsustainable.”

David Zilber agrees. Originally from Toronto, he was director of the Noma fermentation laboratory from 2016 to 2020. This is part of a conversation with As it happens host Nil Koksal.

What do you think about the decision to shift focus from opening a restaurant to Noma existing as a food laboratory?

I worked at Noma for over six years and it felt like 18. René was 20, so it must have been like 60. So I understand.

How difficult it is to pull out what people do [pulled] dead?

It is similar to training for Marines.

It feels like the level of not just dedication, but like the physical endurance required to do the job to the standard required to be the best restaurant in the world. Woke up at five in the morning and was at the door at 5:50, left later at 1:30 in the morning after cleaning the kitchen again because something wasn’t clean enough.

It was a demanding six years – but also very rewarding.

Give a snapshot of what the experience will be like [Noma diners].

As a restaurant, it’s like opening a closet door and discovering Narnia on the other side. Beyond any baggage and preconceptions that may come when you arrive at the gates of what is considered the best thing in the world… when you actually walk in the building, you are immediately transported on a roller coaster through biomes and flavors and stories. and the landscape.

It sounds pretentious and it sounds trite, but when you’re actually there and it’s happening, you’re greeted with the most disarming service you’ve ever experienced. It’s like a friend from your college dorm down the hall brought you a plate that took 36 hours to make.

You have to love what you do to work there, and give your guests an experience they’ll never forget. That’s why in the end, when you’ve finished eating 18-, 20-of course and you’ve tasted thousands of different flavors that you never imagined possible and you leave, you feel high.

But by the time the staff left, they had run out.

yes. And there is also an emotional tax to give that much of yourself to a stranger every day, you know, on top of the physical burden and the mental burden of putting a restaurant together. It kind of creates the perfect storm of burnout, I would say.

Is there a dish, though, that you helped create or contributed to that will always stay with you?

One season, René was like, “For next season, I want to print the whole menu.”

We need to know how to grow delicious mushrooms on asparagus. And this is coated with various white and green sauces. It looks like an impressionist painting, almost surreal, with a landscape of fake herbs arranged almost like a diorama. And you’re looking at like, these fat stalks of asparagus covered in snow, and bite into it and you’re like: This tastes like the best cheese I don’t know France ever produced.

I think a lot about the time when we try to push nature to its limits to create this experience and create something that has never existed on Earth before.

Chef Redzepi – or René, as you have said – also told The New York Times that Noma, in its current form, is “unsustainable.” [He said]: “Financially and emotionally as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.” So what do you think about the future of restaurants like Noma?

I think that kind of statement serves as a canary in the coal mine for a certain type of restaurant. I think it’s a sea change. Maybe it’s time for restaurants like this to go to the ends of the Earth to one-up each other. Because I don’t think restaurants that serve food as delicious as Noma or as creative as Noma should be treated the same way. And I thought that even when I was there.

How to open?

Creative and delicious are no match for the 20-course tasting menu. I also don’t think it’s worth $1,000 [US] check one hit.

The style of service born from the French establishment, which then underwent a period of permutation in the 90s and 2000s through the gastronomic movement, you keep beating this horse that should die with the monarchy, and try to destroy it. it and turn it into a bigger and better and more impressive version and entertain yourself without ever stopping to think: Is this the be all and end all of food and cooking?

I think there are many other alternatives. That encourages community involvement and feeds the masses fairly and equitably to the working staff. I think the soup kitchen and the longhouse are good examples.

So, do you think that fine dining is exploitative in nature?

I think it’s a bit of an inverted pyramid. I will say. I think that it is very top-heavy in what portends to send to guests who eat in its walls. And the squeezed bottom is often human labor, materials, [and] refusal to farmers for products that are not good enough. Then, well, what did he do?

I’m just asking you, what do you like to eat when you’re not working?

I just love to cook delicious and delicious food from all over the world. I’m a Torontonian, you know. So Taiwanese one night and Caribbean the next and mac and cheese the night after that.

There is no place like Toronto when it comes to access to different types of food.

Here’s something funny. Growing up and trying to learn to cook in Toronto, I always thought that Toronto was shafted in terms of fine dining on a global scale. Like, there were no Michelin star restaurants in the early 2000s. No restaurant has won a global award. And that’s why I left Canada.

And 10 years later, after jumping ship, I know now we’re seeing a good dining sputter… Toronto has become figured out.

It is a city of food, beyond all multiculturalism, which shines without being excessive and overthought and showy and glittering for the wrong reasons.

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With files from The Associated Press. Interview produced by Chris Trowbridge. Q&A edited for length and clarity.