Noma – The Menu

Continued from Noma – Preface

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Restaurant manager James Spreadbury explains the Noma signature dish

René Redzepi was quoted about his experience working at the previous number one restaurant in the world, elBulli:

“I didn’t come back to Denmark thinking: I’m going to put a gel of a gel of a gel on my monkfish liver while I whip my guests with burning rosemary,” he said. “I just came back with a sense of freedom.”

The restaurant is situated by the water near the town of Christianhavn, in a converted warehouse space by the water. The whitewashed, exposed wooden beams and contrasted by the smooth dark wood floors. The decor is organic yet modern with very distinct Scandinavian designs – smooth wooden chairs with no perfectly straight lines and fluffy sheepskin throws on every other one, smoked oaked tables with no linen and the changing natural light from the floor to ceiling windows, first bright, then dusk, and then swallowed by the warm glow of the votives lightly reflecting off natural surfaces.

We were seated at our table, beautifully located on a window corner, decorated with a vase adorned with green, leafy herbs and branches, and usually large stalks of what looked like a cross between lemongrass and heart of palm across our charger plates. After navigating through a long list of boutique organic and biodynamic Champagne houses did our server explain that the first two ’snacks’ of our evening were in fact the ‘decorations’ on the table. The serving of the ’snacks’ move quite quickly, a different shared plate is presented in front of each diner, making it quite an interactive experience of exchanging your plate with another until everyone on the table has had their share.

While there was a shorter, seven course menu available, we opted for the twelve course ‘Noma Nassaaq’ menu for the full affair.

Bulrush
dipped in goats curd and hazelnut praline
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Malt flatbread and juniper
Dipped in fresh cream
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Moss and Cep
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Cookie with lardo and currant
Presented in an old fashioned cookie tin
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Mussel
Where the bottom shell is edible (made with malt flour and moulded in between 2 mussel shells)
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Rye bread, chicken skin, lumpfish roe and smoked cheese
Served on felt, crisp rye bread on top, dry crisp chicken skin on bottom.
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Seabuckthorn leather and pickled hip rose petals
Seabuckthorn is a type of berry which tastes in between passionfruit and apricot. The ‘leather’ is made similar to a fruit roll-up: pureed and air dried into thin sheets. This was very delightful!
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Pickled and smoked quail eggs
Smoked on apple wood, the smoke puffs out like a magic show as you open the egg shaped box. Instructed to be eaten within 10 seconds of opening.
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Radish, soil and herbs
A classic Noma dish – A terracotta pot plant with green leaves popping out from soil. We are told that everything is edible, by hand. Once we pull a cluster of leaves out, a rosy pink radish is revealed, alongside a brilliant green cream beneath the “soil”. The soil is made from beer, hazelnut and malt flour, the green cream made from sheep’s yoghurt flavoured with tarragon, chives and chervil.
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Toast, herbs, smoked cod roe and vinegar
The crispy toast was sprinkled with salt and vinegar powder, which was a nice contrast to the fresh herbs
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Æbleskiver
A common Danish Christmas dish, but in a savoury variation – warm beignets with baby herring and cucumber filling
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Söl and rye bread
Warm bread served with lard and pork shavings
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Shrimp and sea urchin powder
frozen, finely grated sea urchin, raw sweet baby prawns atop frozen seawater and river pebbles, dressed with dill oil and fresh biodynamic cream. Garnished with wild flowers and regional herbs. One of my favorite dishes of the night.
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Scallops and beech nut, Watercress and grains
The dried scallop slices reminded me of the Chinese dried scallops, but sliced very thinly as a cross section. A very peppery and fresh cut grass sensation of raw watercress puree with lentils
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Tartar and sorrel, Juniper and Tarragon
Another famous Noma dish that used to be made with musk ox instead of Danish beef. It is eaten with the hands as you use the sorrel leaves to pinch some of the tartare, smearing it in the tarragon sauce and then swabbed onto the juniper powder.
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Langosines and seawater
Oyster mayonnaise, parsley and seawater emulsion, and rye crumbs. The Noma signature dish, where the barely cooked, seared to perfection langoustine is served on a warm basalt stone and is eaten by hand. The flesh is like nothing I have tasted in a shellfish before, perfectly sweet and plump, bursting with juices upon biting into the white flesh.
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Oyster and the ocean
Steamed oyster sprinkled with horseradish, capers of elderberries, wild onion seeds, beach cabbage served in a pot filled with sea shells and pebbles. When the lid is lifted we are filled with the aroma of the sea through the hot steam.
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White and green asparagus, Cream and Pine
Green asparagus sauce, pine tips (made with pine vinegar, pine oil and smoked with pine wood)
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Pike perch and cabbage, Stems and ramson
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The hen and the egg
This was a very interactive and fun dish where each person fries their own sunny side up duck egg. A side plate of herb butter, spinach, ramsons, and herbs was placed at our table. A hot skillet placed on hay was served alonside s a duck egg, a half eggshell containing salt, and some potato crisps. Our server squeezed a drop of hay oil onto the hot skillet and we were told to break the egg on top. A timer was set to 2 minutes on the table, and once the time was up, we added the herb butter and the spinach to the skillet. A sorrel sauce was poured over afterwards, and we crushed the potato crisp and sprinkled over the top. I seasoned mine with the salt provided.
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Veal sweetbread and peas, Forest shoots and grilled garlic
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Milk slice, sorrel
A perfect palate cleanser, where the sorrel carried us over gently to begin the desserts with frozen milk slices.
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Carrots and sea buckthorn
Sea buckthorn flavored frozen spongey ice cream, shaved dried carrots, soft herbs
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Brown cheese with beetroot ice, freeze dried black currents
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herbal infusion tea, flødebolle
soft meringue covered in chocolate
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Chocolate covered potato chips with fennel seeds
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Bone marrow caramel
A package was given to us wrapped in brown paper, and revealed 2 hollow bones inside. With your fingers, you have to pop out the caramel on the bottom of the bone, sized like a smaller scallop, is a chewy caramel made with bone marrow. Different, and delightful.
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One of the most striking differences I found at Noma was the relationship between the kitchen and the waitstaff. It does not follow the strict French institutional rules of a restaurant, nor does it have the heated, time constrained kitchen under pressure to please. To my delight, the floor and the kitchen work together harmoniously as one. Each chef knows just as much about the diners on each table as the servers (also largely due to the fact that each table, bar two, can be seen directly from the glass kitchen, which is a luxury that most restaurants do not have), and the chefs who are preparing the food are actually serving it directly in front of their patrons, explaining in detail how things are prepared with first hand knowledge. You can hear the genuine passion in their descriptions and not once do you get a snooty French accent giving you long fancy words while making you feel stupid if you asked for a definition. Once would think that this disruption between the front of house and the back of house would create some sort of chaos, but the semblance of it all was so effortlessly harmonious at Noma.

We didn’t get to meet Rene this time around, he’d just become a father to his second child only two days ago and thus he’s taking some time off. He also spends another bulk of his time researching and creating new menu items on his boat, which is berthed outside the restaurant. During our kitchen tour, Sam Neil has explained that Rene has trained each and every one of his chefs to taste every ingredient prior to cooking, so that Noma’s patrons are sure to be presented with each single ingredient at its very best.. All staff members take turns partaking in foraging trips three times a week, to travel to different parts of the country and collect edible plants of all sorts. Sometimes they would pick herbs on their way to work, or alternatively, a company van is available for any staff member to use on foraging trips. Sam explained the importance of tasting something at the prime of its season, and used the example of the broth he makes with onions that are in season – the taste simply cannot be replicated all the time. When he uses onions that are picked later in the season, the flavor profile changes, and he has to adjust the amount of onions used in the same dish up to triple the amount used previously, just to extract the same depth of flavor. At this moment, they have begun pickling fresh ingredients for the winter months.

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Sam Miller and the indoor herb storage

We are told the story of Roderick Slone, the Scotsman who lives in Norway. He was originally trained as a cook, but now, in the bitterly and harsh cold winters, Roderick hand dives for sea urchins exclusively for Noma in -10°C waters, moving to the rhythm of the waves and placing each urchin inside a linen sack. The below freezing temperatures of the water means he can only dive 30 minutes at a time, one session after another, up to ten hours a day. The sea urchin we get to enjoy arrive from Roderick’s bare hands in the bottom of Nordic sea and onto our plates in under 48 hours, exclusively for Noma.

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After an extensive tour of the various kitchen equipments, tasting different ‘ice creams’ from the paco jets, ingredient storage and just generally trying to enquire about the recipes for each dish, we stumbled upon a group of young stages, preparing for the bi-weekly project presentation. Each young chef is encouraged to design a project that they can present to their peers to express their creativity, their use of ingredients and the flavor of the project they create. Tonight, a hopeful razor clam dish served on celery halves is being prepared for the project.

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Many people have asked, “how does Noma compare to elBulli?”. I have no answer, just as I have no answer to whether a wild valley is more beautiful then a perfectly manicured garden. The meal at Noma was profoundly delivering the heart and soul of true Nordic cuisine; and unless you are there – it is quite impossible to replicate such an experience, with the local ingredients, the setting, and most of all, such a heart warming team of passionate individuals who collectively deliver the Nordic terroir onto our plates. We all return home with very fond memories of this gastronomic experience.

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Chefs at Noma

Can a girl be any happier?

Noma
Strandgade 93
1401 Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel: +45 32 96 32 97

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