Noma

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

Where It All Began

In November 2003, a twenty-five-year-old René Redzepi shook hands with a business partner over an ancient whaling depot in Copenhagen and committed to an idea that seemed, by his own admission, unlikely: a restaurant that would attempt to define the cooking of an entire region through Nordic produce alone. The warehouse on Refshalevej, with its exposed three-hundred-year-old wooden beams and derelict surroundings, felt immediately right. That instinct proved correct on a scale few could have imagined.

What followed was more than two decades of work that, as the White Guide put it, sent tremors not only through Danish gastronomy but far beyond the country's borders — earning Noma the title of World's Best Restaurant five separate times and placing it in the upper reaches of that list for nearly fifteen consecutive years.

The Cooking

The early ambition — cook only with Nordic ingredients — quickly revealed its own limits. A goulash made from local produce was still a goulash. The real breakthroughs came from two directions: foraging, which connected the kitchen physically and philosophically to the seasons, and fermentation, which gave the team the building blocks to create genuinely new flavors. Vinegars, garum, lacto-fermented vegetables, and what Redzepi called "potions of umami" became the quiet architecture beneath the plates.

Over the years, the restaurant reorganized itself around three distinct seasonal identities — ocean in winter, vegetables through spring and summer, and game and forest in autumn — with every element of the dining room, from cutlery to plateware, shifting accordingly. A dedicated fermentation lab and an on-site urban farm reinforced the connection between landscape and table that sits at the heart of New Nordic cooking.

The wine program has always matched this philosophy. For years, the cellar leaned toward organic, biodynamic, and natural wines — chosen to complement the lightness and precision of the food rather than compete with it.

The People and the Next Chapter

Noma has never been a one-person operation. The current team spans a fermentation lab led out of Singapore, a test kitchen with roots across three continents, a head gardener, and front-of-house staff from over a dozen countries. Co-owner Ali Sonko, who joined in December 2003, and co-owner Peter Kreiner have been part of the fabric since nearly the beginning.

The most significant change comes in 2026. After a residency in Los Angeles, the restaurant is returning to Copenhagen under new operational leadership: Mette Brink Søberg as Head of R&D, Pablo Soto Rodriguez Gil as Executive Head Chef, and Annika de Las Heras stepping into the role of CEO. The plan is ambitious — twelve distinct seasonal menus across the year, one for every month, each shaped by whatever ingredients, landscapes, and ideas are most alive in that moment. "Not as a return to what was," the team wrote, "but as the beginning of a new chapter."

What to Expect

A meal at Noma has always been a tasting menu experience, with wine pairing available and a service style where front-of-house and kitchen staff work in close collaboration. The restaurant sits on Refshalevej in the Refshaleøen area of Copenhagen — a former industrial island that has become one of the city's most quietly compelling neighborhoods. The wild garden surrounding the building, which the White Guide described as "almost virile, thrusting toward the sky," sets the tone before you reach the door.

For anyone serious about New Nordic cuisine — its origins, its ongoing evolution, and what it might yet become — there is still no more important address.