Copenhagen, Jan. 10 (BNA): The famous Danish restaurant Noma, which has won the title of best restaurant in the world several times, said it will close itself to transform itself into a “leading test kitchen” dedicated to “food innovation and the development of new flavours.”
The Copenhagen restaurant said on its website that Chef Rene Redzepi’s Nordic home of gastronomy will close by winter 2024 and reappear as Noma 3.0.
“In 2025, our restaurant is turning into a giant laboratory – a groundbreaking test kitchen dedicated to making food innovations and developing new flavours, a kitchen that will share the fruits of our efforts more widely than ever before,” she said.
Redzepi, a chef and partner at Noma, said they will travel to “look for new ways to share our work” and said there may be a “pop-up of Noma” but did not specify where. After the residency, “we will do a season in Copenhagen.”
“But I don’t want to commit to anything now,” Redzepi told Berlingske, one of Denmark’s largest daily newspapers.
Another major publication, Politiken said the restaurant facility in Copenhagen will be converted to develop products for the Noma Projects line – fermented sauces, cooking classes and an online platform.
“Serving guests will still be part of who we are but being a restaurant will no longer define us. Instead, we will spend a lot of our time exploring new projects and developing many ideas and products.”
Noma had undergone a previous transformation. In 2015, the restaurant announced it would close at the end of 2016 and reopen near its waterfront headquarters with its own vegetable farm in the hippie setting of Christiania in Copenhagen.
Noma, which is a contraction of the Danish words for Nordisk and Mad, meaning north and food, opened in 2003. The restaurant has received two Michelin stars and was voted the number one restaurant in the world three times by British Restaurant magazine in 2010, 2011 and 2012.