She’s just making shit up. I know people who have eaten there this week and it’s been full
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How did they like the food?
Yeah just recently seeing her posts via these protests, not sure how credible it is. not seeing much on social media from actual diners
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Folks realize it’s not exactly a flex anymore.
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Yeah a couple of diners seem to have unposted their stories
Noma should explain who is “stepping up” given that Redzepi is “stepping down.” They should change their website to remove Redzepi and talk about a new era.
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I’ve seen a fair amount of people post.
But I also know a lot more wealthy mainlanders 
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A stint at Noma is the highlight of any cook’s résumé, the culinary equivalent to singing at the Met or dancing with the Bolshoi or interning at The Paris Review . It’s easy to understand why thousands of people clamored to work there, and why, once a lucky few made it in, they might have found it difficult to complain, or to criticize, or to leave. The institution weaponized its own status. To reject the significance of Noma as an institution now is, in a way, to unfairly shift a portion of blame onto the very people who were hurt—people who were there only because they, too, believed in its value. They weren’t wrong to want to be in that kitchen; what was wrong was the way their adulation and ambition were rewarded with terror and abuse.
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That’s a nice series of posts from Eric Huang. A weakness I see in the press coverage of Redzepi is that the focus is so much on him it could leave some with the impression that it was an anomaly rather than part of a long tradition (which often gets mentioned, but it doesn’t feel like the solid context it is). Are there any reports of abuse at the places he worked before, including Pierre André, El Bulli, or Kong Hans Kælder? I’ve heard about screaming tantrums at Thomas Keller restaurants, but not physical violence. The tradition continued at least with Noma alum Blaine Wetzel.
There’s also been no coverage I’ve seen of other abusers at Noma. It seems unlikely that sous-chefs and others higher up in the brigade didn’t follow the boss’s lead.
It’s enough to make you wonder if it’s possible to execute a restaurant at an exceptionally high level without someone — or many someones — suffering behind the scenes.
Early to Rise chef and owner Andrew McCormack, who worked at Jean-Georges and The Modern in New York, as well as three-Michelin-starred Quince, doesn’t believe it can be done. “Work at that level requires the perfect, consistent execution of a unified vision,” he said. “The pressure you have to put on yourself is extreme.” …
Still, McCormack says there’s something to be gained for chefs if they can endure, an attitude echoed by several of the Noma workers Moskin interviewed. “Experiences like that get you to ascend to another level of the craft, even if the job isn’t sustainable in the long term,” McCormack said. “I can’t imagine thinking about food the way I do without working where I did. I feel like I got something that can’t be bought, only earned, and I’ll have it the rest of my life. That counts for a lot.”
I”m not sure if he meant to imply that the kitchens at Jean-George, the Modern, or Quince were similar to Noma’s in terms of abuse. Not great journalism.
To reject the significance of Noma as an institution now is, in a way, to unfairly shift a portion of blame onto the very people who were hurt—people who were there only because they, too, believed in its value. They weren’t wrong to want to be in that kitchen; what was wrong was the way their adulation and ambition were rewarded with terror and abuse.
Were they still not wrong to be in that kitchen after the time they gathered in a huddle to watch a beat-down, or kept on cooking usual while a co-worker was bleeding on the floor?
Lots of us work in stressful jobs that can have killer hours. That doesn’t mean people are physically assaulting each other or berating each other. We support each other. The hardest times are the best times for team bonding. It’s hard for me to believe that anything I’ve read about Noma is normal in the restaurant industry, but I’m certain that it’s not required to make good food. Long hours and high stress, sure. Physical and mental abuse, no way.
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There it is.
Reading about all the experiences adults lived through with Redzepi, the thought kept running through my head that this person has children, and behavior like that does not turn off when they walk through the door of their own home. Sad.
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Report from an actual diner with photos including menu.
And another:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DVxFwjFjUl0/?q=Noma+La+Review&img_index=1
Finally some actual information about the meal and now I don’t want to go. (I was never going to go)
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During my [2019] visit, several of the courses were built around a variety of cultivated molds; nearly none of them was delicious (mold, for the most part, tastes like nothing), but I left the meal feeling enlivened by the sheer scope of Noma’s creativity, and somewhat intellectually stunned.
People love to scoff at this sort of high-concept culinary stuff. What’s served at Noma is “food” in the way that couture is clothing–a basic human need spun so far beyond the minimums of physical exigency that it’s almost nonsensical to hold it to similar standards. Did lunch at Noma taste good? Is a shredded, inside-out, three-sleeved garment by Rei Kawakubo a “shirt”? The questions are, to a point, irrelevant; you’re either disposed to accept the potential artistic merits of this type of formal play, or you’re baffled by, and maybe a little contemptuous of, those monied suckers who willingly shell out for it.
Rosner’s sort of right that it’s wrong to judge that kind of “food” by normal standards, but then it’s also wrong to judge that sort of “restaurant” as anything other than the performance art it really is.
I think Noma’s more recent projects have been more focused on delicious food?
no, it’s not performance art.
? can you give examples of their evolution of focus towards delicious food?
i think they’ve been pretty clear about experimenting with “what is (Nordic) food in the high-end context?” from the beginning, starting with a base of Nordic ingredients (and at times shunning ubiquitous ingredients like olive oil).
throughout, they’ve had experiments with Nordic techniques (like a fermentation base) and kindred applications, hence the turn to different “miso”-like ferments and incorporating approaches and ingredients from their pop-up locations.
personally speaking, my meal in 2019 was much more delicious than that of 2023. i’d say both meals had roughly equal amounts of experimentation.
and Rei Kawakubo never did couture. yes, she was avant-garde, but she never did haute couture.
the issues with Noma need to get bifurcated. there’s at least two main issues but they don’t necessarily go in tandem or work together. one is the physical abuse, which is clearly wrong and totally unjustifiable.
the other is the “unpaid labor” claim relating to stagiers, which is a separate issue. not saying staging is a good system or the best way to do things, but to the extent that this new movement is characterizing staging as Noma making millions off of “unpaid labor,” that tone can be a distraction to the first and more important issue. because people willingly stage and there are several examples of people benefitting from staging at big name restaurants. not saying net benefit or it was worth it at the end, and not denying that probably many stages may have been disappointing, unfair, or exploitative, but the staging system is not unique to Noma nor is it inherently net negative for every stagier. the name on the resume counts for something big (but again, may not have been worth a terrible experience or bad conditions). in this case, i also partially blame the media for not really differentiating between levels of experience - one can “work at ___” having staged for 2 weeks or been a sous chef for 5+ years and the articles come off the same.
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In Mexico and LA it seems like they went to a lot of trouble to find great regional ingredients, farmers, and artisans.
right but how is that about their “recent projects” being more focused on “delicious food” as you said?
they did the same - going through “a lot of trouble to find great regional ingredients, farmers, and artisans” for their 2015 Tokyo pop up as well…
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