No, that was a juice pairing. The California sherry was the appropriate straw golden color.
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@MaxShapiro great writing by the way. Been reading so much AI slop lately that it was truly a joy to read to read your article and hear a genuine voice.
Loved the line, âThe overall dish could have come from the Erewhon hot bar.â Ouch.
Is the Phelan Farm Chardonnay from Raj Parr worth seeking out on its own or were you just saying âwell it was better than anything else they served me?â
I thought those were the wine descriptions. Sounds like they were really trying hard to shock and awe with those wines. Raj Parr is really talented.
Yes
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I just finished lunch at NOMA. AMA
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Thank you! Hilariously Kenji Lopez alt called my writing ai slop. Thank you for seeing that this was truly my voice.
I wouldnât seek it out. It was like being the tallest person in a room of little people. Stacked against the other wines it was good, but you can find better and better from raj. Sandhi Sanford and Benedict is better than this.
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Since youâre a wine guy (and I think more into CA wines than Max) Iâd love to hear your thoughts on the pairings.
mixed bag. BXT sparkling is nice. Some real duds also. But they have an ethos and are trying to stick to it.
Fortunately I brought really good burgundy (not in california) so we were fine 
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@MaxShapiro ha, ha, ha. I read AI slop all day long. You sir do not write AI slop. Or at least you didnât use the phrase âdirectionally correctâ which Claude just suggested I use (and while we are reviewing food here, not AI engines, IMHO Claude is the best writer of all the AI engines, yet Claude is telling me to use the phrase âdirectionally correctâ).
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Hard to believe you (or anyone as informed as you) could be actually âsurprisedâ that there are things that arenât great (or even good) at Noma.
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I just meant that usually dish quality is highly correlated with the appearance, and those dishes look amazing.
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What did you think of the food? 
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If you like Somni/Vespertine youâd like Noma. If you donât then you wouldnât. Thereâs a whimsicalness to the food where they are smirking when creating the dishes. Use of ingredients and ways of making food that other people really arenât doing.
The lady next to me had gone to some version of Noma over 15 times. She said CA/Mexico were her two favorites. It seems a lot of people rank Mexico the highest.
We didnât have the same temp issues that Max had. wonder if itâs the function of a larger party v a smaller party. I saw he was in a large group. We were at the shared table, and they dropped 7 at a time so not a lot smaller than Maxâs but smaller.
I didnât care for the overly passion fruity sourness on some of the dishes, like the cactus - it was just too tart for me, felt weird this early on in the coursing for something this tart like a palate cleanser almost.
The soup in lobster tail made little sense to me. Like Max said - whereâs the actual lobster.
My favorite dishes were the aggressively seasoned dishes.
I really enjoyed the crab starter and the accompanying body dish, i thought those two were home run dishes.
I liked the spot prawn (ours was perfectly cooked and temp was good).
I liked the sea urchin custard but had the same exact issue with it that max did, the acorn is really grainy and mushy, added nothing to the dish, so i left most of that aside.
Ragout dish was good, and I enjoyed the interplay of ingredients and ocean flavors.
I LOVED the black pearl rice dish. I could have ate 2-3 of them. But i love black rice cause of the QQ nature of the rice. Flavors were sharp and i love the subtle flavors macadamia adds. Basically two ingredients i adore put together.
King Oyster Mushroom - hard not to love when done well.
There was a dessert at the end in a sunflower that was a show stopper for me, the nutty savory element was quite compelling.
Dishes I thought were fine but werenât needle movers
The seaweed clam dish was fine but didnât do much for me. I do like these type of seaweed textures tho. One guy at the table didnât eat it.
Tuna neck didnât really taste like much, the dough felt like unfinished mochi.
Tuna eye - it was what i expected, nice seasoning but it was a weird interlude dish.
Seasonal Greens - i thought the mole was a bit too salty for me to eat with the veggies. But i really liked the veggies by themselves. But palate-wise, chinese people like pretty plain cooked vegetables. I liked the artichoke portion of it the most. Tortillas were made well with good chew and worked well as a foil to the saltiness of the mole.
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Appreciate an alternate perspective. So was the experience worth the 15 hundo?
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Thanks for the detailed and authoritative review. Itâs remarkable that they could stray so far from the fundamental principle that food should taste good, but I guess thatâs been their thing.
When thereâs so much to say, the pro reviewersâ performative âten years ago RR was the fifth-most-psycho chef in Copenhagen so Iâm not going to review thisâ and the like seem like a lazy cop-out to me.
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The conclusion of the review:
But was it worth $1500?
No.
I donât get excited about an experience that doesnât bring me pleasure.
Iâm not a fan boy. I donât drink the Kool Aid.
There was a version of this meal that could have justified the price.
This wasnât it.
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It is a lazy cop out. Something this controversial and widely known should be reviewed by critics, but we donât have critics anymore. We have fluffers.
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No meal is worth $1500 by itself. But alternatively it would cost me more than $1500 to eat at Noma. This experience doesnât exist in a vacuum so at the same time we can say itâs not worth $1500 but also say canât possibly enjoy this for less than $1500
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Thanks to both you and Max for the detailed impressions.
Maybe a better question would be, would you go back again now that youâve had it (and FOMO/bucket list has been satisfied)? Either here or another city if you happened to already be going? Would you be more inclined to go Somni/Vespertine again at their prices or Noma again for $1500?
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$1500 is for the novelty for Noma.
You pay extra for the novelty of them transporting their whole kitchen and staff over from Copenhagen to functionally run the same restaurant unlike most pop ups.
So would you pay an extra $500 over somni (after tax tip drink pairing at Somni is roughly $1000) to experience Noma once? I think most people in LA with the disposable income would say yes
So once you escape from paying for the uniqueness of not having to travel to Copenhagen do you need to pay the up charge again? .
I think most would say no.
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