Noma has topped the World’s 50 Best restaurant list five times in its 21-year history. And in January last year, the iconic Copenhagen eatery’s chef and co-owner Rene Redzepi announced he’d be winding it down at the end of 2024.
Redzepi now says he’ll postpone the closure until the third quarter of 2025, the South China Morning Post reports. He also announced that he and his team will be based in Kyoto, Japan, this October, November and December – running their highly-regarded Noma pop-up (which also took place last year).
The restaurant’s chief operating officer, Lena Hennessy, also confirmed that other Noma residencies were in the works. “It’s not a hard and fast closing of the doors,” she said of the Copenhagen closure. “Serving guests will continue to be a part of who we are. We want to redefine ourselves as an organisation. Not in the format people have become accustomed to. But feeding people, yes.”
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Reservations at Noma’s Kyoto pop-up are set to open on 14 May, via the restaurant’s newsletter, the Post reports. Its menu, with drinks pairings, will cost US$912 per person, with a 10 percent service charge. The 10-week residency will be held at the city’s Ace Hotel.
Redzepi said that as a chef and food lover, he considered Japan “one of the highest altars one can visit.”
Noma is a three-Michelin-star restaurant known for seasonal menus that divide the year in three, not four. They are, namely, vegetable; game and forest; and ocean. Its co-founders are considered pioneers of “new Nordic cuisine,” a culinary movement promoting seasonal, local produce.
