After two decades, the Danish restaurant Noma, listed five times as “the best in the world”, closes its doors, as announced by chef René Redzepi. The reason? Dining at the highest level entails long working hours and an intense work culture, and this comes at a cost: “It’s unsustainable.”
At the moment, it is still open serving delicacies, such as grilled reindeer heart on a bed of fresh pine or saffron ice cream in a beeswax bowl. A good dinner can cost $500 per person. But, by the end of 2024, that will be over, but not completely.
Redzepi does not plan to leave everything, but to reorient himself towards a gastronomic laboratory dedicated to food innovation and the development of new flavors, and to electronic commercewith occasional face-to-face reopenings in different cities.
Noma, like other elite restaurants, faces the public eye when it comes to treatment of workers, wages, their position on sustainability and even to movements like veganism.
Redzepi does not deny that, in order to produce haute cuisine, employees have extended hours, and that remunerate a hundred cooks and assistants fairly, at prices that go with the market, it is not possible. “We have to completely rethink the industry. It’s too difficult. You have to work differently,” he told The New York Times. Financially and emotionally, it’s not working, she added.
Noma’s transformation will take “between two and four years,” the agency reported. AFPand its doors could be opened “once every two years”.
The Noma, worthy of three Michelin stars, had already closed between 2016 and 2018 to renovate its premises with an urban garden and menus appropriate to the season. (AND)
Source: Eluniverso
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