It was too good an invitation to turn down. My friend James had managed to get a reservation at Noma, recently named best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine. True, it’s in Copenhagen, but James offered to use his air miles to get me a ticket if I paid for lunch. ‘You’re on,’ I said.
On the face of it, there’s something a little odd about this gastronomic landmark being in Denmark. I don’t mean that the Danes aren’t famous for their food. It’s more that you wouldn’t expect to find such a potent symbol of plutocratic excess in the world’s most socially democratic country. Of the world’s richest economies, Denmark currently enjoys the highest rate of intergenerational social mobility, possibly because it also has the lowest level of income inequality. In order to climb from the bottom to the top of the socio-economic ladder in Denmark you don’t have to travel very far.
The chef patron of Noma, René Redzepi, is a perfect illustration of Danish social democracy in action. The son of an Albanian/Macedonian cab-driver, he has reached the top of his profession at the grand old age of 32.
In fact, Copenhagen is the perfect location for the world’s best restaurant. In the past 25 years, food has become completely radicalised. Left-wing intellectuals, having colonised the high tables of most western universities, have now moved on to the kitchen. Every stage of food production and consumption, from seed to plate, has become a site of political struggle. The restaurants that win all the glittering prizes are no longer temples of haute cuisine like Le Bernardin in New York or the Waterside Inn at Bray. Rather, they are local, original, authentic.
Noma is a perfect illustration of this trend. Redzepi has done stints in both El Bulli and French Laundry, where he mastered a dazzling range of techniques, including all the bells and whistles of molecular gastronomy. But rather than slavishly reproduce what he’s learnt, he’s given it a social democratic twist.
Noma’s specialty is traditional Danish food — rye crispbreads, crustacea, cured meats — that has been put through a modern blender (sometimes literally). It conforms to the diktats of the politically correct food police, i.e., it’s fresh, seasonal and local, while at the same time being diced, pulverised and pressed to within an inch of its life. I’m tempted to call it ‘craptacular gastronomy’.
Like most left-wing beacons of ‘localism’, Noma is far too expensive for the locals. On the day I visited the majority of its customers were overseas visitors. But the well-heeled foodies streaming through its doors don’t think of themselves as plutocrats indulging in hedonistic excess. On the contrary, they’re progressives. Puritans, even. They care deeply about the environment which is why they’ve flown halfway round the world to sample food that boasts such a low-carbon footprint.
In order to really get to grips with the holistic simplicity of Redzepi’s cooking I went for the 18-course tasting menu. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. Technically, it was only 12 courses, but it was book-ended by three amuse-bouches and three petit fours. It included langoustine in seawater, a hen’s egg served on a hen’s nest, dried scallop and watercress accompanied by ‘bio-dynamic cereals’ and new potatoes done three ways. Like all such meals, it included one truly revolting concoction: in this case, a disc of caramel served in a mould of bone marrow. I could still taste that when I pulled up in the taxi outside my house in London.
I don’t regret my trip to Noma. Restaurants of this kind always provide a fascinating glimpse into the world of the moneyed elite. There’s something exquisitely comic about a group of rich men and women who go to such lengths to advertise their disdain for less enlightened forms of consumption. What should we call this phenomenon? Conspicuous non-consumption? You can see why it appeals to them, too. Instead of being plagued by guilt in virtue of their extreme wealth, they can bathe in the warm glow that comes from being morally superior — though, I have to say, sustaining this illusion over 18 courses would tax even Bill Clinton’s capacity for cognitive dissonance. Come to think of it, that may have been him in the corner with the brassy blonde.
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