In our time of climate crisis and inequality, as top chefs dream less of Michelin stars and more of changing the world, the New Nordic movement is reaching beyond haute cuisine into classrooms, supermarkets and parliaments. By Kieran Morris
Few restaurants have enjoyed as much acclaim and influence, or been as widely caricatured, as the Copenhagen fine-dining institution Noma. In its 16 years of existence, it has been at the top of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list four times. There are three Noma books, two feature-length films and a Noma documentary series. There are Noma dissertations and dozens of “Nomaheads” – dedicated diners who follow the restaurant all over the world, from Yucatan to Tokyo to Sydney and back again. In the early 2010s, there were so many articles about hunting for wild produce with Noma’s charismatic head chef that one writer declared it “The Era of the ‘I Foraged With René Redzepi’ Piece”. There is even a 240-page travelogue, written by an Esquire editor who followed Redzepi across the world for four years.
But all the attention that has been lavished on Noma’s hyperlocal, micro-seasonal food – butterflies moulded from blackcurrant leather; 100-year-old mahogany clams served in their shell – has obscured the much more ambitious aims that the restaurant’s creators, alumni and allies have been trying to achieve. Noma as a traditional haute cuisine restaurant, with its elegant cookbooks and high-concept food, is being overtaken by a grander project. The people behind the restaurant are trying to expand New Nordic, a culinary movement they began in Scandinavia 15 years ago, to the rest of the globe. In doing so, they want to transform every link in the long chain of how food is produced and consumed, from the dirt up to your dinner table.
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