One of the world’s best-rated restaurants is closing its doors in 2024. Noma, a Copenhagen fine dining restaurant, is known for inventing New Nordic Cuisine and serving eccentric dishes like reindeer brain custard and saffron ice cream in a beeswax bowl.
The restaurant has been at the top of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list five times, with the most recent win being in 2021. Foodies from around the world would travel to Copenhagen, some flying first-class, to experience the culinary excellence at Noma. The multicourse tasting menu can run you upwards of $500 per person.
Related: SASAA: One Of The Few Black-Owned Restaurants In Copenhagen, Denmark
Why would a top restaurant close?
Noma’s chef René Redzepi has decided to close the three-Michelin-star establishment as a restaurant at the end of 2024. It will, however, be rebranded as a “giant lab” aka Noma 3.0.
View this post on Instagram
In a statement on the restaurant’s website, it’s revealed that the giant lab will be “a pioneering test kitchen dedicated to the work of food innovation and the development of new flavors, one that will share the fruits of our efforts more widely than ever before.”
The restaurant will have pop-ups where diners can experience its locally foraged dishes.
View this post on Instagram
“Our goal is to create a lasting organization dedicated to groundbreaking work in food, but also to redefine the foundation for a restaurant team, a place where you can learn, you can take risks, and you can grow,” says the site.
The restaurant industry post-pandemic
After winning the World’s Best Restaurant in 2021, chef Redzepi shared, “If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how fragile our dreams can be, how incredibly grueling and difficult the industry can be.”
Noma’s next phase of being a test kitchen has been in the planning stages for the past two years.
Read more about Noma 3.0 here.
Related: This Traveling Mom Shares Her Secrets On Funding International Family Travel
