home from Mexico. Then the question
was how do you build a space that feels
like you’re outdoors all the time even
though you live in a place where in
all honesty the weather is so shitty seven
months of the year.
Well, we feel we solved that in a pretty
profound way. In the kitchen there’s
a glass roof so the sky is right above us.
From here you can oversee the different
buildings in what we call the village, so it
takes the cooks to the centre of everything.
Everybody has to pass through the kitchen
to go to the bathroom or the restaurant.
The old Noma, in a
250-year-old building where
the patina and energy
were built in, was also an
extraordinary place. I cried
when we closed the doors to
that space. It was emotional,
but I also believe it was
necessary. That Noma had
become like a couch, a very
comfortable couch that was
getting more and more
difficult to get up from. You
felt good in it, you knew what
to do, you knew everything, and so at one
point I’m like, “No way, man. I’m 40 years
old. Let’s go, let’s do it again. It’s not time
for a couch yet. Hopefully never.”
Sometimes you need to uproot
everything.
The past year since we closed our old
restaurant has been all about researching,
travelling, exploring, connecting with
people who we’ve been working with for
the past 14 years, finding new friends,
challenging our purveyors to do more,
better, different, and see opportunity with
the same old, same old. We’ve been in
my backyard and in my home kitchen
because we weren’t ready here, and
it’s the best creative period we’ve ever
had. We are in new territory.
Our menu will have three seasons that
we feel really fit our part of the world.
In the cold months, we look towards the
waters and serve only seafood, then when
we go into the growing season, which
typically starts in Scandinavia around
June, we’ll have a vegetable menu and
everything will change, even the ceramics
we serve the food on. Then from early
autumn to January it’s the game andforest season – the only time when meat
will play a starring role.
The challenge was how to shape
something new out of the stuff you’re so
familiar with. It’s difficult. The octopus
is the same, so is the squid, so are the
carrots, and they’re from the same farmer.
Having the focus of the three different
seasons brought a great energy to the
research and creativity.
We went on a journey, rather like
when we went to Australia, and spent
months travelling around the Nordics.
It’s crucial. We shook hands and met yet
again some of the divers
and fishermen and the
foragers and so on. But we
also went deeper, diving
into the ocean and looking
at what’s there as opposed
to what we thought before
when we’d use lobster or
turbot – luxury kind of stuff
in a way. We discovered
things in our waters and
challenged ourselves to work
with sea cucumbers, sea
stars, jellyfish and such. It’s a basic idea
but it yields so much. For that reason
I feel like we have been able to squeeze out
new things and see fresh opportunities.
There’s a dish made from these giant
sea snails from the Faroe Islands. They
weigh maybe half a kilo each and we never
really figured out how to cook them. Many
times I’ve had this slimy thing in my hands
and thought, “What are we going to do
with this?” We tried to cook it like abalone
the way we did in Australia, we looked at
Japanese websites and watched YouTube,
but they always have that kind of chew.
Then four months ago we started devoting
time and energy to it and we found a way
to cook it that’s made it one of the most
delicious items on the menu. It has a
similar quality to a simmered abalone, but
there’s just more flavour and we’re serving
it simply, sliced thin and tossed with wild
plants. You eat it as a salad from this wax
cup that’s warm so it releases this honey-
scent note that’s exactly what the dish
needs. I love that serving and even more
because it’s not just a theatrical element.
There’s a jellyfish serving as well that
melts on your tongue. It’s from Danish
waters and it’s served with seaweed.“You never truly
arrive at the
finish line –
you’re always
either at the
starting line
or somewhere
in between.”84 GOURMET TRAVELLER