When I talk about it, I don’t really love
the idea of it. When we first tested it, we
thought it would be this weird-textured,
slimy thing that’s hard to swallow, but
once you get it in your mouth it holds
until the heat of your tongue hits it and
then it’s gone and this salty oyster rush
hits. I’m very pleased with that one.T
he energy I get from this creative
work is paramount to how I live
my life. Without that, I don’t
know, there’s no way. This
industry is way too hard to go to work and
not have that rush and sense of discovery,
like the sense of achievement when you
think, “I’m actually shaping something
new here, together and as a team.”
At the moment there are 50 people
finalising all the small details. The dining
room has huge wooden floorboards and
a room divider made from wood that’s
more than 200 years old, found in the
waters a kilometre away from here. The
patina is stunning. Some people would
say this is not a fancy room, but I’m in
love with it. One of the things that made
it so difficult to build is that it’s lined
with stacked wood rising five metres high.
There are more than 250,000 screws and
the carpenters really struggled to make it.
Everything had to be handmade in this
project; it’s more important than being
modern. One of the main concepts behind
all of it is a sense of rawness – in theuntreated oak chairs and tables and the
room itself – which means you’re always
looking at the beauty of the materials. This
is a craft that we have chosen to do for
a living so everything surrounding what’s
on the plate should also have that feel
to it. The quality of the materials, the
quality of the ceramics or other products
on the table and the quality of what you’re
eating should all fit in with each other.
We have two beams with dried seaweed
hanging from them, and we might hang a
few other elements. In the test kitchen we
salted and air-dried 15 giant squid. They’re
kind of pink, white and yellow at the same
time. There’s a skull of a walrus with the
teeth still attached and we have an octopus
that’s dried rock hard. We squished it and
curled up the arms and painted it in its
own ink. It’s beautiful, like a sculpture.
Decorations like that, which are crafted or
handmade with a story that relates to what
we’re serving, we might put up somewhere.
But what’s very important is that this
restaurant space can never feel decorated- the building is the decoration.
We’re trying to make you feel
comfortable and give you an exciting
experience that tells you something about
a certain place and a certain time. It’s been
the premise ever since we started Noma in
2003, but I believe we can achieve this in a
fresh and new way. Everything we do is to
make guests happy. Honestly, it’s as basic
as that. When that moment happens
where there’s this explosion of joy and
everybody seems to get exactly what you
wanted to tell them – those nights you
remember forever. You get high on it.
One reason why this building project
was so complex was because it was built
to change. A lot of people think I’m crazy
when I say that, because we’re barely open.
But how do we know what we want to
do in 10 years or in five? You never truly
arrive at the finish line – you’re always
either at the starting line or somewhere in
between. Right now, finishing this project
is the goal, but very quickly I’ll need to
have this uncertainty about what the next
menu is going to look like, how we’re
going to be able to continue to shape
this place. The day that feeling is not
there – that’s the day when it’s over.●
Noma, Refshalevej 96, 1432 Copenhagen K,
Denmark, noma.dk
Noma restaurant manager James
Spreadbury, from Adelaide; dining
room; queen clam with its roe and
blackcurrant wood fudge (bottom
left), mahogany clam with preserved
gooseberries, blackcurrant and
mussel stock (bottom right);
Christianshavn Vold lake. Opposite,
from top: dining room; plankton
cake; a corner of the dining room.GOURMET TRAVELLER 85INTERVIEW JENI PORTER