All of my trips are food based. I decide on which cities to visit based on which restaurants I want to try. I’ve been meaning to upload at least a list, or even better, pictures of dishes I've had at restaurants that I have eaten at while on vacation. There have been many requests from friends
and family, and because of laziness, I usually just send them a spreadsheet
when asked. I thought now that school is done
done, that I would have all the time in the world to blog about all my vacation spots. But of course, life gets in the way. There's so much house stuff that we have to work on, that it's cutting into my blogging time. I swear I'm trying to my hardest to post things sooner rather than later!
This blog post is solely focused on Noma.
So many people have been bugging me about this post. The main purpose of our Europe trip was to
eat at Noma, a restaurant with 2 Michelin stars under it's belt.
For any one of you that don’t
know, Noma was the
number one ranked restaurant in the world at the time we made the
reservation, and still was when we dined there.
As of a couple months ago, Noma dropped down to number 3, which I would
say is still pretty good.
Before
we made any trip arrangements, even before we purchased our plane tickets we made sure to
book Noma first.
If we didn't get Noma on the day we wanted, I was going to shift our vacation plans to fit in Noma.
Booking Noma was a
process in itself.
For our May 5
reservation, we had to book in early February.
The most difficult part was making this reservation due to the time
difference.
The reservation system opens
at 10am Copenhagen time, which means 4am Eastern Standard Time.
So before bed, we had to make sure to set our alarm
clocks, several of them, (2 cell phones and 2 alarm clocks 10 minutes before
4am), and put our notebooks (both of them), and an iPad next to our bed.
Their reservation system was very sophisticated;
it seemed to be programmed in a way to prevent crazy jamming up of their
network.
The webpage had some text in
Danish essentially saying that they open at 10am.
And at 10am, the page changed.
It showed an online queue.
My husband literally loaded up the webpage 10
seconds before me on his iPad, and was 3xx in line.
I ended up being 8xx in line.
A difference of 10 seconds apparently equates to 5xx
people difference.
Insane right?
And as you freak out worrying that you waking
up early would be going to waste, the webpage updates your status in line.
You slowly see that number decrease.
As you wait, you just keep hoping that your
computer doesn’t crash or your internet connection doesn’t die.
As the hubby’s number got smaller and
smaller, I was still worried that the days we planned on being in Copenhagen
would be all gone.
I felt like I was going to have a heart attack, my heart was beating so fast. After about 15-20
minutes, the hubby’s reservation page loads.
I was still in the queue, 5xx in line.
The
day we wanted was available.
Yay!
Either lunch or late dinner.
We selected the late dinner, and the hubby
clicked next.
The internet page of doom
appeared…..something about couldn’t establish connection.
PANIC!!!!
Do we hit refresh?
Do we hit
back?
What do we do?
I felt like my heart had stopped beating. We closed our eyes, and pressed back.
Phewwww…..back to the reservation page.
This time clicking next secured our
reservation.
So excited, so hard to go
back to bed!
Now the thing to worry
about is the buying of the flight….
Noma is kind of located in the middle of nowhere. Well it’s not far from Christianshavn. From Nørrebro, where we were staying, the easiest way to get there was to cab it. But because we’re cheap, and we had access to
bikes, we decided to bike there through Copenhagen’s bike friendly
streets. Took about 30 minutes from
where we were staying so it wasn’t too bad.
As soon as we neared the front entrance, got the feeling of warmth,
everyone just seemed so friendly.
Usually unexpected for a ‘fancy’ restaurant such as this. Previous fancy restaurants I’ve been to, full
of snooty stuck up staff. Noma is also smaller than I thought. Which I guess
explains why its so difficult to get a reservation as there’s a limited number
of seatings per day. As with most of these
restaurants, each dish that is served to you there’s an explanation of the
dish. Turns out there were a couple of
Canadian chefs interning at Noma. The
hubby got to talk some hockey and baseball with them when they came out to
introduce the dishes to us.
As soon as we were seated, we were offered drinks. The choices were basically anything you
wanted, champagne to wines, to sparkling water to juices. I ordered a glass of champagne, the hubby got
an apple juice. For the rest of the
meal, I had sparkling water, and the hubby got the juice pairing to go along
with the meal. For those of you who
think that juice pairs are for kids, I beg to differ. These were not your normal juices. After looking through the pictures again, I realized we totally forgot to take pictures of the juices..... Ooooops. I really wanted to get the wine pairing also,
but I knew that it would be too much wine for me to take. Yes I’m a lightweight. I got quite tipsy after my meal at Moto in
Chicago…….the wines were really good….but never again will I drink that much.
After the bazillion courses were served, we took a tour of
their kitchens (they have a plating kitchen, prep kitchen, cooking kitchen,
plus an outdoor bbq as well), and their lab.
The unfortunate part is that our seating was later in the night, and by
the time we were done dinner, the kitchen staff was already cleaning up. So we never got a chance to see the chefs in
action.
As I’m writing this, I don’t know if I should ruin the photos by trying to explain the dishes. I think I should just let the dishes speak for themselves. Here are the courses from Noma, one of the best meals I’ve had in my life.
The night ended with our choice of coffee, espresso based drinks, or tea. My favourite dish was probably the greens dish. Such simple ingredients, but so much flavour
and texture complexity. Some of the greens were fresh, some were wilted, some were grilled served on a scallop glazed dish. When the server
came to check up on us during that course, he asked how we liked it. My response was that if there were no other
tables around, I would have picked up the plate and licked it clean. His response was that I was more then welcome
to do whatever I felt like doing. Thinking
back, I should have, so I wouldn’t have wasted a single drop of it. Next favourite dish was the monkfish
liver. The liver was smoked, frozen and
shaved VERY thinly and placed on top of toast.
As soon as that liver hits your mouth, it melts. I guess you could call it fish foie
gras? Noma has also introduced me to a
new favourite. Bone marrow. But they also set a very high bar for bone
marrow. Typically bone marrow is served with toast, or bread. Noma served with with cabbage. Different, and VERY good. Since Noma, I have ordered it at
other restaurants, but nothing compares. One other interesting thing to note, the mahogany clam that we were served was about 100 years old. It was nice and tender, not elastic band like, that I was half expecting. And before any of you cringe at the fact that we ate clams that were 100 years old, I myself was feeling bad until we talked to the chefs about their choice about using such old clams. Clams are only fertile and able to reproduce the first few years of it's life anyways. So we're not stopping the lifecycle. That made me feel less bad. Below is our take away menu.
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| May 5 2015 Noma Menu |
Noma was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Why they only have 2 Michelin stars while Alinea has 3, is beyond me. When comparing, service and food, Noma beats Alinea hands down. Yes it cost us an arm and a leg, but well
worth the high price tag.
Would I do it
again?
In a heartbeat.
This is the second restaurant that I have been to that plays
with locally foraged food and textures in a way such as this.
The creativity that these chefs have here blows my mind.
If you ever get a chance to dine here, DO IT! There is no doubt that any of these chefs, when they are done their internship, will succeed anywhere they chose to work or open up a restaurant.
Noma
Strandgade 93,
1401 København K
Denmark
Phone: +45 32 96 32 97
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 12:00p - 4:00p, 7:00p - 12:30a
Sunday - Monday CLOSED
http://noma.dk
Nice review! How much is it per person?
ReplyDeleteHi Loretta, sorry for the late response, and thank you for your kind words.
DeleteThe meal itself is 1700dkk, which after the current conversion rate, is about $350 per person. This price includes 25% gratuity.
Additional details can be found in the link below.
http://noma.dk/food-and-wine/