Life after Noma.
So we’ve been rewriting this piece several times, since the news cycle around the Noma revelations has been so fast. In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s a summary:
Noma is arguably the most famous fine dining restaurant in the world, and it’s run by chef/founder René Redzepi. Noma and its alumni have turned Copenhagen from basically nothing into the global food destination that it is today, coined the term nordic cuisine and have had a seismic effect not just on Danish cuisine but other „smaller“ cuisines around the world. Heck, even our very own, new and great Nová česká initiative draws inspiration from what nordic cuisine has done. If the Danes did it, why can’t we? We did eat at Noma in 2018 and really liked it. Met René Redzepi there and took a picture with him, as you do.
Noma has been formally closing a reopening a few times in the past (they’re great with PR and marketing) and have turned themselves into a pop-up restaurant in recent years. As they’re opening their pop-up in Los Angeles, with tickets going for USD 1500 and revenues projected to reach millions of dollars, allegations of past behaviors of René Redzepi and Noma’s management have began to appear online, and from there, things went downhill fast. First the NYT article (gift article here). Then the news that two main sponsors of Noma’s pop-up in Los Angeles, American Express and Blackbird, are pulling out. Then the news that René Redzepi is stepping down from Noma. And then the video. (The video! Have you seen it? You should.)
This has been coming. Some tidbits about the past abuse has started leaking in Instagram posts by Jason Ignacio White, former chief of Noma’s fermentation lab, who even started a dedicated website to document Noma’s abuse. And René Redzepi did make a statement/apology years ago. But the floodgates opened with the NYT article to the wide public. (We did reach out to a Czech chef who worked at Noma and she has confirmed that the culture was toxic.)
Christian Puglisi, the chef/founder of Relæ, Bæst, Manfreds and Mirabelle, and a former chef at Noma, wrote in his newsletter that people are forgetting about today’s staff at Noma. Sure, they are dragged into this against their own will, and bearing the consequences. Chef Puglisi also writes that if the criticism comes from outside of the restaurant, it’s a witch hunt, and only criticism from the inside can lead to change. This argument is flawed - the criticism does come from the inside, in a way - from former members of staff who have been harmed or traumatized. Should their voices be ignored since they don’t work there anymore? The facts that Puglisi did not leave Noma traumatized doesn’t mean he can generalize his experience to others. This feels like the attacks on victims of sexual abuse when they come out with their stories years after the incident - Why now? Why did you wait so long? This is a witch hunt!
The whole thing does open questions on where do you draw the line between hard work and discipline, and abuse. The world is full of fine dining restaurants that use unpaid interns. One Prague chef we talked to mentioned London’s The Ledbury and the incredibly hard shifts there. Is this abuse? Or is it just hard work? We toured a 3-Michelin star restaurant in Bangkok recently and while the chef-owners were smiling and chilling in their clean aprons in the open kitchen up front, there was an army of underlings prepping in the closed back kitchen in very tight quarters. But we can all agree that no matter what stress you’re under, public shaming and beating of a chef or any form of physical intimidation - in the middle of dinner service - just goes too far. No matter how you look at it.
Our gut feeling: we hate, hate, hate the video. The hand-held camera feel of the video should convey spontaneity, but let’s get real - this has been carefully staged. The perfect sound through the wireless mike. The editing. The zoom-ins on the teary-eyed members of staff. The gathering of the entire staff. The „we vs. the world“ message.
But the world is not against Noma. The world is against abuse by management. Noma has always been great at PR and marketing - all the closings and reopening, and the always staying in the headlines with big words. The apology, and now the video, seem to be in the same vein.
Also, please note that Noma does not state what „stepping down“ by Chef Redzepi really means. Who runs the restaurant? Who owns it? Sure, the video shows an empowering „the restaurant is yours now“ pep talk, but what does it all really mean? At the moment, René Redzepi stepping down from Noma feels like a classic political maneuver - stepping back from the spotlight while keeping a firm grip on the empire.
What now? What is the whole point of this? Cancelling a chef and a restaurant, and moving on to the next thing? A debate about unpaid internships, and about the economics of running a fine dining restaurant? A serious talk about the pressures of being „The World’s Best Restaurant“ and of meeting the incredibly high expectations people have when they travel to dine in it? Does paying an army of interns mean you have to pocket USD 1500 for a meal? And does fine dining make economic sense, as Chef Redzepi pointed out a few years ago himself?
That debate is probably ongoing, with no real solution or end in sight. But let’s not get confused here - the Noma revelations are not about where hard work ends and abuse starts, or about sustainability of fine dining. No. They are about very personal stories of abuse, sexism and racism. And no matter what the legacy and the import of any restaurant is, for that, the perpetrators should bear consequences.
