Escape From Noma

This is not the post that I thought I was going to write about Noma, the massively influential Copenhagen restaurant that’s been declared “The Best Restaurant in the World” five different times.

In fact, I didn’t even think I’d ever get to eat at Noma, especially when they recently announced that they’re closing the restaurant permanently at the end of 2024 to become “a full-time food laboratory.” I put myself on the waitlist when we booked our trip to Denmark and never thought in a million years that we’d score a table. And then, somehow, miraculously we did.

When you score a table at Noma, there’s no screwing around: you pay for your full meal immediately upfront or you’ll lose the table. The meal almost cost more than our flight to Europe, but we were celebrating some recent good news and decided to splurge.

The reservation fell smack dab in the middle of our trip: we were going from a Friday to a Friday and our reservation was for a Wednesday at 5 o’clock. The nights leading up to it we ate terrific meals at restaurants created by Noma alumni: Restaurant Barr, in the old Noma space; Sanchez, a Mexican restaurant created by Noma’s former pastry chef; and a few non-Noma restaurants, including our favorite meal of the trip — dinner at Kodbyens Fiskebar. (I’ll write about all of this in my next post.)

It was the meal that we ate the night before our dinner at Noma, though, that set into motion this unfortunate series of events. We had dinner at another highly-recommended restaurant, on all of the “Best Restaurants in Copenhagen” guides. I have no idea what was in the food — we mostly enjoyed what we ate — but we both woke up the next morning feeling queasy.

I spent the day convincing myself that I was fine: we ate a light breakfast, I jogged around the hotel room to get my system moving. Craig wasn’t buying it: “I’m worried you’re not going to be well enough for this meal.”

“Trust me,” I told him. “I’m fine.”

At four o’clock, we set off on foot to Noma, about a 45 minute walk, which got us there just in time to have a little iced tea in the greenhouse. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly, at first I thought we actually knew the people who greeted us as we approached, they seemed so happy to see us.

When it was time for the actual dinner, we were sent form the greenhouse to the main structure that you see above with the most gorgeous, seashell-covered door. It felt like the gateway to Narnia or some kind of mermaid kingdom.

When we opened it, standing there to greet us was the entire staff of the restaurant. It was such a shocking moment, Craig said: “I feel like I should give a speech.” Everyone laughed and then as we were led past the kitchen into the dining room, all of the chefs — what felt like twenty of them — were lined up to greet us and say hello. It was kind of overwhelming, seeing all these eager, expectant faces of the people who were about to pull apart crustaceans with tweezers just for our gastronomical pleasure.

The lead picture of this post shows you the first thing that we saw when we sat down at the table: an entire cod’s head. An explanation was made about celebrating local ingredients, how the fish were all caught in Denmark or Norway, and how we were going to experience taste sensations from the ocean that we most likely had never experienced before.

After negotiating a wine pairing or a juice pairing for a supplemental fee (I went with wine, Craig went for a combo of juice and wine), we were presented with our first course: a whole cooked langoustine that was, indeed, pulled apart on an almost microscopic level. It came with mussel broth that was topped with seaweed: you were supposed to sip the broth through the seaweed and indeed it was like the most potent seafood elixir you’ve ever tasted.

There was also a pickled magnolia bud because of course you want a pickled magnolia bud with your langoustine and seaweed mussel soup

Checking in with myself, I thought: “Okay, so far so good. Nothing too shocking except for that cod’s head, which we didn’t have to eat. I think I’m going to be okay.”

The next course was seaweed a la créme which was exactly as the name implied: pieces of beautiful seaweed (one wrapping an oyster leaf) over a creamy sauce. Sort of like eating the bottom of an aquarium, but a very clean one.

The next course involved lifting a rock off a mussel only to have it open by itself, revealing the meat of the mussel to be wrapped intricately with golden beets.

Ironically, at this point in the meal, I was turning a bit clammy and Craig couldn’t help but notice.

“You don’t seem like yourself,” he said, concern in his voice.

“I’m fine.”

“You look haunted.'“

I excused myself from the table and walked back past the kitchen to the bathrooms. This is a good point to mention that the kitchen was run like an arm of the military. A head chef would yell something out, everyone would yell it back, and it was so intimidating, I was scared someone was going to yell at me to “drop and give me twenty.”

In the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face and took some deep breaths. I didn’t feel like I was going to throw up, but I also didn’t not feel like I was going to throw up. I figured “mind over matter,” and tried to will myself to feel better. I prayed that the next course would be somewhat more palatable, maybe a PB&J or a matzoh ball soup.

Instead it was raw squid on grilled koji.

Koji, it turns out, is the product of soya beans that have been inoculated with a fermentation culture, Aspergillus oryzae — aka: moldy soy beans. They brought a whole tray of white mold for us to examine and enjoy while chewing the raw, translucent cephalopod. This may have also been the moment that Craig was presented with an iced tea made out of blossoms that were digested by beetles and then pooped out. They brought out some of the poop tea for us to sniff.

As I grew queasier and queasier, it became harder and harder to find culinary merit in all of this this. Were we being scammed? Punk’d? What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned baked ziti? Or a prime rib with Yorkshire pudding and all the fixings? Wouldn’t The Olive Garden be really good right about now, with those bottomless breadsticks? Breadsticks! Bread! Did they have bread?

“Would it be possible to get some bread?” I asked a waiter and then I imagined him going into the kitchen, announcing that Table 12 wanted bread, and the head chef shooting the man who prepared my squid for it not satisfying the customer enough. (The Menu was clearly on my mind.)

We had two more courses — cod roe waffle and hand-dived scallop — before the dish that brought me to my knees. It was a dish that stared us right in the face.

That’s right: cod head with tongue on the bone and “eye pie.” That’s really what they called it. “Eye pie.”

The waitress who served it explained that it wasn’t exactly a whole eyeball, it was just the white of the eyeball, and they used squid ink to make the pupil — as if that made it better?

Imagine feeling nauseous and then somebody hands you this.

Remember that scene in Bridesmaids where Kristin Wiig has to eat the Jordan almond to prove that she didn’t feel sick, even though sweat was pooling on her forehead and she was almost completely green? That’s what I looked like somehow forcing this down my gullet. And, reader, I really did eat that. I also gnawed a little on the cod tongue, which felt like making out with Shamu.

This is the moment where Craig, looking at me, said: “If you need to leave, you can leave. Seriously. It’s totally okay.”

It felt absolutely ridiculous: after how far we’d come, how much money we’d spent, how much work went into every component of this meal by this hard-worked army of chefs?

But in that moment, I realized that I would pay the price of a whole other meal at Noma just for the ability to leave the restaurant. That’s what I wanted more than anything: to get away from the fish eyes and the beetle poop tea and the moldy squid. I just wanted to go back to the hotel, get into bed, and fantasize about pasta and cake and all of the things that made me love food in the first place.

“Okay,” I said to Craig. “Are you sure you don’t mind eating here alone?”

“I’ll be okay,” he assured me even though he too was feeling a little queasy.

I summoned over one of the managers and very discreetly told her that I wasn’t feeling well and that I needed to leave. Her face flushed a bit — leave Noma! are you mad?! — but then she asked if there was anything they could do and when I told her there wasn’t, she sweetly called me a cab and sent me home with some mushroom garum.

During the cab ride home, I lowered the window and breathed in the fresh air and felt such a sense of relief, such a sense of liberation, they may as well have played the theme from The Shawshank Redemption.

Craig, meanwhile, texted me throughout the rest of the meal, which he mostly enjoyed, especially this “sweet oyster” dessert which was really ice cream.

This whole experience taught me many things.

One: context is everything. If I’d felt 100%, I’m sure I would’ve gotten a kick out of this avant-garde meal, even the fish eyeballs.

Two: just because somebody tells you that a restaurant is “the best restaurant in the world,” doesn’t mean that it’s the best restaurant in the world for you.

And, three: no situation is worth enduring if it’s actively making you feel unwell. Just ask anyone who’s seen Matchbox Twenty live.

And that, my friends, is my Noma story. I’m glad I went before the restaurant closed forever and I’m glad I was able to taste some of these challenging, genre-pushing dishes. Beauty, it turns out, really is in the eye of the beholder and that eye now lives in my stomach.