Noma the Copenhagen based restaurant, that has been named the world's best by Restaurant magazine a staggering four times, will close on New Year's Eve in 2016. The news comes straight from René Redzepi, the influential chef behind the temple of Nordic cuisine.
In a lengthy feature published by the New York Times, Redzepi details his plans for the restaurant's future. He wants to reopen the restaurant in 2017 as an urban farm in a new location, which is currently rundown patch of land in the city's Christiania neighborhood.
"It makes sense to have your own farm, as a restaurant of this caliber." He says to the Times.
Redzepi drew inspiration for the new Noma from other revered farm-to-table eateries like The Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York.
Redzepi is also planning a radical rethink of the restaurant's menu, letting the seasons dictate what will come out of his kitchen. The Times breaks the feature down like so:
In the fall, then, Noma's menu will focus only on wild game (from goose to moose) and foraged autumnal ingredients like mushrooms and forest berries. In the winter, when "the waters are ice-cold and some of the fish have bellies full of roe," as he put it, Noma will mutate into a seafood restaurant. Spring and summer? "The world turns green," he said. "And so will the menu." In an expectation-thwarting move, during those months Noma will become a fully vegetarian restaurant, with much of the bounty ostensibly coming from the farm he wants to conjure up.
The current iteration of Noma became famous for its focus on foraged ingredients. Many of the items found in the retstaurant's menu were often picked right from the city's neighboring forests and coastline.
No exact date for the restaurant's reopening was mentioned.
