What I Learned From Restaurant People in Copenhagen
Published:
Or, What Noma Taught Me About Failure (and Success)
The shards of dried sea cucumber gonads cracked like brittle tuille in my fingertips, but melted like a meringue in my mouth, a fleeting starburst of deep ocean umami and dried fruit, with the crystalline pops of a well-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano.
I went back for more, obviously. Brandon Jew (Mister Jiu’s, San Francisco) and Nok Suntaranon (Kalaya, Philadelphia) were standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me over the table, both processing the bite through their respective culinary lenses. Luciana Giangrandi (Boia De, Miami) came over. “Bottarga vibes,” someone said. Everyone nodded.
We were in the noma test kitchen, a little greenhouse surrounded by wildflowers, right next to the celebrated Copenhagen restaurant. It was a sunny late summer morning, hours before the restaurant would open and click into service mode. The noma team had flung open both their literal and figurative doors, giving a group of restaurant industry vets the full backstage pass.
But back to the sea cucumber. Then came Thomas Frebel, the restaurant’s creative director. He clocked our curiosity with the chips, his hospitality instincts firing, and immediately produced a vacuum-sealed bag of jelly-like gonads en route to dried glory. Slice, slice, slice. He handed out tastes, walking us through the team’s process. It was a moment of hospitality at its best: see wonder, feed wonder.
This was the first and loudest lesson: The hospitality community is one whose generosity transcends borders.
Not only borders in the sense of time zones and cultures, but also styles, awards, titles, and generations. This industry is a group of like-minded individuals that are unified by a single purpose and that very basic tenet: To make other people happy.
You see that connective tissue when you sit down to eat with “restaurant people.” Whether it’s a chef or a somm or a server, dining together is always an act of care for restaurant people. They’re the ones who will (perfectly) slice up the table’s whole fish, carve up the rack of pork ribs, ladle out the risotto. Or just give you incredible restaurant recs. It’s not so much service as it is generosity.
When restaurant people break bread with peers and colleagues, they start with curiosity, asking industry questions. How big is your restaurant? How many turns do you do? How big is your staff?
These conversations, of course, take place between phone calls and emails for chefs. Sorry, I’m dealing with a Mangalitsa pig delivery situation. Can you believe this contractor’s quote?
Only later, when they start to settle in, do the deeper questions come. How do you maintain? How do you find space for yourself? How do you keep pushing?
At noma, these broader questions are actively considered.
The other entrypoint is the employee one that feeds directly into the hidden engine of the restaurant, a hallway lined with artwork, memorabilia, and cookbooks. The piece of art closest to that door is a wrecking ball print emblazoned with 11 words:
“Knock everything down ~ Build new stuff ~ I will help (with both)”
Which brings us to the second lesson: To succeed, failure can be a good thing. Maybe the best of things.
Once you understand how noma approaches — that is, encourages — failure, you understand how necessary that wrecking ball is to creativity. It’s how you find yourself eating dried gonads from a supposedly inedible species of sea cucumber. It’s how Kenneth Foong Kin Meng (head of fermentation), Kevin Jeung (chef of research and production), and the fermentation lab team fail regularly, only to better understand lye-cured pinecones, masa amazake, and forest cola. It’s how diners find themselves scooping up live ants or sucking on a sumac flower. It’s how menus and concepts are torn up and reconsidered. It’s creating the white space so it can be filled with something … new.
Restaurants will close. Headwinds will intensify. Creativity will wane. Those wrecking balls clear space for the next evolution. Every demolition, whether intentional or not, is an invitation to rebuild in a better way — whether it’s yourself, your business, or maybe even your entire industry.
Or as Rene Redzepi put it over a breakfast of rice bowls to our little group of restaurant people, this community who is always thinking about the future of making other people happy: “Be unafraid. Fill yourself with new energy.”
And on that morning, as Redzepi played the role of host, preached his gospel, and underscored the open source nature of noma, you recall the sneaky essential line of that wrecking ball print: I will help.
No one in this industry is alone. That’s the generosity of the hospitality world — that’s what you see when chefs come together, when restaurants open their doors to their peers, when talented people share, teach, and break bread. That’s community. Paolo Lucchesi is the editorial director of Resy. Email: paolo@resy.com.
