Features

Local and seasonal

Enda McEvoy goes to work at the world’s number one restaurant to find out what sets it apart. Irish restaurateurs could learn from its success, he says.

Restaurant Noma in Copenhagen was last year named number one restaurant in the world in the San Pellegrino best fifty list, knocking culinary giants such as El Bulli and The Fat Duck down the list. In a time where any restaurant worth its salt goes out of its way to list the provenance of ingredients, sometimes in an overly precious manner, there is nowhere taking this local cuisine of the terroir to such a logical and common sense extreme as Noma. The kitchen does not go down the usual route of using olive oil and common spices such as pepper or vanilla; no foie gras or other Michelin stalwarts. This is a restaurant which will only use ingredients from the Nordic region and only ingredients in season, and within these self-imposed restrictions incredible creativity occurs.

Star vegetables

Noma is unusual amongst its peers in that vegetables take equal billing alongside proteins on the menus. The kitchen goes to painstaking lengths to process the dizzying array of herbs, roots, nuts and berries gathered by both the chefs and stagieres (unpaid interns) and by a small team of foragers and producers. Wood sorrel, chervil stems, sweet cicely, beach mustard, woodruff, watercress, winter cress - all with a distinct role, all different preparations. Vegetables are braised and basted whole and treated as a cook would a joint of meat and treated with the same care and reverence because the provenance of these ingredients is as painstaking and time consuming as a joint of free range pork.

One of the most surprising and moving dishes I found at Noma came out of necessity - vintage carrots. During the unusually long winter 2009/2010 ingredients were thin on the ground and rather than being tempted to waver from the self-imposed restrictions, head chef and owner René Redzepi approached one of the farmer suppliers to see what he had, anything at all. The only thing he had was what even René himself described, as “shitty carrots”. The carrots had been left in the ground for “too long” and had been left stored in the corner of a shed for some months. Tasted raw they were mealy and bitter but braised in goats butter and chamomile for about an hour and carved they tasted out of this world, tasted maybe what carrots really tasted like. The vintage carrots became an unlikely signature dish. This happy accident lead to Restaurant Noma convincing growers to experiment with other vegetables, the most successful being vintage potatoes. The potatoes are set in the ground and left indefinitely. The “mother” potato essentially rots but not before producing shoots developing little potatoes with an intense flavour and texture.

Creative pride

This small forty seat, two star Michelin restaurant, in the middle of the dockside in Copenhagen, with such a bond with nature, has intrigued me for quite a while now which is why I had applied to become a stagiere for two months. Stagieres in high-end restaurants are quite common and are essentially the lifeblood of these restaurants. The chef will work for free or for very little in financial return but will garner experience in technique etc. Over the time I spent at Noma a veritable UN of stagieres passed through the kitchens - experienced chefs from Belgium, Israel, Mexico, Peru, Korea America, Australia, Canada, Austria, Croatia and Ireland, all working for varying periods of time for the experience of it.

The hours are long (8am till around 12.30am) and the jobs sometimes monotonous, but everyone was there feeling part of this new Nordic movement. Open five days a week for lunch and dinner, Noma will serve between eighty and one hundred guests between eight and sixteen courses each, with additional snacks and petit fours all served by the waiters and, unusually, the chefs. The idea that the chefs are in contact with the ingredients, sometimes in the case of the wild herbs, from their raw state in the wild to placing the finished dish in front of the diner and explaining the genesis of the dish, instils a pride in the cuisine and creates a positive energy unseen in other high end kitchens. This energy is essential to keep the brigade in momentum throughout the day performing tasks such as prepping chervil stems and watercress stems until they resemble a “tree in the wintertime”, cleaning and sorting wood sorrel, opening hand gathered sea urchins, hand dived scallops, cracking and peeling kilos of walnuts, cleaning baby celeriac, sorting and scraping the vintage potato and opening and prepping the meatiest oysters I have ever seen.

All this prep culminates in lunch and dinner service from a small open kitchen open to the cosy bare dining room. The dishes are constructed and plated in a very organic way in that elements are paired as they would be in nature. The kitchen does not use wine or heavy meat based sauces, using instead vinegars, beer and fruit and vegetable juices to season dishes. Although modern techniques and equipment are used it is not to the detriment of flavour but to intensify it. The whole cuisine is based on the idea of time and place, the idea that this plate of food could not come from any other place at any other time. This is an idea that could be translated anywhere and I believe this is the big draw for chefs to work in this extraordinary kitchen, It was for me anyhow.

Ireland’s potential

Here in Ireland we have access to great ingredients comparable with the best the world over. Incredible shellfish, grass fed beef and world famous lamb are the obvious ones but we have woodlands and shorelines full of tasty edibles and a tradition of vegetable and grain growers which seem to be overlooked. Coming close to the end of my time at Noma, and taking part in daily service, I felt part of this team and felt a little sad to be leaving but also felt not a little reborn and more hopeful. If one restaurant can change the direction of Nordic food and create an identity and elevate hitherto humble ingredients, what could a nation of farmers and growers do? The land is there and the produce is there - we just need to utilise it in the most respectful way possible.

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