Noma, the famed Copenhagen restaurant known for its envelope-pushing, often-foraged Nordic cuisine, has set up shop in Southern California. More precisely, 130 members of Noma’s staff have decamped to Los Angeles for a four-month residency, which runs from March 11 through June 26. When tickets went on sale this morning, they sold out in 60 seconds, according to an Instagram story from Noma founder René Redzepi. “We’ve sold out faster than ever before,” he wrote. “Please add yourself to the waitlist as cancellations happen.”
Many in the Noma-verse have already begun preparing for the highly anticipated residency, conducting research and building a hyper-regional larder. Those who manage to secure (and pay for) a table will have to shell out—a reality that has already caused some friction. That said, there are a few more accessible back doors into dining at Noma LA.
The globally lauded restaurant has been rising and shape-shifting steadily since opening its doors in 2003. It’s been one of the world’s most covetable reservations since being crowned the World’s Best Restaurant in 2010, and it’s widely credited with pioneering New Nordic cuisine—think tiny fjord shrimp in a pool of pine-infused cream and reindeer heart with smoked juniper. Over the last decade, the web of Noma alums opening their own bakeries and restaurants around Copenhagen has helped catapult the city’s dining scene to new heights, drawing food obsessives in droves. Then, in 2023, Redzepi announced that Noma would close, citing the unsustainability of fine dining, which…didn’t happen, obviously.
Noma’s LA residency isn’t the first time Redzepi has rounded up his team to hunker down somewhere new, learn the ins and outs of the local food ecosystem, befriend farmers and artisans, and turn natural culinary wonders into dishes cerebral and delicious. Noma has previously popped up in Tulum and Kyoto. What brings the tweezer-loving team to Los Angeles? The ingredients, of course! Southern California is an ecologically diverse agricultural wonderland which yields a style of progressive cuisine that’s equal parts radical simplicity and playfully inventive, rooted in what are arguably the best farmers markets in the country.
No mystery there. But what exactly will Noma’s residency—and broader presence—in Los Angeles look like? We’ve secured the details to help you suss it out.
Dinner at Noma LA will cost $1,500 a head. That price includes the tasting menu and beverage pairing, plus tax and tip.
That’s a hefty chunk of change—likely more than you or I might ever imagine spending on dinner. Redzepi told the Los Angeles Times that the price tag reflects the cost of flying 130 staff members from Copenhagen, housing their families, and covering their children’s (private) schooling. To put that in perspective: at Somni, LA’s most expensive restaurant, $1,595 gets you the tasting menu and premium wine pairing before tax and tip. New York’s Eleven Madison Park charges $365 for its tasting menu, with a reserve wine pairing priced at $475 ($840 total before tax and tip). And Napa’s The French Laundry costs $425 for food, with wine pairings ranging from $300 to $1,000. Then $1,500 for Noma stateside isn’t entirely unfounded.
But I do have a lingering question: If corporate sponsors like American Express and Blackbird are helping fund the entire operation (more on that shortly), why didn’t Noma ask for more sponsor money so diners could pay less?
The Noma Projects shop on Silver Lake’s Sunset Boulevard will sling its own science-y pantry staples alongside locally made products.
Over the past few years, Noma has leaned more heavily into CPG with the 2022 launch of Noma Projects, an umbrella under which they’ve developed pantry items like mushroom garum and extra-spicy corn-yuzu hot sauce in their Copenhagen test kitchen and fermentation lab. The brick-and-mortar in Silver Lake will be the first Noma Projects shop outside of Denmark. There, customers can buy their signature goods in addition to specific-to-LA items. For the latter, they’re partnering with local producers to create special formulas stateside, including kombucha, cold brew, dashi mix, and fermented honey products.
The test kitchen is going all in on cacti.
The menu is still very much a work in progress, and as the back-of-house crew settles into Silver Lake, they’ve been sampling and cooking their way through a wide range of local ingredients. According to a Noma spokesperson, they’ve been especially taken with California wild bay, also known as California laurel—a broad-leaved evergreen in the same family as avocados, whose leaves release a peppery aroma when crushed. They’ve also zeroed in on American honey ants, insects native to arid climates that store nectar in their abdomens (and have historically been used as a source of sugar in indigenous cuisine), as well as 12 varieties among Southern California’s remarkably diverse array of cacti.
The beverage team is concocting spirits from foraged desert botanicals, making beer with heritage grains and pouring California wine exclusively.
Noma sommelier Max Manning is collaborating on a site-specific beer with Highland Park Brewery, made using organic heritage Sonoran Wheat and Rouge de Bordeaux from Sherry Mandell and Alex Weiser’s Tehachapi Grain Project. He’s also developing a California desert amaro with yerba santa, rabbitbush, ladies’ tobacco, and Manzanita berries, alongside other botanicals foraged in the Cuyama Valley, with help from Rob Easter of Workhorse Rye + Modern Ancient, the distillery based in Tucson, Arizona, and Northern California.
The wine list, meanwhile, has been carefully curated by Manning and Noma’s head sommelier, Ava Mees List, and reflects an all-natural, all-California focus, with bottles from Rajat Parr’s Phelan Farm, Llewelyn Wines out of Sonoma County, and Mendocino’s Dorsal Wines, to name a few.
Noma has a few tricks up its sleeve to provide more affordable access, including for industry, and give back to the community.
For one, Noma’s thought-leadership nonprofit, MAD, will be running a series of events and activations from now through early summer. There will be a free nightly table for young industry professionals (applications are currently open), on-site job opportunities for alumni of the Careers through Culinary Arts Program, and a commitment to donate 1% of revenue to Brigaid, an organization that provides high-quality meals to public schools and hospitals founded by former Noma head chef Dan Giusti. With the influx of Noma cash, Giusti’s team will deliver kitchen training sessions and community dinner programs for LA school districts.
Noma has also partnered with the blockchain-based loyalty platform Blackbird on four industry-exclusive nights during the residency, with tickets priced at a comparatively reasonable $250. Finally, off-site collaborations with local chefs are on the horizon—the first is a Noma bagel drop with Courage Bagels that’s happening literally right now (Monday, January 26, from noon until they sell out). They’re serving open-faced sesame bagels at the Virgil Village location, topped with rose fudge, plus king oyster mushrooms, pumpkin bushi on one side, and nasturtium on the other, both garnished with bergamot and bay.