Lunch at Noma

Plenty of people have written blog posts about their meal at Noma, so we’ll try to keep this brief and focus on some pictures.

This was a 100% random trip. We were invited 10 days before the reservation and scrambled to make the trip happen. Thankfully we were off season for Copenhagen so it was doable.

I will say that the meal 100% delivered on the surreal yet delicious premise that I expected. What was a really pleasant surprised was how nice everyone who worked there was and how relaxed the whole experience felt once we settled in. I’ve never had a fine dining experience quite like it.

Winter is “Ocean Season” so that meant the focus was on seafood. We did our best to take pictures - but didn’t get everything as all that natural wine kept flowing and things got a little loose by the end.

One that natural wine front… I don’t know enough about wine to do a real rundown, but will say that it was really adventurous with a wide range of both natural wine as well as some sour beer and sake that they partnered with purveyors in Denmark and Japan to produce. It was fun.

Without further ado, on to food pictures.

They don’t really do an amuse bouche. Instead they just started big with this langoustine:

This came with a sauce to pour over in a beautiful shell and a bowl of mussel soup that you sip, miso style, through the next of seaweed on top of the bowl.

Next was a seaweed salad… that I sadly don’t have a picture of. Think different types of seaweed wrapped around something small and subtly flavorful.

Then came a mussel… wrapped in beets. It was good:

Next was sea urchin in a hazelnut cream. It was delicious but I don’t have a pic.

It was followed by raw squid over grilled koji. Very pretty. Chewy in a good way:

Things kicked into high gear after this with this cod roe waffle. There’s a lot going on here including a crispy foundation with a saucy middle and the roe on top. How about that for a sophisticated description!

Next came one of the prettiest scallop presentations I’ve ever seen. It was seared on the bottom and raw on top … and delicious all around.

After that we got into the surreal. We were told that we’d be getting a local cod served four ways. Here’s the first two:

The tongue is roasted - and you pick up the handle sticking out of the fish’s mouth to eat it off the bone. The eye actually looks way more intimidating that it eats as it blends into the roe that it’s sitting on - but still totally fun.

Then they brought a piece of throat in a beautiful parsley sauce (no pic, sorry), and a piece of jaw meat (really cheek) on the bone. The bones had this awesome string wrap on them. I didn’t remember to take a picture until I’d eaten all the actual meat on there!

Next up was squarely in the interesting category. It’s a dish made from SCOBY… which is essentially the mother that floats on top of kombucha. There was an explanation as to how they made this into a dish but things were starting to get a little spotty at this stage with all the wine. Just to make it extra extra they paired this with some dried sea cucumber gonad. The consensus on this one was, “really interesting, not sure I’d eat it again.”

We finished with a fish kabob. It was a fish called burbot that is only caught through the ice in Sweden when it’s cold enough for the ice get thick enough. Apparently it is this year. It was good. The sauce was excellent. The shell based kabob skewer was beautiful:

On to dessert….

First up was hazelnut with kelp:

The next dish was crazy… it’s an oyster… made entirely of chocolate. Each one of us had one that looked totally unique. The amount of time involved in this thing boggles my mind. Sharing a pic of it served and another with a bite taken out after we followed directions to “eat the whole thing”:

We finished off with a croissant type pastry wrapped around a seaweed stick and a clam that was actually full of delicious sweet jelly.. because why not.

That’s about it. We ate slowly, drank a lot and shut the place down. Here’s a final pic of the empty kitchen that all of this food comes out of:

Not sure when we’ll do something like this again - but definitely glad we made it happen before Noma closes for good later this year.