Noma’s ‘modern art’ pushes boundaries, but not everyone’s buttons
Mixed reviews for a pop-up version of Danish restaurant Noma, rated best in the world four times, in Sydney.
Exciting, unique, artistic and … underwhelming. These are some of the ways diners described Noma, the Danish restaurant rated best in the world four times which opened a 10-week pop-up in Sydney yesterday.
The menu was devised and cooked by Rene Redzepi, the world-famous Danish chef who founded Noma in Copenhagen in 2003, after he spent several weeks last year foraging across the outback for ingredients that even most Australians haven’t tasted, such as wattleseed, saltbush, crocodile fat, magpie geese and ants. Each sitting costs $485, excluding wine.
Penrith courier Peter (he declined to give his surname) said yesterday’s lunch was not as good as he expected. “Flavour-wise, it was a touch underwhelming,” he said. “A lot of the native ingredients I’ll never have again in my life, and probably don’t want to have again.”
That didn’t include the ants-and-mango dish, though, listed on the menu as “Marinated fruits”. The ants were “limey — they were interesting,” Peter said, adding with a relieved smile that the ants were dead.
He said 20 years of dining out had given him a qualified palate. “Our palates aren’t too bad,” he said. “Maybe a lot of it was out of our palate range. Sea urchin didn’t do it for me.
“Some of the native ingredients were not that great. Didn’t taste very nice, some of them, but it was a worthwhile one-off experience.”
Another diner, Sydney businesswoman Karen Willis-Holmes, said the food was “sort of modern art”.
“It was a privilege to come today,” she said. “It was exquisitely perfect. It was artistic and pushed the boundaries, but not stupidly.
“It was Australian, but not in a pretentious way. I was worried it would be cliched, but it wasn’t.”
Noma in Copenhagen is famously hospitable. Redzepi is known to greet diners and check in their coats himself. In Sydney yesterday, he served some dishes personally, explaining how they were prepared, and after lunch mingled with guests on the veranda overlooking the harbour.
Monica Henjoto, who dined with three girlfriends, said the atmosphere inside was “very relaxed”.
“The staff are very friendly — even when you walk past to the toilet they say hi to you, and when you come back they say welcome back!” she said.
The decor reflected the food, she said. “It looks like Uluru, so you have the red floor like rocks and then you have an Australian desert background. It’s very Australian. It was great to see.”