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Although earlier this year chef René Redzepi announced that he would close his restaurant Noma in 2025, it now seems that he has changed his mind and is already working on building a new Noma, as he revealed during his participation in the San Sebastian Gastronomika. The Danish chef participated in the congress with a presentation entitled ‘Retrospective. In search of longevity’, under the gaze of important faces such as Ferran Adrià or Andoni Luis Aduriz, who was in charge of presenting him “from the heart”, in which he made a vital review of his entire career, focusing on the last three years and noting that they have been “very crazy”, but also referred to his beginnings in the kitchen with only 15 years, when he had “no aspirations or thoughts about the future” and signed up for a cooking school in Copenhagen to accompany a friend.
Throughout his professional career, Redzepi worked in kitchens as important as elBulli, before launching his own project, Noma, at the age of 25, a path that was never easy. From day one, I felt like I was drowning because no one had prepared me for it. Those beginnings were pure survival, but I took the plunge. It was a ten-year leap in free fall, but success came.”
That’s when Noma’s first closure came, from 2013 to 2018, a time when it changed space and underwent its first transformation. “We were no longer 25-year-olds, but parents. I wondered what would become of that place in the long run,” the chef continued during his talk.
Coinciding with the pandemic hiatus in the spring of 2020, René Redzepi had time “to torment myself with many questions.” He thought about how to ensure mental, creative or spiritual longevity. The answer was obvious: “We needed to change as a restaurant and as an organization.” So, they developed new ideas such as selling the fermented mushroom batch and the idea of closure began to hover again. “If you plan too much, the plan itself will tell you not to do it. We wanted to experience longevity. I know now that to remain who you are, you have to change. And that’s been the constant over the last 20 years, in the restaurant and in my life.”
The Danish chef ended his speech by revealing something that surprised the attendees. “We are not closing, we are building a new Noma.” Time will tell what this renovation consists of.