Recently announced as number 1 in the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant for 2010, Noma is a restaurant delivering its take on Nordic gourmet cuisine. Noma is a combination of two Danish words “nordisk” (Nordic) and “mad” (food). Topping restaurants the likes of El Bulli and The Fat Duck it must have done something pretty significant to reach the pinnacle so I was inspired so much to try and get a booking at the restaurant. Clearly being named number 1 in the world had a giant impact on reservations ability – the old process clearly couldn’t handle the number of requests because over a course of a week of trying to get reservations the method to get a booking must have changed about five times! Eventually, however, perseverance paid off and I managed to get a booking for four of us on a Saturday. I was well chuffed to get a weekend spot!

Its pretty crazy to make a trip to another country literally just to visit a restaurant but that’s what Pat, Laney, Su Yin and I did. To save on accommodation costs we decided to take the first flight out this morning – a relatively early 7.15 plane out of Stansted … though still one of those flights where you might as well not have slept the night before you had to get up so early in the morning!

After arriving and checking into our hostel we took a long leisurely stroll to the restaurant. Its not actually that conveniently located but it does have a nice location near the water. We arrived quite early for our booking but Noma was very accommodating and didn’t even blink an eye that we were nearly an hour early (we were cold!)

Before we even had to make any decisions about what we were eating (turns out you really have two choices anyway – either a 7 course (seasonal) or 12 course (classic) tasting menu!) we were first served with a number, and when I say number I mean something line 9!, amuse bouches.

The first lot included Nasturtiums (edible flowers) and Snails and Sea Buckthorn Leather and Pickled Hip Roses. When the nasturtiums and snails came out in a vase we weren’t sure whether to admire or to eat! The leather and Roses reminded me of these fruit jerky type things we had when I was a kid in Australia.

Next up was this mysterious tin which when opened revealed Cookie with Blackcurrant Paste, “Speck” and a sprig of pine. Served with it was Rye Bread and Chicken Skin sandwiching a smoked cheese type pate and Leek and garlic – the bulb end of the leek had been deep fried and then what seemed like a roasted garlic tucked into the centre.

The Pickled and Smoked Quail Egg which came next was served rather dramatically in a large ceramic egg shaped container. Nestled inside on a bed of hay with smoke drifting up slowly it made for an engaging dish both in its presentation and taste. The eggs had been cooked to perfection and were exactly gooey in the way it should be.

Another conundrum was presented for us with the next dish. Instead of a vase of flowers we were presented with a potted plant. Was this to be admired or eaten? Turns out that what was potted (in edible soil) were baby radish and carrots. Such a cute dish!

Aebleskiver, or basically profiteroles, with a sardine was another cute dish. Though usually I like sweet and salty combinations this one was actually a bit too fishy for me!

The finale of our amuse bouche was another sandwhich – this time consisting of a wavy crispy bread and a crispy duck stock skin. There was lots going on in the middle with herbs (which were to be order of the day) and roe and emulsions galore.

Imagine that this all came before we’d even made our menu selection – a very stimulating start to our meal. Dishes came out at a decent clip though because we were all so busy taking photos it seemed that dishes came out quicker than we were ready for them. Heh heh.

Whilst we were waiting for our “main” meal to start we were given some fresh bread accompanied by butter and, rather interestingly, a lard with pork crisps. We appreciated the fact that the bread was served in a bread bed of sorts to keep it warm. The pork lard was an interest twist to a spread for the bread but the butter was more popular of the two accompaniments.

Chef René Redzepi’s focus at this restaurant is in serving food that makes the most of the local environment. So, if you ever see him talking about it, its all about going out into the local forest or seashore to gather what is available and use it in his cooking. As a result of many of the dishes we were served today consisted of a lot of greenage. Something I don’t think Laney was very impressed with – think she’s a meat girl. Ha ha! I must admit the meal is pretty unlike anything I’ve eaten before for its creativity and use of herbs and such and you can tell that an incredible amount of care was given in putting the dishes together and plating the dishes.

I’ll never look at lettuce quite the same again thanks to the first dish of the rank: Roasted lettuce blended and served with blanched flaked almonds was interesting. I couldn’t believe how intense the flavour of the roasted lettuce was. The almonds I could have done without (not really adding much in flavour) but they did give some crunch to the dish.

More greens on the next dish with Dried Scallops, Watercress with Biodynamic Cereals and Hazel Nut. A very strange and unusual dish. I’m not quite sure I liked eating the dried scallops – they were kind of too intense in their fishiness and I felt lost that essence of scallop that I love so much – which I think comes not only from its flavour but the fleshiness of the white meat.

Oyster and the Sea was up next. Rather dramatic presentation with the oyster sitting on a bed of seaweed, seashells, rocks and general sea things. Not a giant fan of oysters but this dish wasn’t too bad.

One of the most gorgeous dishes I’ve had came up next and it mostly consisted of onions! I do like my onion – though it has to be cooked down in some manner as I can’t stand it raw. This dish was ‘Læsø’ onion, onion cress and thyme, tapioca and onion broth. It truly was a lovely dish.

Well, we’d eaten a few things by this stage so it was now time to work for our meal! This could come across as a bit gimmicky trying to get the diner involved in their food but I thought it was a lot of fun. So, first out came some ingredients and equipment.

And then the instruction for The Hen and the Egg. The chef first squirted hay oil on to each of our heated hot plates and then the instruction was to crack the egg, fry to liking before adding thyme butter, lovage and spinach to wilt. This was then finished by herbs, flowers and fried potato curls. Admittedly we were probably a bit too concerned with posing for the relevant action shot than the cooking of our actual eggs … but the result was still pretty tasty!

Maybe there is room for us in the Noma kitchen … 😉

The egg was actually a good transition dish because it was sort of a bridging dish between the seafood and green dishes we had before to the meat dish we had next – the Deer and Wild Thyme, Red Beets and Red Fruit. The dish came with this mega-knife … though in actuality it was more a prop than anything as it wasn’t needed at all. It was a pretty serious knife which even came in its own case! The deer was good and enjoyed the beet that it came with.

You may not think that the next dish we received:

was a dessert but it was! How René managed to include greenage into his dessert and still make it work is a mystery to me! This time it was the Hay which had been blended down, on top of this was a Chamomile Ice with Sorrel and Wild Herbs. Really delicious and an extremely refreshing treat.

The official finale of the tasting menu was something a little special. “Gammel Dansk” (a Danish bitters), Ice Cream, Milk and Woodsorrel. The combination of all the items worked really well together. The wafers of what I think was frozen milk were a treat.

The official official finale to our meal at Noma were the petit fours served with our end of meal teas. A couple of interesting tins and wrapped packages came out for this part of the meal.

They were what was in essence a Danish marshmallow, bitter chocolate covered potato chip sprinkled with fennel seed and finale, my favourite, the Noma classic Bone Marrow Caramel. Kind of like a very extreme meat flavoured salted caramel this one really grew on me.

Aside from the food the meal at Noma was certainly an experience from the first minute. The service was excellent – the waiters make an effort to find out where you are from so that they can send out the chefs who are from your country to speak with you. Out of a full kitchen of about 30 chefs there were about 5 or 6 from Oz and the sommelier was from Oz so they all came out to say hi. In addition to this personalisation of the service, dishes were brought to the table by the chefs themselves who presented them to us. Great care was taken to ensure that our dishes were served at the right time – I remember at one stage that there must have been mis-communication with respect to the timing of our dishes so when they were bringing out our Oyster and Sea dish we saw this line of chefs come out to bring the pot to us … but then when they saw we were still eating our dried scallop dish the chefs did this very smooth and fluid circle around us and back to the kitchen! Towards the end of our meal the fire alarm went off so we were all sent outside whilst it was sorted out. We forgot how absolutely cold it was outside so we were a bit freezing!

But were warmed up by the free champagne and then the firemen who came along, not to mention chatting up, I mean, to the chefs …

Had a brilliant experience at Noma today – I could well understand why it is rated amongst the top restaurants in the world.