A cookbook from NOMA, the "world's best restaurant"
NOMA 鈥� now famed after being named the best restaurant in the world 鈥� produces a cookbook.
NOMA chef Rene Redzepi signs books in Seattle.
Myra Kohn
When a restaurant is unexpectedly named the best in the world, it鈥檚 no surprise to see a cookbook from that restaurant soon hit bookshelves.
But NOMA ($49.95, Phaidon), the coffee-table paean to chef Rene Redzepi鈥檚 Copenhagen Denmark, restaurant, is no rush job thrown together after the regionally sourced restaurant toppled better-known names off the this year. The hefty book had been in the work for years, Redzepi said at a Seattle appearance last week. In fact, it had taken 18 months just to shoot the full-page photographs that dominate the book: bold close-ups of ingredients like flowering wood sorrel and hay ash, plated dishes such as 鈥淢ilk Skin and Salsify, Rapeseed, and Truffle Puree." As NOMA鈥檚 cuisine is entirely seasonal, it took a year just to work through the menu, with some catch-up for dishes that hadn鈥檛 worked the first time around. The photos were also entirely shot on film, Redzepi said, to provide a texture and warmth he couldn鈥檛 get from digital images.
The award wasn鈥檛 entirely unconnected from the book, he said. The book helped to open up North America to him. Kim Ricketts, who organized Redzepi鈥檚 visit as part of her 鈥淐ooks and Books鈥� event series in Seattle, said publisher Phaidon had been excited about the book for some time. But Redzepi 鈥渨as only on my radar a little bit鈥� at first, she said. Then, 鈥渓ike when you learn a new word, you keep on hearing it everywhere.鈥�
"The rest of the world was ahead of us in clamoring about him [and] NOMA 鈥� he had 1,200 people come hear him at the Opera House in Sydney!鈥� Ricketts said.
A limited North American tour was added to the book鈥檚 schedule after Redzepi 鈥�achieved the unthinkable鈥� with that No. 1 spot. Then, by former restaurant critic Frank Bruni brought NOMA closer to becoming a household 鈥� at least, in houses of gastronomy 鈥� name.
It鈥檚 hard to call the lovely book a cookbook, even though it鈥檚 packed with recipes. Few readers would have access to the ingredients that make NOMA's cuisine so unique 鈥� bulrushes, sea buckthorn, rowan shoots, reindeer 鈥� even assuming they were equipped with the required Thermomix blender, Pacojet freezer, immersion circulator, and other specialized kitchen tools.
Still, the recipes, essays, and photographs make for an involving window into a restaurant most of us will never see. It鈥檚 lucky that the vagaries of a 鈥淭op 50鈥� list opened its pages up to us.
The strange thing, as Redzepi pointed out to the Seattle group, is that NOMA was no stranger to that best-of list. It had previously ranked No. 3 in the world. Should two last steps have made so much of a difference?
Rebekah Denn blogs at .
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