NOMA CPH – SUSHIBITS

Yes, we went to Noma!!! “Nordisk Mat”, or “Nordic food” is what it is called, and has been topping the list of best restaurants in the world for years. Making reservations was not easy, the restaurant is closing for an indefinite time at the end of this year, and so this was one of our last chances to go. The second the online bookings opened up, I started clicking like crazy and apparently managed to book for February. Success!!!

And so on a hazy rainy day in February, we went to the most amazing restaurant experience we had in our lives. Not only was the food like art, there were so many influences from Japan in the dressing, the tastes, the interior design, in everything, that the whole experience somehow felt a bit nostalgic! NOMA is heavily inspired by Kyoto in particular, where they set up a pop up restaurant the year before and will do so again this autumn, and we could definitely tell from the flavors.

Let’s have a look at the dishes! It was “ocean season” and so we were welcomed by a huge fish on our table that we were going to eat entirely through different dishes.

But: we started with langoustine with seaweed salt on the rim of the plate. It was accompanied by a bbq sauce in a beautiful seashell that tasted amazing.

Next, a bowl full of seaweed, with a mussel broth with bergamot underneath. You were supposed to slurp it out of the bowl with your nose in the seaweed, which gave off a lot of scent, really cool!

Next, a selection of Scandinavian seaweeds, in a shrimp cream sauce, all with their own texture and taste:

And then it was time for a rock!

With a mussel and golden beets surprise underneath :D

After this piece of art, we received something that looked very very Japanese, a dish we would eat again during the Kaiseki dinner at the Ryokan in Kyoto, and even during our stay on the island of Yakushima. In Japan it is an egg pudding with pieces of fish or chicken inside, but NOMA’s version was hazelnut cream with sea urchin!

It is such a Japanese dish, so amazing to taste their take on it. I really enjoyed this one. Next up, they served thin slices of raw squid on a piece of Japanese charcoal grilled koji (a sort of barley).

Cheers! (we had the wine pairing haha)

Are we not at the main dish yet? No! Next up, these cod roe waffles on a small leaf of wasabi:

Followed by hand dived scallops from Norway:

And now we are at the main dish! And this was the fish they showed at the beginning of the dinner, and yes we were going to eat every single part of it, beginning with the tongue and … eye!

Very nice how the salt it rests on looks like a Japanese rock garden, ones we would visit a week later!

The head of the cod was salted to preserve it. The guests next to us were very reluctant to eat the eye… but it was actually delicious! It was on top of a roasted kelp, with cod roe:

But we hadn’t eaten every part yet, there was also the jaw with smoked pumpkin:

And the throat, in a sauce of pine, parsley, fig and yellow garlic.

That was the “scary” part of the dinner :D Next was barbecued burbot:

The sauce next to it set on a shiso leaf… this is something we had before in Kyoto, usually filled with cherryblossom mochi, so it was a very nostalgic taste.