A couple of weeks ago I finally got the chance to dine at Noma. A fellow Dubai blogger and her husband had a table for four on a Saturday night but needed two more people. Would I be interested? Of course.
I had wanted to eat at Noma for years, but getting a reservation requires a level of dedication I rarely have. I love good food, but I’m not religious about it, and anything that involves more effort than filling out an online booking form a few days in advance tends to lose me.
We had 18 courses that evening. I’m not going to write a 10,000 word deep dive, so I’ll stick to the dishes that really stood out. If there’s something you’re curious about, let me know in the comments and I’ll happily elaborate.
The first bite was fermented wild plums with wild beach roses. Salty, sour, and intense, like a giant swipe of Japanese umeboshi. Fermented plum can be a lot if you’re not used to it, but I liked the effect. It felt like someone tapping my taste buds on the shoulder and saying, “Wake up. Dinner has started.”
Then came new Danish potatoes. If you grew up in Denmark, you know how special the first potatoes of the season are, and the ones at Noma were exquisite. Simple, beautiful, and perfectly presented.
It was asparagus season, so both green and white asparagus appeared on the menu. The green asparagus was topped with kelp and looked almost sculptural. The flavor was clean and fresh. The white asparagus was more delicate, framed by black currant leaves, with a subtle elegance that made it one of the prettiest plates of the evening.
One of the less experimental dishes was grilled bone marrow with garlic, served with lettuce leaves so you could wrap it yourself. Someone at the table pointed out that it felt more straightforward than the other courses, which was probably true, but it was still one of my favorites. Maybe my taste is a little less sophisticated.
Another standout was monkfish liver sliced into ribbons that looked like peach colored tagliatelle. It was served ice cold with toasted bread, and the combination of creamy richness and crisp texture was fantastic. We were told to eat it quickly before it warmed up, which felt slightly stressful but also added to the moment.
At one point we were served a mahogany clam that the staff estimated to be more than 100 years old. You can apparently tell the age by counting the rings on the shell. I felt slightly guilty eating it. Imagine surviving a century in the ocean only to end up on my plate.
The dessert looked like something you might find on the forest floor. Chocolate covered moss and mushrooms. I was skeptical. Of all the things you could cover in chocolate, why moss?
It turned out to be excellent. The moss had a crunchy, airy texture that worked beautifully with the chocolate, almost like an oversized, very fancy Malteser. The mushroom flavor added depth and made the chocolate taste even richer.
The dinner menu was 1700DKK. I was driving, so I opted for the juice pairing at 700DKK. It consisted of various green juices in different levels of sweetness. Most of them tasted either vaguely like apple or vaguely like kale, and halfway through I regretted not arranging a ride so I could have gone for the wine pairing instead.
By the time dinner ended, the individual dishes had started to blur together in my mind. Flowers, leaves, moss. At one point it honestly felt like I had eaten my way through an entire garden.
I tried going through the printed menu afterwards, comparing it with my photos, but analyzing every plate felt a bit beside the point. Noma operates somewhere between food and art, and the dinner left me with the same feeling I sometimes get after visiting MoMA. Some things I completely understood, others I didn’t, but several moments were brilliant enough to stay with me.
We also got a quick tour of the kitchen after dinner, which made the whole experience even more interesting. Despite its reputation, the atmosphere behind the scenes felt surprisingly scrappy. Whiteboards with ideas, jars of fermenting experiments, and the general energy of a creative lab rather than a polished institution.
We even met René Redzepi, which was surreal. He stopped by to talk about the restaurant, food, and a terrible dining experience he once had in Dubai.
Before going, I had assumed that dinner at Noma would be a one time experience. Something to tick off the list. But the more I think about it, the more curious I become. I want to see what they are working on next. I want to return and experience it all again.
If only getting a table weren’t such a challenge.
