Noma Update – Rethinking Fine Dining After René Redzepi

Lately, there's been a lot of bad publicity about chef René Redzepi, the founder and driving force behind Noma — the Copenhagen restaurant he closed in 2024 following a reckoning over the treatment of its staff.

No one deserves to be treated that way — for anything, much less for simply preparing food. Some of the treatment was inhuman, sadistic. He did the right thing by stepping away from his role.

He was a bigger-than-life chef, acclaimed for years for his innovative food preparations. But now my perspective has changed — not only about Noma and Chef Redzepi, but also about the whole high-end dining culture.

Someone amid the brouhaha surrounding his resignation said, "Who cares about Noma? It's just a restaurant serving overpriced food for rich people."

That has a ring of truth to it.

Somehow, I doubt that the money paid for those expensive dinners filters all the way down the team.

I thought that instead of dropping a few thousand dollars on one night at Noma, I should go to ten restaurants — my neighborhood favorites, and some family-owned ethnic spots — so that I would have ten enjoyable nights instead of one.

Moreover, it would contribute to the employment of more restaurant workers. More of my money would reach the servers, chefs, cooks, dishwashers, and everyone else in the complicated chain that magically brings my favorite food to the table.

I should be grateful to all those people and tip them generously until the restaurant owners find a way — raising prices, perhaps — to pay them a living wage and give them health benefits.

I raved about my dinner at Noma in Copenhagen last year. I don't regret that. It was very good and a unique experience. But the credit shouldn't go to one chef, innovative as he may have been, but to the army of overworked, abused, and underappreciated workers who put that food on my table.

They deserve applause, and I hope the experience will lead them to their own dreams of opening restaurants.

So goodbye, Chef Redzepi. You'll be remembered for the good and the bad — for the impact you've had on food culture, and for the sorrowful exposure of the hidden side of restaurant life.