When the Manifesto for the New Nordic Kitchen was first published, in 2004, the reaction in the world of fine dining was sceptical, if not outright suspicious. The manifesto’s points were criticised for being too vague, too piecemeal, too male – all the signatories were men – and too focused on “encouraging cooperation” rather than challenging the region’s industrial food producers through legislation and policy. Frebel said the range of sauces and fermented products would be expanded, and there “could even be could be little Noma stores around the world”. The manifesto emphasised “purity, simplicity and freshness”, urged a predominance of seasonal and hyperlocal foods, and encouraged restaurants to develop traditional Nordic fish and meat recipes by reviving and adapting older techniques such as marinating, smoking and salting.

A new book from Monacelli, Edible Flowers: How, Why, and When We Eat Flowers,uncovers a fascinating history Lars Williams, who was drafted to Noma from Heston Blumenthal’s test kitchen in 2009, moved to the houseboat in 2010 to run the Nordic Food Lab for two years. “We’d be as scientific as chefs could be,” Williams said. “We’d try the same idea 30 different times, with 30 different incremental variations, and record it all to assure we’d been rigorous.” Much like the restaurant, the lab operated with solely Nordic produce, but did its best to stretch that definition: “Things from the Faroe Islands were fair game, things from Northern Norway were fair game – we didn’t just operate around a kilometre’s radius around Copenhagen.”Melina Shannon-DiPietro, the executive director of MAD (Danish for food), a foundation founded in 2011 by Redzepi with the aim of transforming the restaurant business and hospitality and forcing fundamental change in food systems, said the awards had sparked “incredible pride” in Denmark. She said the movement’s success had attracted “amazingly international teams” to Nordic kitchens, creating “a new spirit of open-mindedness, a willingness to explore and blur boundaries, an awareness of being in a global community”. New Nordic was still true to its principles, but evolving, she said.

With Noma Projects we want to share Noma’s innovation and flavour ideas with the world,” Frebel said as he prepared for evening service at the restaurant’s waterside location in the Christianshavn neighbourhood. Despite a judging panel made up of 50% men and 50% women, the list drew criticism, as in previous years, for featuring “male-dominant, European-heavy, expensive tasting-menu restaurants”, with just four restaurants in the top 50 headed by female chefs – one fewer than in 2019.. A lot of what the lab worked with – Øland wheat flour, æggeblomme (“egg yolk”) potatoes and other native varietals – had never been tested and examined to such depth before. Through the lab’s research, crops that had all but ceased to be cultivated were finding new uses, and a reason to be grown again.What would be incredible to figure out and to develop, [would be] ‘what is the iPhone of food?’; what people don’t even know, yet, that they want to use everyday to make very meal a little more delicious. We want to inspire them to cook more, to cook a little healthier, a lot more plant-based.”

The annual list is voted on by more than 1,000 gastronomes including food writers and critics, chefs, restaurateurs and international culinary experts, who this year awarded second place to another Michelin three-star Copenhagen eatery, Geranium. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Aerial photographer Brad Walls provides a crisp conclusion to the summer months with new bookPools From Above – you’ll want to dive right in

Must try dish:​ Mouldy asparagus (asparagus spears that are cooked and dried slightly before being dusted with rice flour and inoculated with aspergillus oryzae spores and left for two days until bright white mould covers the vegetable) The Georgian revival Marblehead house from the 1920s is now filled with contemporary accoutrements like a sculptural concrete fireplace and a brass firepole for kids