Dining on Magnolia Petals and Candied Pine Cones with Noma’s Culinary Alchemists

René Redzepi’s radical and exacting resourcefulness is legendary. When the intrepid chef founded noma, his experimental Copenhagen-based restaurant, 21 years ago, he insisted on using only local foods that were in season, often foraging for ingredients like pine cones and pea shoots in the Scandinavian wild and turning to methods like fermentation and pickling to preserve ingredients during barren seasons—changing the landscape of fine dining and garnering a cult following in the process.

In the highly inventive hands of Redzepi and his crew, abandoned cod heads become a show-stopping delicacy, ants from the woods emerge as a tart treat, and kelp washed up on the beach transforms into a wondrous elixir. At noma, the oft-tired idiom that “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” gets a cheeky refresh—one man’s food waste is another man’s very in-demand tasting menu.

This was never more evident to me than when I joined Redzepi and his team for an intimate meal at Centurion New York, where they’re hosting a multi-night dinner series this week with Resy and American Express. I found myself massaging a bowl of rye bread crumbs (rescued from the stale leftovers of Denmark’s Hart Bakery, of course) into a mushy pile of barley koji and salt to make a batch of ryeso—noma’s rye-bread-powered version of miso. It was the start of a night filled with witnessing (and tasting) the creation of flavors from the most unorthodox places, from a roasted pumpkin spread served on a magnolia petal that was a dead ringer for a nut butter to a crunchy dried-ant garnish that had all the bright zing of lemon zest. If you had told me a week ago that I would be eating a candied baby pine cone with gusto, I would have hardly believed you, but that was before I met Redzepi and his blue apron-clad army of chefs.

Ahead of the dinner, I got a crash course in noma’s Fermentation Lab practices (hence my foray into making ryeso) and the inner workings of the test kitchen, including hearing about the foraging the noma staff did in Central Park earlier that day. (You may be surprised to hear that they found the park abundantly full of potential ingredients and that New York City ants taste similar to those sourced in the Danish woods.) They also introduced the Ocean Bundle, the latest release from Noma Projects, the food product line they started in 2022. Each launch features a limited-edition collection of products featured on noma’s current menu—in this case, a trio of artful plant-based sauces: Elderflower Peaso, Ocean à la Crème, and Nordic Shoyu.

For Redzepi, the foraging and fermentation process is the heart of noma, one he holds dear as he ushers the restaurant into a new chapter. Last year, Redzepi announced that the restaurant would be closing at the end of 2024—after nabbing three Michelin stars and winning first place in The World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards five times. He plans to transition the space into a full-time test kitchen, with an emphasized focus on Noma Projects and hosting international pop-ups, like last year’s wildly popular Kyoto outpost. In his estimation, with these new ventures, noma’s mission remains the same: to fearlessly create something new out of something unexpected.

“Our superpower is to develop flavors,” Redzepi said at the event. “We believe so much in the potential and the power of flavor, particularly when you want to put a little dent of positivity or change into the food world—if it's done through the lens of deliciousness, I believe personally, it becomes so much easier to actually implement that.”