The moment Pablo Soto approaches our table with a live king crab, its claws slowly writhing, it becomes clear that Noma isn’t interested in playing by the rules of fine dining. This isn’t exactly a revelation—the Copenhagen restaurant, founded by René Redzepi, is famous for doing things its own way and for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible between chef and diner. But Soto’s jovial presentation of the ingredient while still alive further underscores the fact that this meal definitely won’t be the standard fare.
It’s a chilly Friday night in March, but the warmth inside Noma is palpable—both literally and in terms of the ebullient atmosphere, which vibrates with the efforts of 40 chefs working in a lively open kitchen in the center of the dining space. After years of expansion, Noma now comprises multiple buildings, a garden and several greenhouses, only some of which are seen by the guests. There are also numerous test kitchens and a fermentation fridge, where Noma Projects creates the small-batch products it sells online and in local shops. Tonight, though, the focus is on the 67 diners who battled the internet for a reservation for Noma’s Ocean Season, supposedly the restaurant’s final offering in its present iteration.
Our arrival is not unlike the opening scenes of The Menu, as an eclectic array of diners gathers in one of the greenhouses and waits to be invited into the restaurant. Each group gets to approach the grand shell-adorned doorway individually, pushing it open to reveal a line of staff who intone an enthusiastic welcome in unison. The dining tables are already covered in ingredients, from bowls of vibrant citrus to jars of ominous cod milt. It’s a way to tease the meal, as is the arrival of Soto, Noma’s head chef of two years, with his giant crab.
“We have a simple objective, which I think is the objective of any restaurant: to make people feel at home and give them delicious food,” Soto tells Observer. “It sounds so basic. But it really is about making people feel comfortable. The energy that exists in this place is wonderful. You can come for a fancy dinner and be in your suit and a dress, but next to you, there can be two people in shorts and sandals. As a team, we have the power to make both situations feel like it’s no problem. You’re welcome to be here, be who you are and enjoy your meal.”
It’s that approach that elevates the Noma experience. The food is, of course, memorable, with innovative flavor combinations and premiere ingredients like the aforementioned king crab. But it’s the vibe of the staff and their encouragement of a buzzy dining room that sets the meal apart from other high-end restaurants.
“We have an incredible menu, but you can serve that menu in another setting in total silence, and you would be like, ‘What is happening here?’” Soto says. “It needs to be surrounded by people and service that is a little bit loud. I have seen how that can move people and how people sometimes get really emotional about it because they’re being received in a certain way.”
The six-and-a-half-pound king crab isn’t the only ingredient that shows up at the table in a rather unexpected manner throughout the meal. Later, after a strong start of four crab dishes in succession and a surprising take on mussels that incorporates fresh cheese, a server appears with two enormous live scallops in their shells. She places them on the table and gently strokes one so we can see it move. For a moment, I’m convinced this is an Oldboy situation and we’ll be asked to devour one that is still twitching. But she quickly takes them away, returning only moments later with the completed scallop dish. Each scallop has been seared on one side and presented in a rich sauce. Technically, it’s now dead. But it’s as close to a living mollusk as I will ever eat.
“When you have an ingredient that’s so incredible, you want to show it off,” Soto says. “We want people to be as excited as we are about what we’re trying to cook. I love that we are able to serve a scallop that is still contracting. That’s crazy.” The method highlights the scallop’s flavor in a unique way. “I’ve worked in other restaurants where you serve scallops, but normally, you prep in the morning and take them out of the shell,” Soto adds. “They’re fresh, but they’re not dancing in front of your eyes like these.”
Ocean Season—one of Noma’s three distinct dining seasons, along with Forest Season and Vegetable Season—emphasizes the sea and everything that comes from it. There’s a salad showcasing several types of seaweed, mussels, squid accompanied by Danish poppy seeds and the aforementioned crab variations, which included a broth served directly from a shell that’s been sealed together with wax. Another spotlights the cod milt (which, for the uninitiated, is fish sperm). It took some self-convincing for me to enjoy it, but it was an easier feat for my accompanying friend, who didn’t realize what, exactly, was on the plate until later. But Soto says Noma’s goal isn’t to challenge its guests.
“We serve what we think is exciting,” he says. “It might be something new and delicious. But what is delicious for me might not be delicious for you. And the more you look into new things and try to make new things delicious, the more things might be different from what people are normally used to eating.”
So although Noma has notoriously served reindeer penis, reindeer brain and duck heart on prior menus, Soto confirms, “you don’t want to serve a menu that is just guts.”
“We don’t want people to be challenged by new things and textures for the whole meal,” Soto says. “I think we serve a menu that we would also like to eat, that we feel is complete, that has different textures, and that talks about the ingredients that are available in this moment, in this region.”
The menu for Ocean Season 2025, set to run through June 27, is fluid and ever-evolving. What I ate won’t be what someone eats this week. And even on the same night, one diner might enjoy a slightly different meal than the neighboring table. Our menu consisted of 15 dishes, each of which was prepared for 67 people. Sometimes, there is a limited amount of a particular garnish, which means the kitchen will vary dishes slightly, although everyone receives roughly the same menu.
“Right now, for our seaweed salad serving, we use wild herbs,” Soto says of the ability to improvise. “But we probably don’t have enough of one single herb to put it in all the 67, so we play around with it.”
The menu for each season takes about two months to develop. Soto, who is originally from Mexico City, first joined Noma for its Noma Mexico pop-up in Tulum in 2017 as part of its test kitchen. He had interned at Noma a few years earlier, and Redzepi, Noma’s co-owner and creative head, later called him out of the blue with a job, which led to Soto eventually becoming the head chef in Copenhagen. His role is to take the dishes created by the test kitchen and execute them perfectly during every service alongside dozens of chefs. The prep each day is immense, but Soto emphasizes that Noma is a team effort.
“It’s not really about the hours it takes to do something because we can always reduce the effort,” he says. For example, a meticulous task like de-seeding 67 tiny seeds is faster if the 40 chefs do it together. “You’re done in three minutes,” Soto says. “The way people get faster at doing things by just being faster, but it’s also by having all these collective minds looking at one problem.” By taking advantage of that collective mindset, “there’s always someone who will find an easier, faster way to do things.”
The adage “too many cooks in the kitchen” doesn’t apply here. For Soto, the number of people is the restaurant’s strength. Some are full-time employees and others are on lengthy stages, which last for the entire season. The staff come from around the world, which is another asset. Soto feels that the intermingling of cultures in the dining room and in the kitchen ensures there is “respect as the number one thing.”
“It can be a challenge if you’re not ready for it because everyone has a different way to be and a different way to communicate,” he says. “But it’s amazing. There are so many ideas to share.”
One of the restaurant’s most notable visitors was Jeremy Allen White, who came to Noma to shoot the most recent season of The Bear. In the third season premiere, White’s character, Carmy, is shown in a flashback working in the restaurant’s kitchen, with a cameo from Redzepi.
“The show is also part of the [hospitality] industry,” Soto says. “It’s a story, but they are making an effort to shed some light into the industry and into the struggles of some of the people who work in the industry. To me, we were just helping our colleagues in the industry to spread their message.”
He adds of training White, “It was important to bring them in and to really show them what it’s like: ‘This is what you need to do to do it correctly.’ We treated Jeremy like a chef in the kitchen. He was actually really good. We had him do some knife scoring on some squid and it was pretty shocking to see he had chef skills.”
Noma’s global impact has been felt on more than just The Bear. Last year, Redzepi co-created and hosted the Apple TV+ series Omnivore, about particular ingredients like salt, tuna and coffee. Noma Projects offers food lovers the opportunity to bring flavors into their home kitchen, with products like mushroom garum and yuzu corn hot sauce, as well as the newly-launched Noma Kaffe coffee. Walking around Copenhagen, the impact is undeniable—many former Noma chefs have their own restaurants, like Rosio Sanchez’s Sanchez, and many others take clear inspiration from Redzepi’s vision.
Soto remembers Copenhagen being a very different city when he first arrived in 2012. Noma was still in its previous space, which is now home to Thorsten Schmidt’s standout eatery Barr, and many of the islands were inaccessible on foot or bike. Today, Noma is farther out from the center of Copenhagen, but very well-connected and shares a neighborhood with the Copenhagen Contemporary museum and the beloved Hart Bageri (from Noma collaborator Richard Hart).
“Go to almost any restaurant that is doing something in the city, and you will know that someone there came through Noma or has worked with someone who used to work here,” says Soto, who names Pompette and Jah Izakaya & Sake Bar as two of his favorite spots in Copenhagen. “The same goes for restaurants all around the world. It’s crazy how much has changed. Tourism in Denmark is motivated by gastro-tourism, and Noma has played a big part in that. We can’t host all of the people who come here for food, so they visit other restaurants that are related and go to Torvehallerne.”
He cites the emergence of natural wine around Copenhagen and the increase in less typical ingredients in the supermarkets as part of how Noma has impacted the culinary landscape of the city. That’s not entirely down to Noma, of course, but the restaurant has been part of a movement encouraging a broader, more natural approach to ingredients and products. “It’s a different culinary universe here than it was before, and I like to think that has to do with the influence of this restaurant,” Soto says.
In early 2023, Redzepi told The New York Times that he had come to believe that the fine-dining business model was “unsustainable,” adding, “We have to completely rethink the industry.” In the interview, he said Noma, initially opened in 2003, would close for regular service at the end of 2024. Not only did the restaurant not close, but Noma staged a second pop-up in Kyoto and opened for Ocean Season 2025. As of now, no one outside the restaurant knows what’s coming when the season culminates in June.
Soto is cagey about what his role will involve when that day arrives. “As we go into our next stage—or stages—I will still be able to lead the team in whatever setup we have going on,” he says. “Whatever future we’re moving into, I know there will be space to be focused on leadership and helping each individual in the team grow into a future that can be long-lasting.”
During our dinner, there’s no sign that Noma could be nearing the end of a chapter. The energy remains high until the very end of the meal, which finishes with a realistic-looking starfish crafted out of chewy caramel. It’s a dish that has been present on past Ocean Season menus, in various forms, but this one is an almost perfect reconstruction of the actual animal thanks to molds the chefs created in Japan. Soto calls it a “really refined version of what we’ve gone through over the years”—a description that could also apply to Noma itself.
“As a chef, you come every day to a restaurant like this with a feeling of, ‘Am I ready for this today?’” Soto says. “You know that something in the day is going to throw you a curveball, sometimes big and sometimes small. And you’re constantly surrounded by people who are pushing themselves. There’s always something to prove to the person next to you. And that push makes you better.”
He adds, with a nod to the future, “Noma always has cool things on the horizon, and there’s always another new challenge. We’re never settled. We’re constantly changing things to make us feel like there’s something cool to do tomorrow.”
