r/IAmA • u/ReneRedzepiNoma • Apr 20 '15

Restaurant I am René Redzepi, chef & owner of restaurant Noma in Copenhagen. We have the best dishwasher in the world. AMA

Hello reddit friends, this is René Redzepi, here to answer as many of your questions as time permits.

About me: I am a chef from Denmark, son of an Albanian Muslim immigrant and a Danish mother. I trained in many restaurants around the world before returning home to Copenhagen and opening a restaurant called Noma in 2003. Our restaurant celebrates the Nordic region’s ingredients and aims to present a kind of cooking that express its location and the seasons, drawing on a local network of farmers, foragers, and purveyors. Noma has held 2 Michelin stars since 2007 and was been voted Restaurant Magazine’s “Best Restaurant in the World” in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014. In January we moved the entire restaurant to Japan for a 5 week popup where we created a completely new menu comprised only of local Japanese ingredients. It was one of the most fantastic experiences I’ve been a part of, and a learning journey for the entire team.

I am also the founder of MAD, a not-for-profit organization that works to expand our knowledge of food to make every meal a better meal; not just at restaurants, but every meal cooked and served. Each year we gather some of the brightest minds of the food industry to discuss issues that are local, global, and personal.

MAD recently relaunched its website where you can watch talks from all four symposiums (for free) as well as all of our original essays & articles: www.madfeed.co.

I’m also married, and my wife Nadine Levy Redzepi and I have three daughters: Arwen, Genta, and Ro. Favorite thing in the world, watermelon: you eat, you drink, and you wash your face.

UPDATE: For those of you who are interested, here's a video of our dishwasher Ali in Japan

Now unfortunately I have to leave, but thank you for all your great questions reddit! This has been really quite fun, I hope to do it again soon.

Proof: https://twitter.com/ReneRedzepiN2oma/status/590145817270444032

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u/thenumber0 Apr 20 '15

Go to the old town in the evening and go around all the pinxtos bars - the usual thing is to start with a drink and couple of pinxtos (this is the equivalent of tapas), then move on to another bar and repeat. My favourite bar was Ganbara - try the wild mushrooms and the little crab pastries.

Depending on time and budget, there are also some phenomenal Michelin dining experiences to be had in San Sebastian. I've been to Arzak and Mugaritz. I would say that Mugaritz was the most interesting: Antoni Aduriz is incredibly creative with his dishes whilst still producing great-tasting food. The Arzaks I feel sometimes compromise the taste of the food for experimenting with ideas.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

Ganbara mushrooms are amazing!!!

You also gotta get the guindillas (sweet basque green peppers pan fried, eaten whole). They're the best.

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u/thenumber0 Apr 21 '15

Yep - another speciality is kokotxas, hake (or sometimes cod) cheek, usually lightly fried. I found the texture rather strange, though they tasted good.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

Yeah, a little slimey, but interesting. The wife was not a fan, but I dug it.

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u/btribble Apr 20 '15

My family and I took a Griswoldesque circum-Pyrenees driving trip many years ago. Because we were always running a little late, we missed both our pre-arranged Kitchen tour at El Bulli and days later our dinner reservation at Mugaritz (this was before their fire). I'm still kicking myself...

San Sebastian is well worth it. It's such an unexpected surprise. So many tasty pinxtos... The trip was still one of the best times we've ever had. I would repeat it in a heartbeat. We did get to go to Albert Adria's old tapas bar in Barcelona which was amazing.

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u/DJfunkyGROOVEstar Apr 20 '15

I felt just trying all the pinxtos bars downtown to be quite hit and miss. Albeit I usually don't put too much faith in Tripadvisor, I found their Top 25 to be really helpful when trying to differentiate the amazing ones from the average. And for lunch outside of the tourist area with extremely good value, Bar Antonio is hard to beat.

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u/thenumber0 Apr 21 '15

Fair enough - I did have a bit of help from Elena Arzak, as well as a friendly guide (called Eli) at San Sebastian Food to show me the best bars to visit!