'Noma 2.0': No Compromises, With René Redzepi

If you haven't signed up for a discord channel, please do so at majordomamedia.com. There's a link that will take you to our wonderful discord community. Chrissing is still on the chapping block. You guys do not love him enough, but we got some great discounts, whether it's a Cook any day, comment here, athletic brewing, Roy. This is Roy's Panatone. No offense to my friends that make Panatone. It's the best. Well, we have. I think it's right up there. You know what's weird. I think you guys might have overlap when you were at Elbohiet. Oh, Renee and Roy. Yeah. He works there. Yeah. I didn't know. Yeah. Crazy. That guy CV is insane. Totally insane. You need that right? PRMA. All kinds of crazy shit. But that's cool. That's cool. That's cool. And you can only get that discount through our discord. Discord. And all things Momofuku, shop. Momofuku.com. There's a discount code there on Discord as well, but the instant noodles and all the salt spices and chili crunch. But by the way, I tried some delicious things before getting the bon gaz Verne. How do people get the Noma products? Can they? Yeah. They can if they're quick. Is there a website that you do direct people to? Yeah, we have Noma projects website. I should know it by heart, but for some reason, I don't know if it's Nomaprojects.com or it's not that hard to put in the URL or the Google. Google it. This is some Danish shit right here. The guide can't even promote it. So it's a product. Yeah. Nomaprojects.com. com. No more projects.com. That's where we sell the things that we have made. And that has made Noma. And no discounts for you. Full price. No, it's funny. Like, he brought some over. And Hugo is just he's crazy for smoke mushroom. Garam know that there's a new product. I won't talk about it, but he hoarded it. Tim would. Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. I think you're going to see it a lot of places. Hopefully in my pantry and not easy for people to copy and copy poorly as many things that have been done. There's one thing about mail and stuff. It is not easy to copy. Not to copy correctly. We'll get into that in a second. Anyway, uh, visit us on our discord and all things momo Fuku a shout out momo Fuku and www.nomaprojects.com. Let's get into the show. What we did today, Changcho, part of the Ringer podcast network presented by Major Dominguez. Thank you. You'll let tingle as always. We have a special guest today all the way from Denmark. I was about to say Scandinavia, but is that even accurate to get any of you? Yeah, it is accurate. Yeah. One of my close friends, we've known each other a long time and it was too long. It's been too long to see him and there was a stretch where we would see each other multiple times a month for many years. Weirdly enough. Those days are probably never coming back to the chef community. Never never. So it was a nice little time. I'm glad that it happened, but welcome Renee. He's been on this podcast before. Why are you why are you here in America? We have a book. I thought it was the shameless plugin was ending. It's called nomatupino and it's available everywhere. Right off the bat, Renee. Yes. I have a problem with your book. Noma 2.0 because this is the second location of Noma. You've moved and basically reopened open a new restaurant. But in reality, this is like Noma 2000 point out. Well, you guys have changed so many iterations of what you do and who you are all the time, but you draw a line this year and explain to people who don't know why it's 2.0 really. Well, we're coming into a 20th anniversary. But if I go back in time to, let's say, eight years ago, Noma had gone through incredible success. It was fantastic. And it gave us so much opportunity, but at the same time, it was also very limiting in a strange way, particularly creatively. We got so defined with each success, people started to pigeonhole us and define us into suddenly we're the foraging restaurant or the fermentation restaurant. And I told myself every day, just go to work and play around work as if you have nothing to lose. But the reality was, it wasn't like that. And so at one point, I said, if you know, how are we going to break this? And so we decided just to close the restaurant and move a kilometer down the street. And we found this incredible location on the water right next to Cristiania, which is this free town. And so as we are closing up, I'm also thinking to myself, what if we just move one kilometer down the road and we just do the same thing as we've done always? And that's when we start doing our pop-ups around the world where we went to train and learn. And then we opened Noma 2.0 five years ago, but it feels like we've been there 20 years because of the pandemic. It really does. It feels like we've been there forever already. It's crazy. Three years. Yeah. That's how long it's been since the three of us, side and a room at least. Yeah. We haven't seen each other since the beginning of this thing. No, which is wild. It's the first time. I mean, and maybe even in America, you know, I don't think Americans are understanding this war in Russia and with Ukraine, how much that is affecting people in Europe. You spoke about a little bit yesterday about the energy? I mean, people are afraid. Russia, we can kind of throw a rock to Russia from Denmark. It would be like, I could drive to Russia if I wanted to. Scandinavia or the Nordics, Finland is a sporting with Russia. And there's a nervous energy around. And besides that, there's also this energy crisis. How much more expensive are so for next year in 2023, we have energy cost that's gone up 700% for no more. And that's just in general. So in the restaurant industry, that results in, you know, the fishmonger saying, Hey, I know, no, no, no, no, it's busy, but just everyone else, they've ordered 20% less this December or this November December. Same thing is for the green growth, sir. And now we're starting to see, you know, people tapping out even this year in Denmark. Can you imagine in Denmark to the major ice skating rings? They've cancelled this year's ring because the energy cost that too high to keep the ice frozen. And we're in Denmark. Right. I'm trying to put that I think Americans here like, Oh, no, the two ice ricks are closed. Nobody cares. But like, that's like big deal for you. It's sort of the official Danish. They're like saving where they can on energy. Right. And it would be like, if Major League Baseball was like, we're going to reduce the league by four teams this season just to like keep costs. Imagine in New York City, what's the ice skating ring at the Rockefeller Center? If they said this year is not happening because there's not enough energy. It would never happen in America. What are the country can we deplete before we do that? There's always a barrel of oil. What else can we burn? Things are harder than ever. It is wild. So we came out of the pandemic. Finally, it felt like, okay, this is ending. It felt good. We started to travel and people were happy. And then just like that, you know, you wake up one morning. And I remember we had guests from Ukraine, chefs, they were sitting and they were like really nervous and we speak into them and I say, Oh, surely there won't be a war next day. The war happened. And now the nervousness is back to many people in Europe. For sure. Yeah. It feels like, I mean, Chang, you were saying we were driving in the car and you were like, I feel like something like this is a, people think we're coming out of a dark time. It's going to be a bad year. Yeah, you don't need to get me started on like my rosy picture of the world. Don't don't don't awake in that part of Chang. Yeah. Renee, see it. How many books now have you written? So lot. Well, it's three and probably many more to come. It's more than three, I feel like. And if there's a four of these in there, they've forgotten the one we don't need a time. The one that we made a thousand copies of, it's basically like a booklet. Yeah. I mean, I, that, that book has destroyed somewhere. I had that somewhere. That's like, I think that's worth a lot of money. Yeah. It is. It's very, I know you don't even own a copy. I don't have a copy anymore. We made a thousand of them. Yeah. I had, I think I had one, I gave another one away. I don't even know. But so of the ones that they're actually in in the world, there's the Noma Cookbook, the first Noma Cookbook, the time and place, which came out in 2010 and 2010 was a pivotal year for Noma because we, you know, that was the year where Noma became Noma in for the wider audience. We became number one in the world on the so-called list. And then Lombard Hold, this book we'd been working two years on came out in the same year and it was an explosion. This idea of time and place just became of them of that moment. And then actually it's four books. And then I did my journal. And then came the fermentation book, which has been a fantastic book for us. And now this is the book that just come out, which is by far the biggest book we have done. There's actually 200 recipes in it. And the recipes there are actually online. You have to access them through a QR code in the book because the book is already, you know, very big in a way, it's like three kilos. And if you had to put in full recipes, these are the most detailed recipes. There's all that six points, six pounds for you by. Okay. I was like, oh, cool. And, yeah, so if we put that in, it was like 700 pages, but it is the most detailed book we've ever done. And it's actually the book that I feel like I'm the most proud of. And I will also mention that there's two co-authors of the book, Jun Takahashi and Mehta Super, which is, you know, two of the nomah veterans who we've done the book together. They've been there a long time too. Yeah. Mehta has 10 years anniversary next year. Jun is 12 next year. At the end. And he's only 14 years old now. So, okay. So, I know you're publisher. I know Artisan Ano Liyah, a great affection for her. But tell me what the book is that like the publisher really wanted from you and what is the book that you said you wanted to do. Because there's always a difference. No, but that was honestly for this book. First of all, we have an idea that we're going to make a book about nature. That is coming at one point. We're going to call it Noma in nature. And it's going to be about foraging about how we interact with the natural world, how foraging has given us so many things. And that's sort of in the works, but we just convinced Artisan that we needed to do this book and it had to be exactly how we did it at the restaurant. Nothing in between. Even though that many people, I would say, well, almost all people can cook from that book. It had to be an exact representation. Why did you feel that? Why did you feel like it had to be exact? Because I'm very tired that everything when it comes to food has to be. I'm not going to say dumb down. But why can't you be allowed to say this is our work? This is how we do things. Why does everything have to be done in a home kitchen? Why can't you have it be an inspiration for how to look at ingredients? To see how do you put things together? It's a body of work. It's a book of creativity of ideas. Why do you always have to make it so that, oh, I can go down to whole foods and create 10% of it? I don't agree with that. What's wrong with 10% of it? This is my 10% of no-mom meal here. Well, you know, we did the fermentation. We're going to be fantastic to see how many people attack in us daily because they're actually really using it in the kitchen. I love that. But why make a no-mom book that's not a no-mom book? I wouldn't understand that. But I mean, there was no other way that it could be. You know what I mean? I can never imagine you making a book that isn't no-mom. If that makes any sense, I don't want this on the ass nine. But there's no compromise in that. I don't want to compromise. Who would never happen? No, and why should anyone compromise? If you're compromising, you are making a decision with that it's been okay. I could never, of the 20 years, we worked at no-mom all the hours, all the people that's been in there and done all this hard work. And then to publish a book and we can't do what we want, we can't showcase the exact work. There was no way. So I would rather never publish a book. I'd rather never do anything like that again if it can't be the way we wanted. So if I'm an aspiring younger, as a younger, as an age, but I'm just starting out in business, I buy this book and I'm buying this book like I would buy DeCosta's cookbooks. In some way, I view that as a comp to this generation. If you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about with DeCosta's book, that means that you're younger on this unchecked. But he had a whole series of books and then that turned into Farhan and Albert's books. I feel like the Noma cookbook, at least from the professional setting, is now that I'm taking this seriously. I want to learn and I'm going to copy as much as I can. Right? I think you see that. What do you want from somebody that's open in this book? What do you want them to take away? That cooking is wonderful. That the creativity in cooking is incredible. There's so much to learn. The ingredients out there go out and search, find the foods, put them together in new ways, be inspired, dig deep into the recipes. Some of the recipes are 17 pages long. There's a lot to unpack and learn from them. We have techniques in there that's taken us five, six years to perfect and they're in the book. Just take them and learn and do something with it. I think that's perhaps the most important subject in this book is that you have to take your time. But at what point for somebody that is, when you're in this business at some point you're emulating and copying until you don't, do you feel that with these books, people are not finding their own voice because I feel like a lot of people, whether it's even MoMo or NoMo or a handful of other restaurants, you see it being copied. Things being copied. To some degree, when you're reading a recipe, you may not even realize that you're being influenced to a point, I think how do you encourage somebody to still find their voice when they're trying to also copy? I think you have to copy. What's your advice to someone that's trying to find their own voice as a cook to be like, okay, now you have to not do this. You have to do what you want to do. It took you a long time to find your voice. Oh, yeah. And I remember that. It was such a powerful moment. You're like, aha, I'm going to do it this way because what was cooking in Copenhagen before? Cooking in Copenhagen in the early 2000s and 90s, it was bad versions of French food and okay versions to bad versions of Italian food. That's what existed. The Danish food or it didn't really exist like that. And I don't know. For me, one of the most important things was to travel. And I think I would encourage anyone who has the opportunity to do that. For me, I just, you know, I worked as much as I could. I started in a kitchen when I was 15 and I worked all the time. I saved every single dime and you know this about me, Dave. I've never been the type to go out and to drink and party. I'm always the first to leave anything. He's a real, that's what he's best at. Not being a great, great chef. Right. The best to leave for a group of people. For a Danish man, he's really mastered the Irish goodbye. But even when I was 15, 16, 19, 20, I just went home. I saved my money. I would go and travel and do these internships around the world. And that's when the curiosity started happening for me. That's when I started learning that perhaps I can go home and there's more to it at home. But what was the point? And I think this is where I would like people because I want more diversity in this food world to not copy you to a certain degree or a Noma or any other great restaurant. Because you have to at some point. And it's like what Jerry Saltz always says. At some point you have to copy until you don't. How did you find that moment? You know what? No. I'm going to do it this way. And they're all going to make fun of me, which they did. Yeah. I mean, there are many important moments. And well, if I can I go a little back in time to answer this because I feel like I need to. Well, first of all, I'm an apprentice. I am young. I mean, a small little restaurant is called Piawndai, the chef, he's French and he's in the kitchen. And I'm working there. I started when I was 15 and you know, I went from being a child and suddenly you're working 80 hours, sweating on the stove next to him every day. One of the most important moments for me happens in that kitchen. And that's a moment when the chef, I'm at in pastry. We're only three people in the kitchen. And he says, you know, it's Saturday we're cooking desserts for the staff, a staff of seven only in a restaurant that's seated 20. And I cook a freshly spun vanilla ice cream. And with that, I had roasted a pineapple all day long in caramel and I added saffron last minute to this caramel. And this pineapple was, you know, gold and like a sunset. I was just so mesmerized myself. Some young and this, we're talking in the 90s, right? Today like braised pineapple with vanilla ice cream is brazowy food. But I served it up and he came back for seconds. And then next morning he was fiddling around with papers, he was making a new menu and he said, "Hey Renee, by the way, that dessert you did, I put it on the menu." And for me, it was just a moment I had never perhaps experienced in my entire life, like this trust and this incredible pat on the shoulder. So that's really when it started for me to tell the truth. That was the fire that started this thing I've had in me ever since. That moment I can really boil it down to that. Then, you know, I go traveling, I am a sous chef in Copenhagen, I learn lots of things, a little master of many skills. And then I open Noma and at that time we didn't really know what it was going to be. We just told ourselves that she used more local ingredients. But we had no clue how to actually put them together because you can use local ingredients. But if you're making a casoulet, it's still a casoulet, even though that beans are Danish, you know? And then at one point I'm in the kitchen, I'm actually have my sous chef at the time. He was a man. with us for 10 years, Tolston Bill God. - Big man. - Big man, he's like a true Viking. Two meters tall, a giant man. - Gentle soul. - Just imagine when a guy named Tolston Bill God looks like a Viking show. - He's taken out of the Viking show, but a very gentle soul, and we are trying to do a menu. Back then we changed the menu every month. And we are looking towards Spain, and they were like, every month you were seeing this new gadget or this new hydrochloride that was doing something special to the ingredients. And I remember vividly me and him standing there. I had my knife and I had a cutting board, and I looked to myself, and I said to Tolston, we're gonna do the exact opposite for a while. We're gonna see if we can do this with nothing. Just using our hands on knives and a cutting board. Literally, that was the decision we did. And on that menu, we made this tartar. There was, it was scraped with a knife, and it was covered with sorrow leaves. - Woodruff too, right? - Woodruff as well. - Is this the muscox? - It was started with muscox, tartar muscox, and then we had this paste of a tarragon with all these wild condiments in it. And you had to eat it with your fingers, and there was another dish of sorrow granita with sheep milk mousse. We had this dish with lemon soul that was cooked with potatoes, brown butter, and then rams and capers and nettle shoots. - Rams and capers are like ramps. - Ramp berries. - Ramp berries that we had made capers from. - Wait, hold on, really quick. I just wanna, I'm gonna have to, did you add, Jane, did you ever actually taste that muscox dish? - Yeah, I mean, I can remember this, 'cause I wasn't right there, or probably I went there like a year after there, but I was there for me at a point when, before the shit got crazy for both of us, and I remember thinking I'd not seen anything like this, and it was a moment where now, years, years later, it was like, go an electric. - Yeah. - You know what I'm gonna say? - There's almost a thing, you were talking about the point of these books and everything and the NOMA effect. There was a moment just then, the chain where both of us already knew instantly. - Well, yeah, because that dish is a, I always think of like a how an art critic might think about this, because it would be in the pantheon of dishes, whether Renee thinks it's the best dish you ever had. No, that's not the point. It's a dish that changed the trajectory of what NOMA could be, because it seems like a simple idea. If you look at it, you can Google it. It's a beautiful looking dish. But in 2022, 2023, that may seem almost like, past saying now, because you see that a lot, but at that time, that plating, and what it was, was revolutionary in fine dining, because you're encouraged to eat it with your hands. It is now ingredients that look familiar, but it's not. And it didn't taste like any, it tasted good, but it was like a tactile thing. And it was exciting. And I picked that up right away and I was like, oh, this is something is happening here. And it took the world some time to understand, but I remember that dish. It just when you were described, it was like, yeah. - But you were just saying, we're talking about what you want a young cook to get out of NOMA 2.0 out of that book. But I remember, I never got to taste that dish. My first time in NOMA was like 2011 or something like that 2012. And I remember standing in kitchens, though, with NOMA time and place and just cooks just gathered around. Like you've talked about many of these types of books, Shane, but this is the type of book, this is the type of dish that people just sat and stared at. - Yeah, and imagine what it tastes like. - For me, it was a French laundry cookbook, as it was for you. - Just imagine what it might taste like. But to me, like that dish, I knowing these stories, and it's like, that's what I want. I love this business, even though I hate it simultaneously. But I love that moment of like that addiction of like that lightning bolt. And I just want more people to take that chance to fail on their face, flat on their face, because even though you made that dish, how many were bad? - So many. - So many. - And it was so many years of apprenticeship for you to be like, fuck it, let's do it this way. - Yeah, 100%. - My fears people don't know how to fail forward on that, you know? - Well, I mean, you're talking about, we're talking about this dish was maybe 2004 or '5, when we did it first. Imagine 2004 and '5, did Facebook even exist? If it did, it was probably just that Stanford University. I mean, everything was different. You still smoked in restaurants. You know, there was big candelabras on all restaurants. You know, it was just such a different time today than to today. And so how can you ask if you are a young cook and you're opening a restaurant and you know that within probably on the day that you open, you're gonna be hordered with food influences, probably even critics. How can you have time to fail? You don't have time to fail. - Well, that's the thing I think is the secret ingredient to make one of the main ingredients is the success of Nome and all the people have gone through it. Those first two years in the wilderness, really? Before food became food, before it became glamorized on blogs, the blogs didn't exist. Really, there was no camera phones, no nothing. And it was in this weird period where I don't know if it can be recreated again, but I know that I can relate to this too. You were able to almost go out of business. - Several times. - Several times. Taste that failure, oh, just taste. You're not eating it, putting your feet to the fire where it's like third degree burns, but you're getting out of that and you go back in and you keep on fucking up and fucking up. That failure is dangerous advice, because if you didn't have that chance, if you open up Nome now, there's no way it is today what it is. You don't have that ability to grow into make mistakes. - For sure not. - Well, there's also another thing that I see between the two of you when I think about Momofuku and I think about Nome as well, though, where like, well, you just described Renee, where you basically saw everyone was playing with hydrocolytes. Everyone was trying to pretend they were Spanish and you said, we gotta go the other way. Everyone's digging, we got a zag. Like, Chang, you got that too. - Well, but here's the fucking fun, important note. He's not saying no to hydrocolytes. - He's not, he just think we to be something else. - But you can't say no until you know how to use that. - That's right. That's the part that you did. - You knew how to do all that. - She worked at LB, I mean, in like, in the words of moment, we were all learning how to use hydrocolytes. So you saw a lot of the similar attributes. - It was like, I feel like I should say that I love Elburi. To me, it is the restaurant, the greatest restaurant of all time. - But you knew if you were gonna be, like Chang's talking about voice and you knew that if you were gonna carve out your own area, you had to do something else. Just like, I mean, Chang, you worked in only like, like Western French kitchens and then you were like, you know what, if I need to carve out something for myself, I gotta do something else. - You know, I will remember one thing when the first meal I ever had with your place. And today it's so benign, but raw oysters with kimchi juice. - Yeah. - Oh yeah. But imagine you're coming from Denmark. - Yeah. - To New York City. And you have a taste like that. It is so new. - Yeah, that's a boy. - And today, today is like, you see it everywhere. This sort of fermented with an oyster or something, the fermented flavors. It was just so mind blowing. I will never ever forget it. - But the thing is like, I appreciate, because I know he gets that too, but these are the little things that happened back in the day that nobody really picked up on, except for if you were in the business. That's a simple thing. You're making a gel tin clarification. - Ba, ba, ba. - But nobody had done something like that. - Right. But my point was also that like, you guys also recognize a moment where it's time to change again. Where you're like, you could be at the peak of your power. And you both, I see it in both of you, where you're like, no, it's time to change again. Or we die. - Well, I'm more ADD than here. - Much more. - Much more ADD. Like Renee can soupy so fucking focused that I can't. - Well, you're bouncing around because you can't focus. But I guess I'm, so you've talked about a couple of these big moments that change as you go. Like the moments where you knew you're establishing your voice or you need to change it. So there's that first vanilla ice cream with pineapple. Then there's sort of these defining dish with torston. And then, you know, point 0 was when you had a rejigger again, but there was another moment. And I don't know if you recognize this too. But I think that between, you know, we basically would get to eat at Nomo once a year for the mad symposium. And I remember there was a point where, you know, a lot of the dishes at Nomo at one point were like pretty playful, you know, like you would, you would, you had your centerpiece of, you know, what people would think were just flowers and garnishes. And then you would say, and your next course has been on the table in front of you. Those branches are all actually made out of, or you know, they're baked and you keep them. And you could drink the flower bottle. You could drink all of this stuff. There was like the one minute egg where you would crack the egg at the table and they would cook there. I remember we came back that year after those dishes. And you had just been like, you had stripped away all of the, you know, I'll call them gimmick. You had stripped everything away down to like bare, deliciousness. And like that was a huge change to it. No, I felt like you guys made a huge pivot in that moment. Just recognizing it. And it was like, you could time it to the development of the lab, right? To me, it was like, it became much more about taking, extracting as much as you could from things that were not necessarily delicious and making it super delicious, which is quite frankly changed how you guys have made food. I think that was a real moment. Yeah, for sure. But we'll have to say that around that time, that's also when we had the neurovirus incident. And that is also-- Also, I'm scared you. I mean, imagine you are a restaurant term. and you have muscles on the menu. And these muscles are infected with norovirus. You can smell it, you can't taste it, you can't see it. They've seemed like a fresh muscle. 63 people turn sick. Cool business you guys got into, by the way. Just where to like-- But then imagine that every single media in the country, all the major news station, that TV cars, the big trucks, all of them, they're right in front of your restaurant, the day that the world finds out, "Okay, you're poison people." It was terrible. And I think that was also a moment when let's call in the gimmicks. We just got so focused. We were like, "Okay, either we're gonna close from all of this because it was really bad times." And I think that was a fuel as well for us to say, "Okay, let's focus. Let's hone in. Let's be Vikings in a way. You know, like, go to war." But I'm not making this up right. In the wake of norovirus, you guys made another pip. You were just like, "Fuck it. You gotta go. You're gonna have to pass harder and just go after it." It was a very different menu. It was like a fashion show. You look at these periods. Yeah. I mean, again, I wouldn't wish this appeared like that for anyone, honestly, even though there was so fruitful phenomena. Yeah. I don't know how to like convey that message to people is to find your own voice, seems such an easy thing to do. But man, it is so difficult. Well, another thing I've always admired about-- I have to-- One thing I also have to say about this is, finding your own voice, I still think we're looking for it. Yeah. I feel like we're there. On those moments, though, that you can sort of crystallize. And I think they're pretty clear now in retrospect how different it was because it was just like this-- all of these little things, the zeitgeist thing that happened, you know, in a change is the game. Yes, it does. But you don't know it until you try. And you have to be in total fear to do that. And you guys kept on doing it. I must be in fear all the time. Yeah. You talked about as like going electric. As you're talking about this, I can't help but think music is the best analog where it's like, you are always finding your voice, but you change your sound and you have like an era of what you're doing. You're doing a new thing. You know, Dylan goes electric. Whatever it is, it's always these different eras defined by what's going on around you that change how you're cooking. I mean, if I have to think about it, my favorite period was that period. Not in a way because I'm trying to be like, oh, I was there before anybody else. My favorite period was first like 2006, right? It was electric. It was the reason why it was because it was the shock of the creation. That's when it happened in those years. It was so cool to see because it was still raw, right? It's not nearly as refined and I know you probably looked back on it and I was like, oh, that was so simple. Yeah, but now I know what you mean. And man, like getting to see that and tasting that and that process is like night and day to the food. It's completely different food than you're making now. But that was like a seminal moment for me because you're like, you're like, I'm there and you're seeing this process happen. It's very different. So Dave, when was the best time for you at Momofuco? I don't know. It's a different period. It's right. I think that first year, somber was like the worst back against the world, the worst. I never like nor I never ever would want to live that again. I have nightmares about going out of business every day. But the most amazing reckless creativity that you've probably had, right? Totally crazy. Totally crazy. But you miss that time though today right now. I don't. I don't. Okay. It's pain. Yeah. You know, pain because like I don't know how I don't know how to get to that moment of creativity without that. And I don't know if it is possible. I hope that you don't. I hope you can. And I hope that somebody figures out a way to do it where you don't have to get in that anguish through the hardship, like not having to experience nor a virus. Is it possible? I don't know. Yeah. Do you think it is? Well, I'm not sure. Actually, I'm thinking like, can you experience the adrenaline and like anxiety of a gun point at your head without having a gun? Every time no more pivoted, there was some we don't have to get into it. Some inflection point in your life. They caused it. That was causing it. And I remember talking in Australia many years back. I'm like, dude, and I saw it in your eyes like, oh, here we go again. It's going to fucking change. And I see it. And now before and now like trying to be as encouraging as possible. But that's what I wonder is it. Is it always stupid because we're taking that risk or is there a better way to do it? And I don't know. I don't know either. Right? It's a fucking weird chicken egg. It depends what you mean by better, I think, right? Because if you're chased, like you described this earlier today, the kind of person who like always wants something new and boundary pushing versus somebody who's like a craftsman. And there's, it's a beautiful way to go either way. The repetition and perfection of an arc, day in and day out versus what you guys both seem to be chasing, which is like finding the edge, finding the limit always. What are you chasing? I don't know anymore. It's like the pandemic's changed so many things. Every day, I'm like, you know, less involved with the restaurants in the day to day. But do I think about do I want to just do something open up something? I don't know. I'm less sure of anything these days. Would you would you want like a here's the David Chang eight counter restaurant. It's open four days a week and you're there. I would be open like two days a week, one day a week. But also it's like my cooking I think is very different than it was before. I would love it. I would love it. I still miss cooking. I want a table. I want to table that restaurant. Is that appeal to you though? Would you that appeal to you? That's like just you and your. I personally think that that is the future of this sort of creativity and the future of kind of special experiences is more more specialized and small and smaller and smaller. I agree. I like it in Japan. I sat in a second where you're going again. But to me it's like for me, I want to make things as simple and as pure as possible. So if I'm going to I think about I was like I just want to make Korean soups and stews and that would be my restaurant and charge like as much money as humanly possible. But everything is made from scratch and it's just like a ball of rice. Here's some soup and stew and some vegetables and you're done. But I'm making it all for you. And I want people to be nourished and to feel good and to feel happy without any of the bullshit. In a lot of ways that's how people in Japan cook anyway, at least those restaurants that are small counter. For sure. Well, I was going to say when you, you know, you're whenever we talk about like the sort of function of restaurants, what's indispensable about restaurants or what kind of restaurants are indispensable in the future? It's always barbecue sushi and no mind. Yeah, basically what we talk about. Can I ask you this? You know, these are the kinds of questions I had asked of if we were just having dinner or drinks. I remember when I was at LBE, I remember visiting Farron and he was just on the computer and he was just going through Flickr. Flickr was how it happened. I mean, it was well before Instagram. Sure. And I just saw him in a distance clicking through all of the people that were copying LBE. And that's what I knew. It made sense. He was like, I'm fucking done. Like, what's the point? No matter how much I create, it's getting copied almost immediately. I feel that one, one of the, in my opinion, one of the reasons why there's no point left in where the last iteration pre-pandemic when you moved in the new space, which seems like such a long time ago, which sort of feels like yesterday simultaneously. I feel like you saw so many people, when you see CloudBerry on a menu in Texas, like fucking the world's upside down. See Buckthorn. See Buckthorn and Iowa, stuff that's fucking wrong. People just, what you get? I'm not trying to say no, but it feels to me similar when you made the pivot. Like, you know what we're going to do? Something very different. The food that you make now, even though you've now laid it, you've given all the engineering and structure and recipes. Now it's like, we'll do it. It's not easy to make. And I think part of what it was was elevating the level, this is where it was different. It's elevating the level of execution and plating to a level where good luck. Good luck. Because now it's fucking skill. I'm not going to say that it wasn't, but now it's so much more intricate, but you're working more than ever to hide the seams in the construction. Oh, yeah. And now it's not easy. I see people trying to copy it a lot. And you don't look that good. I've seen a fair number of insects made out of dried fruit. I've seen a few of these for no. I mean, I think that's got to have been knowing you somewhat in your deep, in your mind, like seated as like, this is an answer to this. Maybe, maybe, maybe it was, if I can go back to the Farhan thing and, you know, everyone was copying him. I know with Farhan, Hanab is uncertain that what would have bothered him much, much more is the day when he was going on to flicker and there was no copies on it. That would have been much, much, much worse. And perhaps even for me too, if I can be honest about it. That's that juice, you know? Yeah. And so, we're all addicts. We're publishing books and there's Instagram and I was so inspired in my early years, particularly from Ducasse, from Michel Bois, huge inspiration, then came El Bulli. And at the time, in the beginning, I think Nomo was just a mix of all of that, strangely enough, you know, until you were able to mold it into something that. felt like this is me. This is actually what I enjoy. This is who I am. This is how I like to see things onto a plate. And even not only that, but this is also how things to be served. This is how I like the restaurant to look. This is how I like people to feel when they come in, you know, all of it. And I think that's also when it becomes, let's say, a unique restaurant. This when all of this belongs to something that is one signature in a way. In fact, you can say it like that, you know. It's not only the food. It's also the people. And how does it look? How are you serving the food? How do you want people to talk to the guests and all those things? I mean, it was incredible. I remember many, many years ago, read the book down in Under in Paris and London and by Orwell. And there's this moment where he's a dishwasher in Paris. Do you remember this? Have you guys read it? He's a dishwasher in Paris. And he says, look at these waiters. They come in from the street. They are like, they have barely enough clothes to keep them warm. And then they dress up in a suit. And for a moment, they act as if, oh, we are the same as you are, dear guests, you know. And then it resonated so much with me. This act. And I've worked in so many restaurants where it felt like we were acting. And I remember that moment just being, okay, at Noma, I don't want that at all. The chefs serve. Let's put the chefs inside the restaurants. They are so awkward. They don't know how to say anything. They have that dirty hands, dirty nails, tattoos all over piercings. And that's when also something different started to happen that actually complimented the food. And it was the beginning of a culture. I mean, I think you guys are, I mean, Chang, I think you're right that you're both the, you're of an addiction to this sort of the praise, the reaction you get from when somebody eats something in their mind is blown. But to both of your credit, there's also, you both have this real love for like just witnessing creativity and action. I think you both like to see that. I find that to be one of the most beautiful things when I see, when I'm with Renee and I see it happen. And oftentimes it's frustrating because he's actually best in class at that. I think, you know, sorry, go ahead. No, and I'm you know why do we have to be in a podcast for you to tell me this? I know you've been going over just every 20 years just telling him compliments. No, and it says he's like, there are times where I see it. I think what's better than you as a making food on this, which I'm trying to say this because like I don't think people can emulate certain things because I think what you do better is you're crafting. And I've seen you do it craft experience right from a guest perspective of a holistically what they want. And it's never just what's on the plate. It always ends in your head. God has to be tied to the feel to the tactile texture, everything. I don't know of anybody that like immediately like a fucking like beautiful mind's just it all connects. I've seen that several times. No, no better example than when we were in Slovenia. No, not Slovenia, the fuck where Austria. And you made a goddamn sushi restaurant out of that horse stable. No, yeah. With the moss sushi. Yeah. I was just like holy fuck. He was like one of those shows where you know, you come back in like 30 days and it's a holy different thing. And he did it in like two days and you're with really world class shops. And I saw that. And I was like, oh, it's now gotten to point for him where you were develop this muscle in your head where it can be done instantaneously. That to me is where no one's going to be able to copy what you have. They think they can, but I know that they can't. I mean, okay. So I do think the value of experience and the value of constant learning and the way you sort of build up your library in your mind of ideas and things that you can, you know, if you learn yourself how to actually open that library at the right time, which I feel I'm, this is one of my forces. I'm going to putting things in the right places in my mind and then take them in the mouth when I need them in the moment. Parad that with a fantastic team in the test kitchen. We are six people in the test kitchen. The one who's been the shortest time is eight years and the one who's been the longest is 15. And we're all still pushing. We're all challenging each other. Then suddenly creativity can seem like at warp speed because we put all this, but it has come with so much trial and error, so much reading, so much traveling, so many hours spent just chopping onions and doing all that we sort of extremely boring work to get this to get to this point in my career where I'm 45, I've been in the industry for 30 years. It comes with it with so much effort, you know, and I, when we talk about how can you get to this point as a young cook, I do still believe that this big amount of effort is necessary in the beginning. You got to have to just go out and absorb and learn and spend time doing menial things to learn it. It's almost like karate kit over again, you know. Do you think that it's creativity is better now with cooking or less developed because there's so much information, right? Imagine if your book, you know, I think it's less intuitive, it's less intuitive, it's less playful, it's more organized, which in some cases is better, but it used to be more playful, more based on intuition and craft. You know, all these ingredients come in. Let me put something together and you were challenged to make the dish of the day or the menu of the day. Like I'm thinking about years back where you're a lab and our lab were trying to figure out the miso and the split peel that just treating and for me, like talking about it because it hadn't been done in a standardized format. That took a long time. Now, every not every a lot of restaurants are making it and they don't have to go through that struggle of yeah figuring that out. Are we at a place where there's so many points of access in that information that it's a bad thing now? So how do you like untrain yourself to just like go out there and experience things? Is it possible? Because theoretically, cook and chefs should be more creative than ever, I think. Well, don't you think they are? I mean, don't you think there's more interesting things happening? I mean, I come to a place like LA and the quality of food, the quality of cooking, I mean, at the book signing today, there was a hey, I forget his name, but I'm Mexican and my girlfriend is Jewish and we have a Jewish Mexican deli, you know, there's all this creativity happening in in just a different way. I don't know, I'm maybe because you're here, but I felt like okay, LA is something bubbling here. I feel like Chang, the difference, I think what you see like today is like remix culture versus like writing original classics. Yeah, I'm a broken record on that. Sure. So I did want to say we should talk about Japan a little bit, but I did want to say one thing, you're talking about these young cooks and one thing I've I had I was fortunate enough to sit in on sessions of this at both your restaurants once at Newtlebar and at Noma, but you talk about young cooks finding a voice and one thing that I've always really found special and I know other restaurants do this, but I thought was really beautiful was like when you guys would do sort of like Saturday night projects, types of things like services over. This is not for the public. These dishes that like chefs from at Momo's all the restaurants at Noma, it's like all of your cooks can present something. None of this is like a test to get on the menu. None of this is like because we're trying to like bleed you for R&D. It's just like let's all just sit here after work and see what we can do. Like that kind of stuff like maybe that doesn't happen often and you guys talk about having test kitchens and labs and things like that. I know you guys probably were happier in those labs and you were actually working so this. Can I say it's especially from my perspective watching Noma less so from my perspective with the Lomo, it's doing things you're not supposed to do because they're not efficient. You know, you have to really struggle to do things that you're not supposed to do in an efficiency basis. I think as an organization grows, it's like it's hard to make space for that. It's harder to make space for it. It's more complicated. It's a desire and drive to make things more efficient. I think that you know, you have to make things work. Also, you drop creativity. Yeah. Having space for inefficiency means space for creativity. Like doing something that's point I actually really 100% agree with Dave on this for sure. Yeah. Like the more efficient and the more organized, even though creativity is also organization, but it's organization within four walls of do whatever you want. But now I do agree with Dave with this quite a bit that there's so much efficiency and we've been sort of pigeon like forced into this mode of aberration where it has to we have to have covers and we have to expand and so on and so forth that you just have to have the stuff on the menus that makes everyone happy or as many people as possible happy. I mean, when we first opened No Man those early years, we had many days a week when we have zero guests, zero guests. What? Not that I want to go back to that, but when I look back at it today, wow, that was special. Did you have? Okay. In those zero guest days, you show up to work and you knew you had zero buddy, zero people, zero buddy. Nobody in the in the in the book, no reservations. Would you just stand there waiting for a walk in? No, I would work. I dined at that restaurant and there was like three people there. I was like a solo. Yeah. I remember that. - At the craziest, right? Tell us the truth. How long is the wait list to get a seat at Noama? And it's like, - No, it's more, it's never been more crazy than now. - And what is it? Like thousands and thousands of people. - We can have thousands of requests for a table, for a Friday or Saturday. And how many people it is? I have no idea. - Back in the day, - Back in the day, Dave was one of three diners. - No real, I remember the table where I sat at, solo looking over the water where there's, yeah. - I've had days, many days where you come to work and there's zero in the book and the phone doesn't ring one time. And you think she said really? - Silence is definitely. - In this, there's a million people in Copenhagen and not one of them. - No, one of them wanted to do that. - Accidentally came. - Not one of them wanted to have dinner and not even call to check. And it's not like that it's Monday night. You know, we're talking about a Thursday night. And then on the Friday, you might have 12 guests. Let's get into Noma, Japan now, because we gotta get to dinner reservation. But a few months back, Chris and I were talking and weirdly, not weirdly, pond reflection. I think one of the most important moments that have happened that changed the whole game of food was when you guys were at Noma, Tokyo pop up. What year was that, 2016? - 2015. - 2015. - We had Ivan working on and he didn't realize, 'cause he was live broadcasting that on Instagram. - He was the first guest on the first date, on the first lunch. - And everyone I know was watching that lie. - Yeah, I know. (laughing) - Which is like, we've just been frustrating here and, but like, was crazy. That's a crazy thing to think about. - It changed, and it never happened before. - I know. - I was one of those people looking, I was like, "Clammed heart." (laughing) - And ever since that, - Not just clam, - Cigimi clam. - Cigimi clam. - That was like such a monumental moment in food because even though you weren't gonna go there. - It was 14 actually. - 14. - You were, that would have taken like four or five years without technology, right? Apocas magazine or some niche magazine that documented this dinner that you got it five years later. Like two or a couple of years. - Two or a couple of years. - Yeah. - Something about a black garlic leaf, finally trickling that thing. - And that that had happened immediately. I was like, "Oh, we shit." And I took some time and I said it as a joke, but it actually wound up being probably one of the more, you know, important moments in dining. - I remember that moment so well, we all did. And it was kinda, I like Ivan, let's say this, but it was kinda disappointing. - That's what we were like. - He just put all the magic out there. - He was like, "Oh, but it didn't stop." - I just stopped. - It didn't stop, no, because you wanted everyone to arrive there and have the surprise. I'm not having seen anything. - There's no more surprise. - You know, that's the thing. - Do you think you're gonna do like Dave Chappelle does in comedians and just put away their phones in a purse that they can't have until they, that would be impossible? - Because half those people, the truth is right, Renee, like half the people are paying the price because they want the pictures. - Yeah, I mean, I think people ask me this all the time and I say, of course we could, we'd still have guests, we'd still be full, but it is a thing that people just really want and enjoy. And it's like, you almost, it's almost disrespectful, I think, to people. Even though that, and funny enough, I was speaking to the team about this the other day because I remember the first moment that somebody had a smartphone out at Noma and filled me. And it was, I still remember the feeling of, I felt like, excuse me, you're filming me, you can't do that, you have to ask for permission. And, you know, a few weeks passed on and suddenly it happened again and again and again. And now it's just all the time. And so you can't, what are you gonna do? - Are you ready for this do pop up? Can you let everyone know if it's too late? If you're hearing of this for the first time, you don't have tickets to Kyoto. - Can you even get it? - It's sold out. It's the fastest we've ever sold out of anything. And we were so nervous about this one 'cause Japan had just opened, we had been planning this for two years. And yeah, it's sold out very quick. - Do you have a couple of extra large seats of a couple of big Asian boys who are in the way or a couple of just a couple? I'm excited for you guys, Japan is. - I don't know if Dave has, can he sit for like three hours for five? - No, no, okay. - Do you think that you think it's gonna take Dave three hours to eat the video? - I can't. - I put David on his body. First time David came to Noma. He sat with his eyes closed and like looked up in the sky and chewed and smiled to himself. He was so, he loved sitting out. And then fast forward like five years and he eats the entire menu in 37 minutes. (laughing) - With Cho, the famous dinner. - With Cho, I've never seen anyone inhale, you know the able to skewer the dumb. He inhale it, he like threw it up and he hit his tongue and he's like, (laughing) - I mean, that's me, that's me racist, but it was legitimate in the Kung Fu Panda eating the dumpling. - She's up in the air into the mouth. - Boop. - Even David Cho was shocked. - Cho was like, this isn't no boof. (laughing) I thought he was gonna know who that's really. - Yeah, she said, I'm eating with Garfield. (laughing) - That was a fun one. - What a, give us what people. So you've been in Japan, I talked, when I talked to you a couple weeks ago, you were doing the 88 temples walk, you've been doing some research. - Yeah. - Give us like a break us off a little taste of. - Well, you know, we're going in Sakura season, it's spring season. To me, that's the best moment to be in Kyoto. It's a fantastic moment because that's when all of Japan just turns bright green. All the wild shoots on the forest floor, all the wild plants and ingredients are coming out. Seafood is spectacular. Kyoto is the home of Kaseki cuisine, the finest expression of Japanese food, arguably where the Western tasting menu originates from. I mean, it's incredible for us to go there and learn from all of this. And to be able to mix this and make a fusion of it with 20 years of no-my experience, with all this culture and all these ingredients and all this knowledge, their existing Kyoto and put that together to a menu for our guests to enjoy. I think we're gonna do something special. I have, I am very, very worried about saying these things 'cause I'm afraid of jinxing things. So most of the time I don't say anything. And I hardly ever enjoy when things go well because I don't know why, but I've never been able to do that. But I have a feeling it's gonna be special this time. I really do. I think this is also the future in a lot of ways, making something that is permanently ephemeral. Mm-hmm. Yeah, good phrase. I like that. It doesn't make any fucking sense, but it does. But I do agree with you on that as well. Something that comes, there's all this effort, there's all this, I mean, we've been planning this for two years. We already have a team on the ground. We've been harvesting wild kiwis this summer in Kyo-Ni-E and Rao Kyo-To. We've done for Menson. We're gonna be there three months before the entire test kitchen to make this menu. Wild kiwi? Wild kiwis. We're gonna fly in 103 people from a team. So this is the part, okay. So this is the part that I actually think you're addicted to is like, there's something magical about getting to uproot your entire family basically, your restaurant family, and go on like a retreat with them for three months. Like Mexico was very special. It was so special. Nothing can never compare to that. And this is the sea, it's not about just like, oh, we get to take a vacation. But getting to go with everyone you work with somewhere, it's not a vacation. It's been Australia? It's not a vacation. It's not a vacation. You've done Tokyo, Australia, Mexico, and now Kyoto. And then you have plans for another one? Yeah, we do. I can't say. I can't say, I'll tell you afterwards, but then you can't tell anyone because it will be the most crazy thing, the one coming after that. But I will tell you this much. Yes. Yeah, really? You will never guess it, Dave. Never. Because it's so special. And I'll just leave it with that. Detroit, rock city. That'd be sick. Pre-pandemic, we had three pop-ups lined up. And funny enough, one was going to be in LA. The pandemic killed that. Then we had Istanbul and Tbilisi, Georgia. LA, this is why you can't have nice things. That's what it is. But Istanbul would be sick, too. Yeah, but I don't-- I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get there, but to Kyoto as much as I'd like to. But I mean, are you nervous? Yeah. But here's the thing. I know it's going to be fucking sick. That's the thing. Yeah, you're still nervous. Yeah, of course. To me, there's two types of nervous. There's nervous-- I don't know what I'm doing. There's nervous because I really want this to be special for everyone, our guest, for myself, for my kids, for my team. I really hope it's going to go well. Let's go and do the best that we can. I'm nervous about that. I know that as a team, as a unit, we're going to make something special. But I'm nervous for how it's all going to go, what's going to go wrong, and so on and so forth. I'm excited, nervous. It's a big, big, big, big difference to, I don't know what I'm doing, nervous. Well, there's nervous, and there's worried in your nervous. Yeah, there's worried nervous and excited nervous. Yeah. And if you haven't been to Kyoto during the course season, it is-- I will have to say-- I'm also worried all the time, by the way, about all sorts of things. That's something me and Dave share. I know. It's actually terrible. I know. Our poor wife. Your poor wife, your poor Chris is. I don't have a Chris. Well, if you do have a ticket to get to Kyoto, that's going to be amazing for anyone who's going to go. Oh, fuck you. I wanted one. I think if you figure it out, - Figure it out and get the Kyoto. I figured out. - You might have to wash them dishes, but-- - I might sit in the back, it's true. - We might be able to figure something out. (laughing) - Well, listen, Noma 2.0 is out now. You can get it at your local independent bookstore or your online retailer for books. You don't have to name that, giant company, but it's out now. Buy it, consume it. - NomaProjects.com. - Keep clicking until the garam shows up. - Yeah, man. - Garam and all the other things coming. - Again, my son does not like everything. And he tasted it and he was putting on everything. - And that's not the garam, it's a new thing. - New thing, I can't talk about it, but it's legitimately, I was like, fuck, that's so smart. It was so smart. - Got it there. - And everything else, which I can't say, which I was like, but I like it, but I'm hyping it up for real, 'cause it's like, it's fucking really, really delicious stuff. So, sorry, Chris. I don't have any for you. - Story of my life. (laughing) - Thanks for name. - Thank you so much. - All right, give us five stars. Have a year rate this, go check out NomaProjects.com and go buy Noma 2.0 out right now. (upbeat music)