World’s best restaurant Noma to close in 2024

From 2025, Noma will operate as a laboratory supplying food and meals for the online store Noma Projects.

Copenhagen’s Noma, repeatedly voted the world’s best restaurant, will close in 2024. The reason is the constant overwork of the employees and insufficiently good working conditions.

From 2025, Noma will operate as a laboratory supplying food and meals for the online store Noma Projects. The restaurant also plans to open in a pop-up format as “enough new ideas and flavors emerge.”

According to Renee Redzepi, the restaurant’s founder and chef, the establishment has struggled to make ends meet and pay a decent wage for nearly a hundred employees in recent years. “We have to reinvent the industry completely. It’s just too complicated, and we have to work differently,” Redzepi commented.

The average check at Noma in 2021 was estimated at 5,300 DKK, the equivalent of $760. The restaurant has been voted best in the world five times in its history, including in 2021, when it was also awarded a third Michelin star.

Thus, the third chapter in Noma’s history will begin in 2025. The restaurant was already closing in 2016 when Redzepi took the concept with him to Mexico, Japan, and Australia. Project Noma 2.0 was launched in 2018 – the restaurant was based on three “seasons” – seafood, vegetables, and wood & forest. In the new lab format concept, Noma will open as a pop-up restaurant not only in Copenhagen but also in other major cities around the world.