What I ate #1

Hi again,

A promise is a promise and keep the promise I will. But first - a prelude.  When we travel we follow more or less the same routine, sightseeing (shopping) by day and entertainment by night.  My husband (likes to think he) is a bit of a food connoisseur and makes a point of dining at at least one very posh, famous, 3 Michelin star, celebrity-owned, ranked-top-in-theworld restaurants in every city we visit. Hence, when we planned to visit Copenhagen last year, we thought of Noma. As you do.

We knew Noma had a waiting list of at least 3 months and we were only going to be there for 3 days, but my husband called them from Sydney and asked to be put on the list regardless.  I continuously teased him about it, until on our second day in Copenhagen he received a phone call from the restaurant.  It turned out that someone had cancelled their booking and there was now an opening for lunch.  Needless to say, we both immediately shouted YES. As superficial as it sounds, a meal at Noma was on our “bucket list”. 

People do not go there because they are hungry and are just after something to eat; rather, it's an opportunity to dive into the amazing and unique world of a super-talented man, to feel inspired by him, to share his unique approach to food and life, to taste dishes you cannot find anywhere else - in a gastronomic sense, that is.  We were served 17 dishes in total and, whilst they were all memorable, I will recount just a few. 

When the maitre d' showed us to our table, we noticed that the waiter was trying to re-arrange some flowers in a vase on our table.  We didn’t think twice about this until she pushed the vase towards us and there in the middle of the bloom were two edible snails, one for each of us.  It was challenge #1 and we had no choice but to tackle it, and tackle we did.  I must say, the snail tasted good. 

Our next challenge was presented to us in a non-descript glass jar full of ice with the lid screwed on tightly.  When the waiter open the lid and showed us what inside, we gasped.  There, on top of the ice cubes lay two very much still-alive shrimp. 

Yet again, we summoned up our courage and reached for the shrimp.  When I took mine out, it was still wagging its tail.  The waiter saw the horror on my face and took mercy on me.  He pushed some sauce towards us and told us first to dip the shrimp in it before popping them into our mouths.  I can’t honestly tell you what it tasted like but was relieved when it didn’t jump out of my throat. The following courses were of less adrenalin-pumping but still astonishingly challenging and unpredictable nevertheless. 

At some point, they brought us raw eggs, butter, two small frying pans, a bunch of spinach leaves and a timer, and explained that we had to cook our own egg omelette. We had a lot of fun with it. 

Another dish was a plate full of soil (edible, of course) with some exotic garden vegetables, the other – a recreation of the ocean bed with seaweed, shells and the like, every piece looked so natural that we had to ask a waiter for guidance as we couldn’t determine what was edible and what was just part of the setting.

As for desserts (my favourite part of the meal), there were several: berries in snow, chocolate buns in the shape of a huge snail and white chocolate in the shape of a bone, the role of bone marrow being played by salted caramel.