I’d missed out on the restaurant’s other incarnations - Tokyo, Tulum, Sydney - so I was determined to be present for this one. I jumped on the reservation queue back in November 2022 as soon as it opened and got a table for four in a scrum that filled out the Ace immediately. And like any community, privilege is key to standing: Booking at Noma Kyoto’s very limited run (March 15 to May 20) provides bragging rights for a lifetime of dinner conversations. The world is an enormous place, but the community of food lovers can make it feel like a small town. David Muñoz of DiverXo in Madrid was in attendance at the same time as Rasmus Munk, who runs the extravagantly theatrical Alchemist, the latest Copenhagen rival to Noma. My booking was for dinner, but lunch at the hotel was a particular magnet for famous chefs keen to see what Redzepi was cooking up.

Of course, we discussed who else was headed there.įoodies were flying into the country from Hong Kong, London, New York, Mexico City, Adelaide and elsewhere. He was headed for Noma’s pop-up at the Ace Hotel in Kyoto, too.

I was at a table in a humble izakaya in Ebisu, Tokyo - of which there are innumerable in Tokyo - when a photographer I know only from Instagram called out to me from the counter. I’d never been to Japan before this Spring. And yet I kept running into people I knew. He had brought Noma to Kyoto, making it the center of the gourmet universe for the season. That’s why I flew all the way to Japan from London. Those charms have made Noma the restaurant that gastronomes have to get to when they visit not only Copenhagen but any place in the world Redzepi decides to set up shop. He has withstood controversies, relocations, critics, closures and Michelin’s long refusal to give him a third star, before it finally relented in 2021. Through two decades, the Danish chef’s lofty gastronomic ambitions and unfussy approach to hospitality turned his Copenhagen restaurant Noma into a culinary magnet - paradoxically inaccessible to most diners, yet enchantingly popular. (Bloomberg) - Rene Redzepi’s charisma can charm dragons.

Dragons of spring dawning