Noma Australia: Tickets to hottest restaurant to hit Sydney sell out in 90 seconds
TICKETS to the hottest restaurant ever to hit Australia went on sale this morning - and sold out in 90 seconds.
When tables at Noma Australia were released at 10am, all 5500 seats were snapped up instantly, even though each ticket cost $485 each.
The restaurant of Danish chef Rene Redzepi will open at Barangaroo on Australia Day 2016 and run for 10 weeks in a major coup for Sydney. More than 25,000 people had registered interest in attending the restaurant, many of whom were from overseas.
Tables were offered of two, four, six and eight at dinner and lunch Tuesday to Saturday. The dinner sessions sold out first, in about 50 seconds, with lunch soon following suit.
It is not known what will be on the menu at Noma Australia but Redzepi has been in Australia in recent weeks touring the Northern Territory sourcing bizarre ingredients including mango goose and mud clams.
Redzepi toured the Top End to find produce for NOMA in recent weeks,
like these crocodile parts. Picture: Instagram
Successful table-getter James Morrow said he was thrilled to get a table for four.
“There was no way we were going to miss this,” said Morrow. “Yes, it’s a lot of money, but it’s a lot cheaper than tickets to Copenhagen, and this is really a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We’re all still amazed we managed to get in.”
FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NOMA AND RENÉ REDZEPI
By Simon Tsang
IT’S THE WORLD’S BEST
Search “world’s best restaurant” in Google and Noma invariably pops up in the autofill list. Indeed, it’s won the prestigious accolade four times (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014). The Copenhagen-based restaurant opened in 2003 serving a reinterpretation of Nordic cuisine based on foraging local produce. The man behind Noma, René Redzepi, has since catapulted to rock star status in the restaurant world for his inventive and quirky dishes that sometimes resemble plant life found on the forest floor.
BE PREPARED TO EAT ANTS
So far, Redzepi has taken Noma outside Denmark only twice as pop-up restaurants — London in 2012 and Tokyo in 2014. On both occasions live ants were served to patrons. In London, 22,000 ants were foraged from Denmark and flown over to the pop-up restaurant where they were served with crème fraîche. Apparently, the ants tasted like lemongrass. In Japan, Redzepi went local, sourcing live black ants from the Nagano forest, which were combined with jumbo shrimp.
Ants are also a big part of Redzepi’s pop-up restaurants. LIVE ants. Picture: Instagram
PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE
Redzepi all but single-handedly transformed the Nordic food scene and has become one of the most influential chefs around the world. So it’s no surprise that Noma is a restaurant in demand. The pop-up store in Japan had a waiting list of 60,000 and the typical wait time in Copenhagen is three months, depending on group size. Once you’re in, be prepared to take it slow. A Noma meal lasts hours, with up to 12 courses such as its signature dish the Hen and the Egg — essentially pickled and smoked quail eggs.
IT’S POLARISING
Not everyone’s a fan. Times (UK) restaurant critic Giles Coren fired off a series of profanity-laden tweets tearing into Redzepi in 2012 after Noma won top spot in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for the third time in a row. You’d have to read it to believe it. In an interview with Eater two years earlier, Redzepi had called Coren a “nasty b-----d” and a “really disappointing journalist” who was only interested in making himself famous. Clearly the love goes both ways. British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay apparently didn’t warm to Redzepi’s style either. During a Reddit Ask Me Anything session in April this year, Redzepi revealed that Ramsay dined at Noma and “hated it”. Uncharacteristically, however, “he was nice about it”.
REDZEPI IS MAD ABOUT FOOD
The Macedonia-raised chef founded a not-for-profit association dedicated to promoting good cooking and a healthy environment called MAD (taken from the Danish word for “food”). The first MAD symposium (madfeed.co) was held in 2011 under the theme of vegetation. In 2013, a live chicken was killed on stage during an address to the audience.
Source: The Daily Telegraph, Elizabeth Merryment / Simon Tsang, 30th October 2015
Originally published as: Noma Australia: Tickets to hottest restaurant to hit Sydney sell out in 90 seconds
