Noma!!!

Yes, Noma, previously ranked the #1 Restaurant in the world (now it's #3, but who cares). I'm pretty sure my life just peaked. The only reason I got a reservation is that a friend who could not go gave us hers. The only way to do justice to this 17-course, 4 hour culinary experience is by going through each dish individually - I loved them all, and ranking them would be impossible. But what also distinguished the restaurant was the impeccable flow of the service, the open kitchen feeling, and the hour-long tour of the kitchen and facilities after the meal. At Noma the servers also help in the kitchen so they know everything about each dish, including where each ingredient comes from. Sometimes you'd have to ask a lot of questions just to give yourself a break from eating - the dishes come nearly right after each other, and they take control of the timing. If you take a bathroom and schnapps break, for example, they'll warn you that your next course is prepared. Anyway, here is a tour for those who can't handle the best culinary experience ever, because I certainly know it's all downhill from here (until I make some more $$$ to support my lavish eating lifestyle).

Hard to say which I enjoyed more, the friends or the food.

1. Fresh Berries and Lemon Thyme. Right off the bat, you're in flavor heaven. With gooseberries, dried currants, other herbs and berry flavors and a cold, smooth broth, each bite was different. 

2. Cabbage Leaves and White Currants

3. Green Shoots of the Season with Scallop Marinade. Hand-foraged the day of, I could name one of these Nordic herbs (mint). They were each incredibly flavorful and different, but they were all crispened a little bit, and served over what they called scallop fudge - a simple paste that didn't detract from the uniqueness of the herbs. 

4. Sweat Peas, Milk Curd and Sliced Kelp. What you see on the left are the freshest, tastiest peas ever. I didn't even know I liked peas that much. The brown slices are kelp, or seaweed, and underneath is fresh homemade Ricotta-like cheese. Served with a green, fruity broth. The highlight of the dish was definitely the peas, however.

5. Grilled Onion. A couple of my friends said this was their favorite dish. Cooked on their special grill, the onion absorbs a ton of flavor. There was no clean way to eat it, and interestingly, the waitress encouraged us to eat with our hands.  

6. Grilled Baby Corn with Egg Yolk and Beef Marinade. This was the most flavorful, sweet and juicy corn ever. It was so good that when the tiny piece of baby corn was gone, I ate the stalk. 

7. Danish Potato and Nettle. What you see is a potato wrapped and cooked in leaves, and cooked over salt and yeast to absorb the flavor. You are supposed to open the leaves, spear the potatoes and dip them in creme fresh. Tons of flavor in  each potato slice.

Myself twigging a potato.

8. Flower Tart. The flowers had a very subtle, but delicious and interesting flavor. 

9. Sea Urchin and Hazelnuts. I had never eaten sea urchin before, but now I love it (at Noma at least). It's all texture. It's kind of spongey, almost like a squash. It was also really sweat.

10. Sweet Shrimps wrapped in Narsurtium Leaves. This one was pretty weird. They were similar to shrimp dumplings, albeit using leaves and served with a yeast sauce. The waitress recommended eating them in one bite to get the full explosion of flavor.

11. Mahogany Clam and Grains. These guys are roughly 100 years old - you can count the rings on the back for exact number of years. The server loved to tell us about Noma's insane diver, who gets these things from the cold Norwegian waters. They were quite good.

12. Monkfish Liver. These smoked strings of liver were served frozen, but they melt quickly as soon as you start eating them. This may have been my favorite dish. It tasted smokey, livery, and seafoody all at once. Served on a toasted peace of bread, this may set the standard for smorresbord for the rest of my stay here in Denmark. Now you can see why I said it's all downhill from here.

13. Pumpkin, Rose Petals and Barley. Another soft and delicious soup with squash/pumpkin. So simple but so good.

14. Pickled Garlic Flower. Yes, this is a piece of garlic, somehow. They pickle it and it turns black and tastes like a natural fruit rollup. You could probably fool someone by placing a fruit roll up there instead, but then again, the presentation wouldn't be as beautiful. 

15. Roasted Bone Marrow. They showed us the grill/oven hybrid where they cooked these things, so you can tell where it got its serious, smokey character. You could eat it plain with a spoon, or make it into a taco using the leaf and the flowers, which were in a vinegary sauce. I'm a big bone marrow fan and this was amazing for me - fatty, but so much flavor, and it seems to melt in your mouth.

16. Hazelnut Oil and Vacuumed Ice Cream. Yes, they showed us the device used to vacuum this ice cream. What that means is that when you take a spoonful - even a massive one - it will melt and contract down to very little in your mouth. Fun...

17. Chocolate Covered Forest Flavors. Highlight here was the chocolate covered moss.

Desert Egg Nog - at this point we were all feeling fat, happy, and nearly speechless.

After a tour of the facilities, our experience wouldn't be complete without a picture with some of the chefs in the kitchen. And they all screamed "Cock!" which is "cook" in Danish.