J. Kenji López-Alt Called Out Noma After Its Closure Announcement
A temple of gastronomy is crumbling. Its foundations couldn't and shouldn't survive the shocks of shutdowns and stresses such as actually paying its staff's salaries, according to the man GQ called "the internet's most beloved cooking guru."
If you hadn't heard, the internationally celebrated, five-time "Best Restaurant in the World" (per The World's 50 Best Restaurants), Noma, is closing. The Danish eatery will plate up its last tufts of moss at the end of next year. It's hard to overstate the influence of Noma and its head chef René Redzepi on the food world (via The Guardian). Noma's aim has always been promoting Nordic cuisine and ingredients, focusing on fermentation and foraging to create culinary experiences infused with power, clout, and authenticity. It helped turn Copenhagen into a bucket-list foodie destination, with many Noma alumni opening their own ventures in the city, according to Wonderful Copenhagen.
Yet in a splashy announcement in The New York Times, Redzepi, in his role of celebrity chef figurehead, proclaimed Noma's business model was "unsustainable." He continued, "Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn't work." He said that he realized this during time spent at home amid the pandemic. But, as Insider reported, Noma's costs went up by around $50,000 a month in October 2022 because its interns, who were previously unpaid, started receiving compensation. However influential Noma's legacy, J. Kenji López-Alt, took to Instagram to call out the way that the restaurant achieved that influence.
Questioning Noma's exalted status
Noma's downfall raises the question of whether this shrine to modern fine dining was ever sustainable. Its costs were artificially low, because, per VICE, around half of its kitchen staff had worked for free. J. Kenji López-Alt called out the behavior in his Instagram post, referencing an article in The Atlantic that called Noma and its ilk "abusive, disingenuous, and unethical." López-Alt asked, "[W]hy was a business that didn't just underpay, but had nearly half its kitchen workforce literally working for free celebrated in the first place? Why do people continue to excuse this behavior even when it is exposed?"
As The Seattle Times noted, López-Alt's greatest skill might be using his MIT-trained knack for science to educate the world about how food works. But, according to NBC News, he is no stranger to working in restaurant kitchens that stifled parts of his personality. López-Alt has also criticized Gordon Ramsay for "normalizing abuse" toward restaurant staff (per Instagram). So it's unsurprising that he would want to draw attention to ethically questionable behaviors underlying an industry-wide problem.
He isn't alone in pointing this out. "Top Chef" host and judge Padma Lakshmi called out restaurant owners with a tweet saying, "Burnout is the business model ... the industry is due for a change, philosophically and otherwise." The Financial Times reported that the hospitality industry is having an employment crisis, and the situation in Copenhagen is reflective of the restaurant world at large.